(no subject)
Jun. 12th, 2005 05:20 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
katallisonSo I posted something earlier today about getting back into writing, and in a comment, ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
cesperanza pointed out that I'm really a "Method" writer, one who (like a Method actor) spends a lot of time upfront thinking through characters' emotions and motivations, and then has to struggle to figure out what the characters should do to express those; whereas she writes in what she calls the "British" method, analogous to the great British actors who stand *here* and say the line and then walk over *there* and do that piece of business, and work back from there to discern and build in the emotional underpinnings.
And now I'm fascinated by this, because I just assumed that everyone goes about writing in the same way I do, more or less, and I'm having fun trying to get my head around what it would be like to simply have some scenes in mind, and write them out, without having already done a lot of sort of preparatory emotional outlining to guide the process. And because I have a ton of other stuff I should be doing, I thought that instead I'd -- that's right, do a poll!
[Poll #511623]
cesperanza pointed out that I'm really a "Method" writer, one who (like a Method actor) spends a lot of time upfront thinking through characters' emotions and motivations, and then has to struggle to figure out what the characters should do to express those; whereas she writes in what she calls the "British" method, analogous to the great British actors who stand *here* and say the line and then walk over *there* and do that piece of business, and work back from there to discern and build in the emotional underpinnings.And now I'm fascinated by this, because I just assumed that everyone goes about writing in the same way I do, more or less, and I'm having fun trying to get my head around what it would be like to simply have some scenes in mind, and write them out, without having already done a lot of sort of preparatory emotional outlining to guide the process. And because I have a ton of other stuff I should be doing, I thought that instead I'd -- that's right, do a poll!
[Poll #511623]
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
(no subject)
Date: 2005-06-13 06:51 am (UTC)But then, at some point, the action has carried me as close to the resolution as possible, and I have to actually stop and think about what needs to happen emotionally before I can say the story's done.
That's usually when I stop working on that story...for the next year or so.
Then, after a while, I come back to it, and I'm usually more clear in my head about what they want and how to get it for them - which is always what I'm about, in one way or another; getting them what they want, or what they need, or at the very least getting them healthier and smarter than when they started.
Then I waffle a bit about what actually has to *happen* for them to do those things, and then finally I write the end. =)
Needless to say, the first hundred pages or so are a breeze. It's those last twenty that'll kill ya....