/lit/ - Literature

Characters first, then scenes involving those characters. I've recorded so many of these, rarely do they evolve into stories. But all the stories I've managed to write started that way.

>>10744113
I fucking love this image

>>10744113
>tfw my life is becoming notes from underground
>I wish I had sleeping pills to OD on right now
I used to laugh at this but after two months of isolation (temporary, I'm moving back into real world life at the end of March, moved back home to help take care of my parents they live in a remote area) it's really starting to hit home.

>>10744113
Based on writing advice that I've read it's more interesting to start with characters and have them drive the plot. Generally I think of characters as related to their own individual themes and when I want to write about a theme then in goes the character.

>>10744113
I like to distill an idea into a character if that makes sense, i.e. they're almost the physical embodiment of a concept. That character then drives the plot development and the rest of the characters follow. I know it's a little 19th century but it can lead to interesting results with contemporary topics and experimental stylistics and narrative structure. At least that's what I'm trying with my novel in the works. It could be total shit and my method is shit.

Characters
Plot
Themes
Then I just hope the rest starts falling into place as I write

>get emotion or obscure feeling to explore
>break it down, question what the current world view on said emotion is, and create answer to how it should be treated or explored
>break it down into story arc
>shit out 5-7k worth of words for a plot while relating to the break down of the idea
Ill try and do the plot vomit as fast as I can, the harder go the more intresting the idea is. Genuinely if you get bored of a plot so will anyone reading it.
If the plot is good...
>name characters and create their arc, before hand they would have utility names, like sailor or waiter. Main characters get god names, such as Apollo. Do this to relate a trait to the story without character development.
>dive deeper into theme, develop atmosphere and texture
At that point onward, everything has to relate to the characters and how they develop. The story comes naturally as I write.

>>10744637
anon this is me >>10744623, I'm genuinely curious what you're writing/have written because I also tend to shit out text very quickly and let the story write itself

>>10744675
Current project is a story where a young man decides to kill himself, ends up not to taking his life. Doing this by obfuscating a vogage and return story that plays on traditional character tropes that will be deconstructed. The feeling I want to explore is coping with the fact we can't explore everything in our own cities, people within in it down to our closest neighbours and friends - we don't know each other at all down to the core - let alone explore the endless possibilities abroad. Yet what we can explore is our internal selves. When we're depressed and want to kill ourselves, we tend to do huge amounts of introspection, and thats the reason for the allegory I'm trying to go for with the mc anyway. On phone so hope I don't sound too jarring right now.

>>10744113
I generally start with a theme that I want to explore, like you. I then start a notebook and begin collating various bits of inspiration related to the theme such as art, poems, notes from books I’ve read etc. In the same notebook I also write about my own personal experiences related to the theme as well as interesting tid bits from conversations with people I know. From the notebook I try to distill a single big idea that I want to tackle: a thesis for the book essentially. During this time I’ve usually started to think about plot and characters, so I start refining them further, build a general skeleton for the book and its story arcs, then start writing.

>>10744980
How do you go with self-inserts then? Generally lot of storytelling is against it.

>>10745076
I’m opposed to self-inserts personally too. Anything from my personal experience that I use is generally an attempt to explore a personal foible of my own. As such, characters often feature aspects of my own personality or that of people I know, but only for the purpose of exploring those traits and faults, not for being a replication of a flesh and blood personality.