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April 06, 2004
actually....
This is 24 hours late. I did two pages in seventeen last night, but forgot to blog.
I'm realizing I have a lot of work to do insofar as making some of the characters unique. Characterization is one of those things I love, but in the process of telling the story some of the individuality of each of the people in my story has been lost. I know I poked his good name with a stick in my last entry, and the author in question may not be my kind of storyteller, but his characters (the male ones, at least) are all individuals. Rand is Rand. Wolfboy is Wolfboy. And Mat is a bastard (and I love him). And I think part of his commercial success is owed to that ability (lots of authors have a similar spooky characterization talent: Misty Lackey, Lois Bujold, Tim Powers, Steven Brust, Neil Gaiman, and every other author in existence whose works I like).
Speaking of Matts -- Matt Groening has a theory. He designs his characters so that if you saw them in silhouette, without color linework, you would know which character you're looking at. The literary equivalent exists, but I haven't nailed it. Yet.
So it's something I'm mulling right now, and something I'll probably deal with for the rest of the book and in rewrites. Which, the way things are going, should be early summer.
Woof.
Posted by sdshaver at April 6, 2004 12:48 AM