Becoming your character

SlowHand

Do you find it difficult to write the characters who are of the opposite sex?
Do you have any special tricks you use to get into their thoughts and feelings?

Well, peppercorn, sure I do(Do you find it difficult to write the characters who are of the opposite sex?) It helps to be a good listener and have close friends who are open to honest discussions of their feelings. We don't all like the same things sexually of curse but we all have opinions and often strong feelings about what we don't like and why. In that there is always a story. Mentally we are different in our maturity and our ability to fantasize as well.

Do you have any special tricks you use to get into their thoughts and feelings? Again Pepper I don't know that tricks is the word for it but it takes lots of reading and research to develop characters and a feel for a setting. It's a good idea to free write your impressions of the before emotions and mind set of your charters and then lead up to the story line it's self. In real life we all know that there is often conflict before a embarking on trying something different than we are accustomed to and then again there are conflicts emotionally about sex in different settings. Porn will always give you images...it won't give you emotional hard core conflict that stories require. It doesn't tell you the after story either. Some subjects are in fact a explored in writing in a SCI-FI type setting where you can define the emotions for each character.

It's a good idea to read widely all kinds of things in a verity of formats. A lot of it comes down to what do you want to say verses what are you actually saying and what you are actually saying in a piece of writing my very well be quite different than what you wish you could say.

In longer writings you can experience the characters taking over in your stores and that helps to come up with a shorter slice of that to develop into a short story, like we see here at MindSpired. The bottom line is it takes a long time to develop a story in a setting that has the ring of truth to it. Then again the idea of "ring of truth" is an over all feeling about your story that radiates form it's core.

Stories either have that elusive feel of value in a emotional contest which is difficult to put into words. It's related to what you are saying in your story and what the story is actually saying to a reader.

For example it takes a while before a reader matures into a mind set that they are no longer writing from their personal experiences in bed to leaping into projecting those emotions and feelings into a created character that has been placed in an imagined setting.

I'm straight, but there is a lot of gay and lesbian writing out there and opinions and attitudes of practicing gays and lesbians that you can get a feel for what you might want to put into a character. Then you need to post it in a gay or lesbian environment and see if the find it has the "ring of truth for them". In other words you the writer must be willing to face the music in a completely different world than you are accustomed to getting feed back from.

Can and will you change, Well, your orientation may not then you may discover that you are leaning to either way kind of sex. For me I can say I'm straight but I have written gay and lesbian stuff that has gotten some positive feedback from gays and lesbians. Problem is one of discerning their motives and the level of sincerity in their feedback.

So, much for easy and tricks!

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SlowHand

Peppercorn asked:
Do you ever interview friends to immerse yourself in another's mindset?
How do you virtually walk that mile in another's shoes and then put it down in a story?
Or do you have no trouble at all bouncing back and forth between the sexes when you write your stories?
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SlowHand:

Do you ever interview friends to immerse yourself in another's mindset? Well, I don't do formal interviews I read a lot of their work and I talk to them about it and sex in general. We all have a mindset. I don't really try to put another living person's mind set into a character as I don't really think it's possible. I do sort of file general mind sets as far is types of sex different kinds of people engage in. Like BDSM for example. I get a lot from other fiction writers and how they approach the problem. It's more like a cumulative pool of knowledge that you acquire over time from reading and talking to other people about what you have read and what their opinion of that is. That gives you an attitude. That attitude is a starting point actually...like in setting up a dialog between two characters to explore the issues you just read or discussed, often this happens after your mind has begun to nag you a bit about some points you may have found unsettling. This sort of thing leads to character growth in longer writings, so after you have explored an idea or attitude you usually can find a slice of the writing that has promise for a short story. Then it's time to consider setting and character description. Once you have a beginning and middle it's time to think about a twist at the end that will hopeful amuse or titillate your reader.

Well, that's sort of a grand plan, we are talking about an art here so there are no absolutes and every artist is different in their approaches. Most of us would probably agree that it takes practice.

How do you virtually walk that mile in another's shoes and then put it down in a story?
Or do you have no trouble at all bouncing back and forth between the sexes when you write your stories?

A lot of what I have already said applies here as well. I'll comment on: do you have no trouble at all bouncing back and forth between the sexes when you write your stories?

Well, that's why you do your exploratory writing to see where it will lead. Some times you find that it takes a direction that you don't have enough knowledge about so you file it in a folder and start doing research...read wider often it may take a number of months before you actually get the seed and your new knowledge to sprout into a workable idea them you explore some more. I'm always writing something. It always leads me some where. I'm always reading something as well. I find I like reading a novel along with a short story collection because my subconscious often bubble us something I'd like to try to write about.

So there you have it. My general thoughts about your questions.

SlowHand

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yarded for harvest

I find that the most important thing in writing well is to review the story a few months after having written it without taking peeks at it between times.Its amazing what I find in a story I once considered as being as good as I can do.

I also find that its useful to look at it with a view to injecting some references to body language as this supports the charactorisation in the story. Without reference to some body language the charactors often lack charactor and are unconvincing.
Reading aloud is also good but the initial power of creativity too often sweeps the problems away as one reads and its not as good as reading it after the creativity around the story has waned.

I think too that its important to get intelligent feedback as soon as possible after posting- waiting a month or two after submitting for the story to go up is totally unacceptable and rude- as happens on another site. It put me off writing for some time.

Also, I find that if someone is rude in their response to a story its challenging, particularly if they have nothing published or if they misrepresent the context. This is a frequent happening and might elicit the response that it is unfit for consideration or by responding to the challenge with equal malice lol. Neither response is ideal!

I also like to go through my stories with single things in mind-eg, tense, tautologies, etc.
I find that my imagination is often far superior to my ability to record it. Sometimes I have to miss things out. By keeping the story a few months I'm often able to recall the important missing bits and am able to sensibly add them. The holes in the original which resulted in disjointedness are then filled.

There are so many ways to edit one's stories. Mostly they are about supporting the charactor which went with the story originally. It was in the initial writing that the writer was the charactor in the story. Unfortunately, not all charactors are sane, in life we have special places for such people. One doesn't really want such a special place for one's story. In every story there are psychological elements- I prefer to have just half of it- I try not to have the psycho but enjoy the logical.

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