A Word from Writers to Writers

I completed my first Creative Writing a few semesters ago! While studying for the final, I was reviewing the Characterization section of my only favorite textbook (which I will now shamelessly plug-in: "Writing Fiction: A Guide to Narrative Craft" by Janet Burroway with Elizabeth Stuckey-French) and found some great quotes that I would like to randomly share with anyone who cares.


"You are going to love some of your characters, because they are you or some facet of you, and you are going to hate some of your characters for the same reason. But no matter what, you are probably going to have to let bad things happen to some of the characters you love or you won't have much of a story. Bad things happen to good characters, because our actions have consequences and we do not all behave perfectly all the time."--Anne Lamott


"What's vital for the fiction writer to remember is that the wicked, violent, and the stupid do also love, in their way. Just as humble and loving and thoughtful people hate. Hate humbly, hate lovingly, hate thoughtfully, and so on."--Doug Bauer


"If you take two sticks and hold them parallel, you can capture that image in a photograph because it doesn't change. But if you rub those two sticks together, harder and harder, faster and faster, they will burst into flame--that's the kind of change you can capture in a story or on film. Friction is necessary for change to occur. But without the friction of conflict, there is no change. And without change, there is not story. A body at rest remains at rest unless it enters into conflict."--Stephen Fischer

I take whatever I learn through my writing and art very personally (which everyone should), including the principle Doug Bauer mentions above. The characters of fiction are modeled (or at least are supposed to be) after the characters of real life. I've noticed that I often feel more sympathy for the villains of literature than I do for the antagonists in my own life. Why is this? Because while reading a good book, sooner or later, you see the two sides of a "bad" person, but many times in the real world we only see a person as a certain way. Whichever facet we glimpse of any human, they are still that...a human. Alright, so with that I will leave my soapbox for the day