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Post by ! Wisp ! on Jul 19, 2023 20:51:14 GMT -5
I usually do- the world, the characters, and then the plot. But sometimes it's, the world, the plot, and then the characters. I find it easier to build the world first, create the characters, and then create a plot that would fit the characters and the world the best.
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Post by ! Wisp ! on Jul 19, 2023 21:04:47 GMT -5
I just find it easier to build the world first because I just make my protagonists and antagonists from there. Idk, it's just more fun for me to build the world first, as well.
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Post by Saint Ambrosef on Jul 19, 2023 21:12:10 GMT -5
My writing is very character driven, and I generally prefer character-driven stories. Plus I really like delving into the pscyhe of people and carefully crafting characters into complex personalities. Devising and exploring a character's motivations, backgrounds, philosophical worldviews, priorities, etc is the part of writing that comes most naturally to me.
I usually have at least a vague idea of the world when crafting characters, but more thoughtful worldbuilding is secondary. It's still really fun though. Plot has always been the hardest part of writing for me; I'll often know, like, themes and morals and motifs I want to explore, but the actual story part? Pshwah! I suck at it lol.
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Post by Brownie on Jul 19, 2023 21:31:08 GMT -5
I do world plot characters usually. I like to think of my worlds as the catalyst that's shaping the problem, the plot is the problem that comes from that world being how it is, and the characters as a result of how the world's problems have shaped them into being.
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#f0a9e4
Name Colour
Captain Americat
"Don't frown, someone could be falling in love with your smile." - Teen Wolf
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Post by Captain Americat on Jul 19, 2023 22:19:56 GMT -5
For me it’s almost always characters, plot, then world. And then it basically all develops as I write and everything just sorts to make sense and comes together. For instance, not too long ago I came up with a character, and all the sudden I’ve thought of a plot for him, his entire backstory, and then I’ve developed a new world around him xD I love my characters & they’re the reason my stories exist. Everything comes to life around them.
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Aroace
🎃ᦓρ꠸ᥴꫀᠻꪖꪀᧁ👻
does the candy hunting remind anyone else of cookie clicker? no… just me? okay.
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Post by 🎃ᦓρ꠸ᥴꫀᠻꪖꪀᧁ👻 on Jul 19, 2023 22:29:39 GMT -5
For me it’s almost always characters, plot, then world. And then it basically all develops as I write and everything just sorts to make sense and comes together. For instance, not too long ago I came up with a character, and all the sudden I’ve thought of a plot for him, his entire backstory, and then I’ve developed a new world around him xD I love my characters & they’re the reason my stories exist. Everything comes to life around them. Creating a character and giving them a whole bible worth of backstory lore after is what I live by.
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Post by 𝕊’𝕞𝕠𝕣𝕖 on Jul 20, 2023 0:23:43 GMT -5
Interesting! I can't say I experience that with my characters. Question for y'all, out of curiosity .... when you come up with an original writing project, which idea do you typically come up with first: the characters, the story/plot, or the world? For me it's pretty much always characters, then world, and the plot last. For me, it’s much the same Characters, world, plot All my stories are extremely character driven so those are the most important part of my story
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Post by Deleted on Jul 20, 2023 6:31:57 GMT -5
World, world, world, characters, plot, scrap project, repeat
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Post by valleylight on Jul 20, 2023 8:51:49 GMT -5
Usually I have a basic idea for the plot and main protagonist(s), then I focus on the world and all the characters together before outlining the plot.
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Post by Saint Ambrosef on Jul 20, 2023 11:04:57 GMT -5
Plot is so hard for me. I'll have ideas of how I want the characters to develop (their personal arcs, if you will), and a good idea of what problems plague the world they live in. I'm just not good at putting that together into a comprehensive story. Hence why I'm a writer who doesn't write
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Post by Brownie on Jul 20, 2023 11:20:06 GMT -5
Plot is so hard for me. I'll have ideas of how I want the characters to develop (their personal arcs, if you will), and a good idea of what problems plague the world they live in. I'm just not good at putting that together into a comprehensive story. Hence why I'm a writer who doesn't writeyeah same that's why I developed my current method. My stories felt bad because I was forcing the characters to bend to a plot that didn't suit them or bending my plot to fit my characters and it just wasn't working. Now, I usually start with a change in the world (What if people were plants?) then come up with a problem that would stem from that world (What if the plant parts inside them died?) and then that usually directly leads into characters who would either have to live with that flaw in their society (An abused child who wasn't allowed sunlight) or someone who would be the most important towards fixing that problem (A full druid who focuses on reanimating dead plants). And there. I have a character driven plot that feels both connected to the world and to the characters it affects. I think the most important part is insuring the plot feels "inevitable": the characters feel like they have no other choice but to reach that end because of their problems, their morals, and the pressures the world puts on them. Yall should watch this clip because it is absolutely enlightened.
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#f0a9e4
Name Colour
Captain Americat
"Don't frown, someone could be falling in love with your smile." - Teen Wolf
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Post by Captain Americat on Jul 22, 2023 18:16:50 GMT -5
Well, I had a lot of ideas running through my head today so I kept running to my desk in the middle of work to jot down notes xD I then also proceeded to write on scrap paper for the entirety of my hour break xD
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Post by Saint Ambrosef on Jul 22, 2023 23:26:23 GMT -5
I spent two hours today trying to figure out a character's last name lol. He's supposed to have a madness arc later on, and I wanted his surname to be a (very) subtle reference by rooting it in my conlang's word for "insanity". And since my conlang is heavily derived from Old Church Slavonic, I had a lot of research to do.
I still haven't quite figured it out. But so far I know I want it to have some variation of ne + zum. Now it's about playing around with those sounds until I find something that works with the character's first name.
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#f0a9e4
Name Colour
Captain Americat
"Don't frown, someone could be falling in love with your smile." - Teen Wolf
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Post by Captain Americat on Jul 23, 2023 10:44:41 GMT -5
Good luck
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Post by Saint Ambrosef on Jul 24, 2023 10:24:10 GMT -5
Good luck with that!
Also, I think I finally figured out that character's surname 😭 Only took me like seven combined hours...
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#a3c5e6
Name Colour
𝓣𝓲𝓷𝓾𝓿𝓲𝓮𝓵
Warrior Fanatic
All hail me, the flower-flushing queen of Prague
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Post by 𝓣𝓲𝓷𝓾𝓿𝓲𝓮𝓵 on Jul 24, 2023 10:48:53 GMT -5
What is grammarly? Ngl, kinda surprised to see someone who hasn't heard of grammarly until now. I have super vague memories of being introduced to it during elementary school and I still see them sponsoring YouTubers on occasion. But yeah, like someone else said, it's a writing tool, though I never really use it myself (mostly because there's no lifetime subscription, hence why a want to get a similar tool called Pro Writing Aid).
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Post by Saint Ambrosef on Jul 24, 2023 12:17:14 GMT -5
Good luck with that! Also, I think I finally figured out that character's surname 😭 Only took me like seven combined hours... I wanted to share the process, because I'm kinda just proud of the work I put into it (and also I found it really interesting): My story's conlag is heavily derived from old Slavonic languages (primarily Old Church Slavonic), so I started looking for existent words that meant some variation of "insane". But I could find any from which I could derive a name I liked the general sound of. So I started looking into the root etymology behind a lot of the words: безоумл҄ь ( bezumlih) "irrational", неразоумивъ ( nepazumivŭ) "unreasonable", разоумъ ( razumŭ) "rational", etc. I noticed the one thing they all had in common was "зоум" ( zum). After some digging, I found out that they're all derived from the Proto-Slavic word "оум" ( um), meaning "mind". I decided that I could construct a name that effectively meant "absence of mind" or "confused mind", and that would work. But in order to do that, I had to come up with a word for "absence/lacking", since one did not already exist in the early Slavic languages. (I could have used the preposition "без" ( bez), meaning "without", but I arbitrarily did not want the name to start with the letter 'B'). So I looked to the modern Russian word "отсу́тствие" ( otsutstviye) for inspiration. "Oтсу́тствие" itself is a compound word. It took me a bit but I managed to break it down into its root component words (brackets indicate the Proto-Slavic word from which the Russian root word is derived): oт ("away from/out of") + суть [соуть*] ("essence/being") + ство [ьствo] (equivalent to English "-ness") + ие [иѥ] (an ending common to compound words). *Interestingly, the words for "essence/being" (суть and соуть) are just the third person present plural of the verb "to be".So "oтсу́тствие" literally means "out-of-being-ness". Which, curiously, is not that difference from what "absence" literally means (Latin preposition "ab" meaning "without", and "-sence" of course meaning "essence"). Anyways, that gave me some good material to work with, but I needed more. So I did the same thing again but with the Russian word "помеша́тельство" ( pomeshatelihstvo), the adjective "confused". Which was even more of a chore, because "помеша́тельство" itself is a combination of two compound words, "помеша́ться" ( pomeshatcya) and "тельство" ( telstvo). This is how these then break down into root words: по (due to?) + меша́ть [мѣшати] (mix/stir) + ся [сѧ] (self) + тел [тєл҄ь] ("er") + ьство (-ness) Literally, "having-mixed-up-the-self-ness". Aka "confused". Fascinating! At that point, I felt like I had enough potential root words to mess around and come up with something. I ultimately constructed the word "нецоумещауий" (netsumeshtachiy) for my conlag, which means "irrational/insane". It breaks down into the following: нетсоуть (netsutih, "absence") + оум (um, "mind") + мещасяст (meshtasyast, "self-mixedness") нетсуть ( netsutih) is itself a compound word of my conlang, that combines неза* ( neza, "without") + суть ( sutih, "self"). So altogether it literally means "without the self, a disarrayed mind". * "Without" is usually беза (beza) based on the Proto-Slavic "без"), but some regional dialects use неза (neza) insteadAnd now that I had a complete conlag word, "нецоумещауий" (netsumeshtachiy), I derived the character's surname: Nezhumensky (Нежоуменски). I'm very happy with it!! And it was ultimately a pretty fruitful journey for my conlag as a whole. I know nobody's probably interested in this but I had to tell someone. I'll go back to my hole now.
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Post by Deleted on Jul 24, 2023 12:25:58 GMT -5
Very long process
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Post by Deleted on Jul 24, 2023 15:37:12 GMT -5
I've been writing for six years and still don't have any idea what I'm doing. I will pray yours goes much faster, young friend.
*questions life choices again*
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Post by *Ɗαɾƙρσσℓ* on Jul 25, 2023 22:15:56 GMT -5
Would be nice if I wasn't having the desperate urge to go back to a WIP i haven't worked on in like five years while I'm trying to make progress without distractions on the current ones.
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Post by 𝕊’𝕞𝕠𝕣𝕖 on Jul 26, 2023 23:39:09 GMT -5
Hey so, how would you guys feel about making a little discord server for writers from the forums? How many of us use discord?
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Post by ! (Ġray) ! on Jul 26, 2023 23:39:35 GMT -5
me, I do
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Post by Saint Ambrosef on Jul 27, 2023 7:50:04 GMT -5
I don’t use discord.
Honestly, I feel like having a discord would kill this thread faster.
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Post by Brownie on Jul 27, 2023 10:00:56 GMT -5
I don't think discord is a very good medium for artists to share work and talk tbh. It's meant as a chatbox, not a place to build dialogue
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Post by *Ɗαɾƙρσσℓ* on Jul 27, 2023 11:01:37 GMT -5
I have a discord, I wouldn't mind a version of this thread on there. Could maybe provide a faster discussion platform for people to get feedback/discuss writing issues while they're working on stuff. I actually used to be part of a nanowrimo writing discord, it eventually died out due to inactivity but early on it worked pretty well, we even had a writing sprint bot lol
But also these days I'm not that much more active there than I am here tbh except maybe in terms of dms, so I guess it depends on how others feel abt it.
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#a3c5e6
Name Colour
𝓣𝓲𝓷𝓾𝓿𝓲𝓮𝓵
Warrior Fanatic
All hail me, the flower-flushing queen of Prague
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Post by 𝓣𝓲𝓷𝓾𝓿𝓲𝓮𝓵 on Jul 27, 2023 11:28:16 GMT -5
I use Discord and am even part of a server hosted by Campfire, so it's not like a writing server is impossible.
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