"I could write better characters than this!" You think so?

[Heart of Darkness]

>To all people who say that they can write better than what is currently available in today's media, post examples, preferably of work that has been published. I know at least one of you is overconfident about your writing skills.

OT: I know my writing sucks, mainly because I don't practice my creative writing skills. I mean, I'd like to think that, given enough practice, I could, but I'm not going to delude myself in saying that I can do so now, especially if I keep putting off my practicing.

 

[Sorafrosty]

Yes, this is exactly what I feel! I think that whatever I do when I write, the character's voices have an aspect of my personality or voice in them. For example, they phrase their lines just as I would. *scratches head* I feel their voices become silly when I try to change their diction, too, for some reason... I agree that it seems like a common theme, a recurring one, but it seems that some writers in the media are able to change the, say, diction of their characters to sound different from themselves or other characters, but I do not know the technique for doing that. Do you have any way of making them sound different, or have them not sound like different aspects of you, or does it happen regardless of what you do?

The cop-out-yet-unfortunately-true-answer is that it's down to practice. however, I found that having someone else's voice in my head when I wrote helped. For example, if I have a friend who's very boisterous and enthusiastic, then if I want a character like that, I imagine things how she would say it, and because she's a friend, it's a little easier for me to know what she'd say, and write it naturally, than to write 'me as boisterous' if you get me. We all write what we know, there's no way around that. One of the characters in my book I deliberately read in the voice of Flemeth from Dragon Age of all people, to kind of grab that sense of old-yet-absurd that I found she encapsulated. It wasn't by any means the entirety of the character, but I found the more I exercised that kind of ability to force myself to read from another perspective, the more I could simply come up with these perspectives without basing it on another character from fiction, allowing these characters to grow more on their own. It's like in drawing - you might want to practice on someone's face first, but eventually you'll have enough of a knack for eyes, noses, mouths, hairlines, that you can come up with your own. I also find that whilst at first that whole 'force yourself to write in a way that isn't your own' feels unnatural and stilted, eventually it starts to come naturally. As you learn more about the character you're creating, you know what they'd say and how they'd say it.

It all takes time, but that's the way with all creative effort.

Ah, yes, that seems to be the case; practice. I like how you describe how you write one of your characters with Flemeth's voice in your head. I do agree that we all write of what we know; after all, if we were writing of what we didn't know, there would not be much to write. The 'force yourself to write in a way that isn't your own' is rather difficult, very true, but eventually it might merge with the style you write in naturally. I am very interested in reading what other people write, though, so if you ever feel you want to, PM me with some of our writing