Tuesday

Zelazny

"One of my -- standard -- and fairly true -- responses to the question as to how story ideas come to me is that story ideas only come to me for short stories. With longer fiction, it is a character (or characters) coming to visit, and I am then obliged to collaborate with him/her/it/them in creating the story."

- Roger Zelazny

I must say that this is what got me into writing. I love the idea of letting your characters "have fun". To allow them to take you into paths you wouldn't expect. I still remember sleeping one night when a character of mine came into my subconscious, asking me "what he should do next." I thought that was really cool. This is what professional writers feel - I'm one of them. Unfortunately, for me, I spent several months writing, rewriting, and then rewriting two screenplays in this manner (listening to your characters). -- It's bullocks (my favorite English slang term).

I don't know if Mr. Zelazny was British or not, but I found out that he was a science fiction writer. It figures. Of all that is literary, who chooses to write science fiction...

Oh wait, I know... a romance novelist.

Crap! Here I am dissing on people that actually make money for their writing.

I regress.

Characters of mine don't talk to me anymore. I am so glad (I hate their banter). If they did, I would still be re-writing the same junk over and over again till it made me feel better. I love that I just erased over 15 pages of my current screenplay, because, well it just sucked and I'm sick of making sucky stuff into less sucky stuff.

The current character of mine forced me to "collaborate" with him. He became so much less of a character than I originally had in my mind before I started. His journey became less of a journey.

Thank you, science fiction writing, Mr. Zelazny.

God bless you.

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