Characters, Conflict; I couldn't have said it better myself

(Edit: Added Post 5 on 2/12/12)

You can consider this lazy linkage. You can also consider it finding the truth in strange places.

Occasionally, I surf the [extremely liberal] political aggregator DailyKos. It turns out one of their writers is doing a post series on writing a novel (four so far, linked below). While the first post has a great illustration of story basics, the second post gives us this giant nugget of truth:

When writing a book, many people start with an idea – the conflict that the characters are going to face. In fact, that's often how people will describe a book, "it's about this guy in a raft with animals." But I want to suggest to you that when it comes to writing, characters should come close on the conflict. They had better, because when you start writing, it's going to make a huge difference whether that alien invasion is being faced by Elinor Dashwood or Captain Ahab. If you try to think too far down the road without knowing who is going to be leading your intrepid human resistance movement, you’re likely to end up with a different kind of conflict, one between your characters and your plot. That’s the kind of conflict you don’t want. Your story isn’t about the conflict. Your story is about how your character deals with that conflict. So get a character.

Wrap your head around that. Commit it to memory. If you want to start writing a novel, this paragraph should be the advice that guides you through the first few steps.

Mark has promised a post per week, but with the way the site aggregates it might be hard to just subscribe to that and avoid all the liberal jabberwockery. Here are the first four posts:

• Post 1
• Post 2
• Post 3
• Post 4
• Post 5

If I see another tidbit that speaks this well, I'll be sure to share. In the meantime, keep up the good work, readers.



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