posted
How do you go about imagining a scene for your work? For example, how would you go about coming up with an arguement between two lovers scene? This is how I'd do it:
Mental conversation:
Alright...so we have an love conflict. Pretty cliche and overdone. Maybe it'd be more interesting if it was between three people. Hmm... That's pretty strange. It'd have to be fantasy or sci/fi. Or it could be pure fiction, but naaa... I like fantasy more. How about the third person is...a clone? No, that's also cliche. Still, the third person should be special. How about a shapeshifter, who has slept with both of the first two people, then spread lies or rumors?
Yeah!
But how about the shapeshifter isn't present, and the two other characters aren't even sure if it exists--no one does, and the other doesn't.
[And so on.] (I felt this would be off topic in the other thread.)
[This message has been edited by Phanto (edited January 04, 2004).]
posted
My creative writing teacher asked me to write about the creative process I used for writing one of my short stories (which is now a finalist in WOTF.) I think it mostly makes sense even if you haven't read the story, so I'll post it here.
posted
For your example of an arguement between two lovers, there's a few things that would enter my mind.
Choosing a scene might be first. Where are they? Home or in the car? At a party? On the side of the road along a desert highway? etc
Then I might think about the characters. Married or not? Unmarried people might have a tendency to just walk away and never come back, where married people, hopefully are more inclined to work it out. But perhaps that's already established in the previous part of the story. So I'd come up with a reason for the arguement. Since I've been married for over fourteen years, I have ample memories of how I've angered my wife. I might choose something from experience or something else that I'd never do, to make a character more evil, distusting, twisted, etc. To what degree do I want my characters to argue? Slight disagreement or a full out screaming match? I'd choose a conclusion--man storms out and gets hit by a car or woman kills man out of self-defense but doesn't call the police or man realizes he was mistaken and his wife wasn't cheating, etc
Once those and other details are worked out, and I have the setting with a conclusion and characters in mind, I just try to imagine as if I was watching my story in a movie and write what I 'see'. Action and reaction. Man angers woman. Woman reacts. Back and forth with me choosing which path they take, answering the 'how' and 'why' to each action and reaction and taking it to where it realistically meets with the conclusion.
That's the fun part, creating what I want in my story and hopefully having reasons for the reader to believe them.
posted
my imagination going into an art form is like a plane. I save memories dreams imaginary situations, wishes, like fuel, and then i put them in the gas tank then I start the enging of my imagination plane and I turn the switch from autopilot to manual. I take the controls and just start flying. Usaully this runs me into ruts but sometimes i get something good. luckily my most recent project is going pretty well and thanks to this site and my friends which are like ground controlers, I have found a nice path in the sky. This way my imagination plane wont crash in some godforsaken alps and i wont have to eat my characters to survive for the next flight. Thank you everybody.
Imagination also helps me out of bad situations. I had to wait 10 hours at slimy greyhound bustation on new years eve last year and thank myslef for my imagination to keep me company.
I ll write more but my gramps is messing with my tv.
posted
Well, to begin with you already know what you want to do - an argument between two lovers.
The first thing that I do is make sure that I know the characters implicitly. Understand their motivations, their language, and their temperament.
Next, I'll brainstorm on the key details of the scene, noting interesting bits of dialogue and the direction that I want it to flow.
Then write. Create a minor exposition to begin and then follow with action and dialogue. I find that if I have a mild outline thought out, the characters tend to figure out on their own what they're going to say, if you know them well enough. You can rebound the conversation and action off of them, and if they're strong enough, they might even surprise you with a few new ideas.
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