Light and Shade
Feb. 5th, 2002 04:36 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
changeling"You don't have to tell me anything," she said. "But I have seen a great many paintings in my life. They are images of the soul." She pointed at areas of white in the painting. "Someone who goes to so much trouble to bring light into his landscapes, has known darkness."
--Falling, by Anne Provoost, translated by John Nieuwenhuizen
I tend to be far too precious about my characters. I don't want anything too bad to happen to them if I like them. I was reading one of Sandra's old posts looking for more Tybalt pics to use as a reference when I came across this. I felt like my heart was being ripped out through my throat. That's a good thing, in a way. It shows how strongly the writing affects me.
Anyway, I got to thinking about my own writing, particularly the NaNoWriMo2001 piece. One of my characters, Liz, was planned to die at the end in the original storylines. However, as I started to write the piece, and Liz started to come alive for me, I wimped out, and decided not to kill her.
Same happened to Adam: originally the evil villain of the piece, Adam magically got himself a boyfriend without my knowledge. Now, up until this point Adam wasn't in the narrative; we'd seen the consequences of his actions, but we hadn't seen anything of him. We'd seen him through Al's eyes in one of her dreams, but we hadn't seen inside his head. However, all of a sudden there was this sweet boy called Tom who was in love with Adam, and I didn't want Adam to be evil any more. I knew he couldn't be, because Tom could never love him if he was.
However, while I'll defend the purification of Adam to the death (the story has become a little more poetic and tragic now because of it), I think that I can't justify saving Liz. The more I sketch out her character, the more 3D she becomes, the less I want to kill her off. However, I think that this novel is working its way up to a tragic conclusion.
And in a perverted sort of way, I want it to be Al's fault. She's so damn single-minded about everything; I want this to be her downfall.
--Falling, by Anne Provoost, translated by John Nieuwenhuizen
I tend to be far too precious about my characters. I don't want anything too bad to happen to them if I like them. I was reading one of Sandra's old posts looking for more Tybalt pics to use as a reference when I came across this. I felt like my heart was being ripped out through my throat. That's a good thing, in a way. It shows how strongly the writing affects me.
Anyway, I got to thinking about my own writing, particularly the NaNoWriMo2001 piece. One of my characters, Liz, was planned to die at the end in the original storylines. However, as I started to write the piece, and Liz started to come alive for me, I wimped out, and decided not to kill her.
Same happened to Adam: originally the evil villain of the piece, Adam magically got himself a boyfriend without my knowledge. Now, up until this point Adam wasn't in the narrative; we'd seen the consequences of his actions, but we hadn't seen anything of him. We'd seen him through Al's eyes in one of her dreams, but we hadn't seen inside his head. However, all of a sudden there was this sweet boy called Tom who was in love with Adam, and I didn't want Adam to be evil any more. I knew he couldn't be, because Tom could never love him if he was.
However, while I'll defend the purification of Adam to the death (the story has become a little more poetic and tragic now because of it), I think that I can't justify saving Liz. The more I sketch out her character, the more 3D she becomes, the less I want to kill her off. However, I think that this novel is working its way up to a tragic conclusion.
And in a perverted sort of way, I want it to be Al's fault. She's so damn single-minded about everything; I want this to be her downfall.
