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The Character As Storyteller by My Guest William Tooker

  The Character as Storyteller

 

Some people work best from an outline and I can certainly understand the role of structure in writing. When I sit down to write a story I have a loose outline generally including the character arc for the major players and what needs to have happened by the end. On more than one occasion I have been traveling down a road where I believed I knew what was around the corner only to be utterly surprised by the character having none of it. It's a strange sort of relationship you have with your characters as an author. You are the defacto god of their universe but sometimes their reactions can surprise you. Greedy and selfish characters can hold that last inner spark of decency and noble heroes can give in to bitterness. When I was a bit more of a neophyte I used to try and force them into reactions I wanted rather than what they wanted the results often felt forced and weakened the plot. Pushing characters through a gauntlet is a slow frustrating process that usually ends up in a rewrite. Giving the characters free rein to talk back to you and surprise you will add momentum to the story. Don't be too caught up with the idea that these new actions don't lead to the end you want. If it's that brilliant of an ending then there will be more than one path to it and if it's not as good as you wanted it to be the rebellious character might well be leading you to a better end than you had planned. In the end what really matters is that you fulfill all the points of story having changes in most major characters by the end and creating a resolution that fits with the heroes’ journey through his individual perils.

  William is originally from Ohio. After college at The Ohio State University Will has lived in San Francisco, Ca and Oakland, CA. After a brief pit stop back in Ohio William lived for a time in Clearwater, Florida and Denver Colorado. His interest in horror started at age 13 when seeing Don Coscarelli's Phantasm in his hometown theater for the first time. Later that year he had the bejesus scared out of himself reading The Amityville Horror. Although Roger Zelazney's Chronicles of Amber were the works that made him want to be a writer he has learned character development by reading Stephen King, learned to color outside the lines from reading Clive Barker and Glen Cook. After Slouching Towards Bethlehem" is over Will is starting on an ongoing novel series with a modern day gang war among sorcerers. If you've stopped by the profile stop and say Hi! I love meeting fans.              

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