#ROW80 Week 9: From Afar

Here’s my #ROW80 linky for Week 9. Perhaps because I’m on holiday at the moment, it’s been a fairly good week.

Reading

I read about 70 pages of The Three Musketeers, and the last 100 pages of Nietzsche’s Beyond Good and Evil.

I started reading Nietzsche’s book with a specific question in mind: how would ethics work in a story with distinct “heroes” and “normals”, such as a superhero setting?

The book had a broader focus than I thought, and didn’t really answer it.

It did, however, get me thinking about and finding examples of power as a motivation for things. I don’t think I ever understood how someone could want power “for its own sake” before.

Writing

This also went well (about 1000 words on Conkers, and a few hundred more on another WIP), although I didn’t keep up with my commitment to characterisation exercises.

On Tuesday, I had a go at the re-writing exercise from Writings of a Mrs. I think I ended up changing the details of the scene more than I did my writing style; but that did change the characterisation. So far, so good.

For the next two days, I did quizzes in the personality of my characters. First, I did one about breakfast in various situations (normal, special occasion, etc.). Conkers being fantasy, this ended up being more about world-building and research than characterisation.

(I believe I found this test on A Keyboard and an Open Mind, but it doesn’t seem to be there; I’ll put in the correct link if I find it.)

After that, I ran out of ideas. I tried a questionnaire from the Australian Bureau of Statistics, but I wasn’t very happy with it. For the rest of the week, I just worked on the stories directly.

I suspect my real problem was that you’re supposed to do these tests in character, and I wasn’t. Next time, I might have a look at how actors get into character and see if I can use something similar.

Good luck and happy writing!

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