Who else could have done it?

yay ty!

concert asks meme

4. First concert you went to?

Avril Lavigne for the Black Star Tour ♡

6. What is your next concert?

Three Days Grace (again) !!

9. Best opening act you’ve seen?

HMMMM. Probably Meg Myers for MCR??

14. Best concert you’ve been to?

basically i've been reflecting a lot on the kinds of writing advice i tried to follow growing up and where it did and didn't help me - i think a lot of it came down not to the advice itself actually being bad but to not having enough of a context at a young age to know how to interpret the advice or know what its "position" is on the ladder of importance when it comes to writing

specifically, with regard to character writing - a lot of the advice i saw when i was really actively working on improving my writing was to "get to know your character" to an extreme degree of detail. the advice reminded you that real people are quite detailed, and the basic idea was to give your character detail in a way that makes them feel more like a real person

the problem with this advice isn't that it's bad advice, it's that it assumes something about the person taking the advice that may not be true. so - in my case, following that advice, i would create very detailed backstory for my character, and then layer a lot of supplementary detail on top of that - advice often suggested knowing your character's cafe order, what kind of music they like, etc. the problem is that (for me anyway) that kind of thing should come later, not at the beginning step of character creation. so i ended up with very detailed character sheets and still no sense whatsoever that my character was a "real person" - now i just had all these out of context details i needed to remember and keep track of

the lack of context is really the beast here. i think a lot of young writers feel pressure to make their characters distinct and unique, when really what's going to make a character feel like "a real person" to the writer is a connection to something the writer actually cares about. probably the most important thing to ask yourself as a writer, before anything else, is - what do i find interesting? what do i want to explore? if your character is a vehicle for themes that are actually of importance to you, that'll give you a reason to be actually invested in them.

once i've established some kind of thematic relevance of the character to me, i've found it's best to start with a big picture sense of who the character is. what role does the character play in the story, relative to everyone else? what does the character do to move the plot forward? what kind of impression and impact does the character leave on the other characters? how does the presence of my character affect the overall dynamics? who does the character remind me of - both drawing on people i know in real life, celebrities, or other fictional characters? what kind of role do those people play, and how is my character similar or different?

another piece of writing advice i didn't really know how to work with as a young writer was to 'give your character flaws.' at this point with my writing i actually never think about this because i think it leads to the same kind of problem i mentioned earlier, where i was just writing stuff down out of context and now it was another thing to keep track of that didn't actually make my character feel more real to me. instead, i basically ask myself - what challenge does my character need to face? story and character go hand in hand - depending on what your character is dealing with in a big picture sense, the story should put them up against that and make that thing relevant. this is naturally what produces "flaws" in the character, and ties those flaws in with the actual story being told.

i think a lot of people - myself included in the past - tend to see plot and character as separate when they actually go together. certain kinds of characters invite certain kinds of plot. if you have a plot in mind, ask yourself - what kind of person would end up in this situation? who's the person who would really be transformed by going through this? and the same in reverse - if you're starting with a character, ask yourself, what kind of journey does this kind of person need to go on? a path for "growth" is already built into the character when you have a big picture sense of who they are, because character is story.

if you look at your own life, and the real people around you, you'll notice that you tend to encounter the same kinds of problems and learn the same kinds of lessons over and over again. it's the same thing for fictional characters, certain themes emerge and repeat because their disposition makes it so that there's certain kinds of issues they need to contend with and learn from.

a lot of people say they're bad with plot when they're quite good at writing short fanfic stories (hi c) - because when the character "feels real" to them they have a good sense of how to position that character so they're contending with something that they struggle with. the story teaches the character something, or at least positions the character to have a conflict that requires them to learn, even if it's short.