Character Swap

We did an interesting activity in creative writing club today. We had to describe one of our characters who we knew well to someone else, and then they would have to write a short piece from your character's point of view, and you had to write a short piece from their character's point of view. It was quite difficult, at first, until you got into it.

I'd say that it made you realise how much your characters mean to you, but I was already aware that I was quite protective over my favourite characters and storylines (I feel I should apologise to all my other characters and storylines - just because you are not my favourites does not mean you are not valued, and no offense was intended). I also expected it to be difficult to write from the point of view of someone else's character, so there were no new lessons to be learned there either. However, what I did take away from this is how hard it is to describe your character to someone else and not miss anything out. I doubt my partner's piece shows my character the way I show my character, which is my fault not hers, she is an amazing writer.

Also, I am quite nervous to share what I wrote, although surprisingly I am quite happy with it. I'm just worried that I got her character all wrong and she won't be very happy with me, or that she won't think I wrote it very well (did I mention she's a better writer than me, and probably THE best in our group? Yeah.).

It also made me want to talk more about my novel, mostly to my best friend while we were walking home, which is odd for me, because, as I mentioned earlier, I'm quite protective over my characters and storylines. They're kind of part of me, they're some of those really private things that I daydream about randomly so I don't much like sharing them; you'd expect my best friend to know all about them, but she doesn't, we don't really talk about our writing all that much. When somebody, like my aunt, say, asks me if I'm writing anything at the moment, if I am, I'll generally just say something along the lines of "Um, yeah... I'm writing a fantasy story... about a girl... as usual..." and that'll be it.

Me and my friend did talk a bit about it - I can't remember how much I've said about this novel previously, but this is the friend who suggested the name Barnabus, if I mentioned that - and I told her today the significance of this - that although my novel finally has a proper title, the name Barnabus has stuck, to my main antagonist - and she was pleased, I think, of her contribution. She, I think, may or may not be the first person I have told my new title to. It's called The Secrets The Dead Keep. (By the way, this post isn't necessarily to talk about my novel, it doesn't really have much of a point...) Back in August last year I wrote about 41,000 words in a prologue and not quite twelve chapters (I had a plan set out, but in order to keep myself wanting to write, I skipped one of them; also, I never finished about Chapter Twelve) set over three months, when the whole novel will take place over twelve months. I don't really think there's much more I can say about it, I may or may not have given a (very) brief idea of what the plot is about in a previous post, I can't remember - my memory really isn't great, you may be able to tell :P.

So... maybe I'll post a bit of my novel on here at some point (apart from the random extract I had to remove from my first draft due to a "deliberate" mistake). I'd also like to read a bit of it out at Creative Writing, but I think it'd be best if I read the prologue, unfortunately I'm happy with neither the original prologue I wrote in August, or the one in the rewritten version, so that'll need a bit of work... Anyway. :) I'm sorry this post... wandered a bit, and that it didn't really have much of a point, but I wanted to post it, so there. :) I may be posting again soon if I manage to write part two of When I Turn Forty, if anyone's interested about that, which they're probably not - I've tried writing that story several times, I'm still not convinced the idea is any good when it's on paper instead of in my head (where it is  good), but I'll definitely be posting on the 14th (of February, this year, that is, guys :P). No extra brownie points for guessing the subject. :)