At the User Group Meeting last night, Chris was giving some helpful advice (as always) on what to do if you’re having trouble writing your Main Character’s throughline.
The problem with writing the Main Character (a problem i’ve written about before here) is that often, because it is the first-person perspective, you’ll end up basically writing yourself into your story, instead of writing the character. Now, at times, this may be good, but because it can be so personal, you might not be as truthful as you should be.
As with all things Dramatica, it’s a matter of perspective. If you’re having trouble with your Main Character throughline, write the Main Character as if you were looking at someone else, i.e. write him objectively. This way you’re not so personally invested in it.
This is also a good technique to learn Dramatica. Write a story you don’t care about, a story that is not all that important to you. We did this last night at the annual “Dramatica Mad-Libs” class. We picked a random storyform and then started to fill in the blanks.
It started out quite strange, with a bunch of seemingly unrelated parts, but eventually, after 2 hours or so, we came up with a very interesting and compelling story. Towards the end several of us did become personally invested in it - I think it’s hard not to when you’ve made so many creative choices.
So switching your perspective, not only when you’re forming the structure of your story, but also in the writing process itself, might help your writing.
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