FreedomToTheReaders' Exercises for Cat's Writing Bootcamp

Author's Note 3

For this camp exercise we were instructed to write from a new character's perspective using third person voice. Compared to the previous tasks, I found this one rather difficult, but not only because it was in third person. (Unfortunately though I hate to admit it I'm one of those lazy writers that is very comfortable with first person pov and tends to stick to my comfort zone.) My idea had been set up with three characters from the start so it wasn't as though I had to modify my entire original idea. I had a time of it getting into the head of the character this is written from for starters. Now, don't laugh this is going to sound weird, I know, sometimes it even is for me. Anyway, when I get an idea, I often see it as pictures, as a silent movie type of thing. And at other times it feels as though characters are literally talking to me in my head. Occasionally both of these happen simultaneously. (Great now I sound deranged, well too late now I suppose.)

Unfortunately, none of those things happened when I first sat down to write this assignment. So for a good bit of time I was stuck as to how to complete this one. I reread the portion of the second assignment for this character, several times, in effort to get them to talk to me to no avail. So I decided that if I couldn't get microscopically into the character, I'd put on the macro lens and try to work from a birds eye view. Except I wasn't sure where to start doing that from, until I watched a few random videos on the internet about animation for videogames. Then with inspiration in hand I decided I'd begin by breaking down the movements of the first two characters as I'd seen in my head when I originally got the idea. I reread the dialogue exercise and proceeded to use the dialogue as markers and then literally wrote out every move they made. I was genuinely surprised at how much it helped, it gave me a reference guide to consider what the two characters would look like if someone were watching them.

As it usually does, diverting my mind off of an original task, writing the third person piece, and doing something else, diagramming the movements, lets me digest and consider the first task without knowing I'm doing it. This allowed me to eventually get into the head of the character this is written from, but it still didn't completely solve my problem. Yes, I had an okay try at the base task, but then there was the extra credit. (I have a tendency to bite off more than I maybe should, and I hate leaving things unfinished, so it was just dangling out there, of course I had to try to add it on too.) But the extra credit was no easy task - I still really only managed half of it. At this point, I had had the bare bones piece written and I had given it a few days to sit, in the process of trying to figure out the extra credit parts. So I ended up doing a hybrid thing, combining the idea of Exercise 1B and the general idea of how I'd diagrammed my character movements, all spurred on by the bit Cat said about thinking of the setting as a character, and that was how I ended up trying to incorporate setting into the exercise. I've actually decided to post both my original try and the new version just as a comparison.

- FTTR

P.S. - Sorry this AN got so long. I do believe, without actually checking my own previous words, that I told you all these notes would be brief. But if it's entertaining or educational or even the tiniest bit helpful, it was worth the length.