marisa
asked
Sally Green:
I'm not sure if this has been asked before, but this is a subject that has always fascinated me. How do you go about developing your characters, and making them unique? What are your methods of doing that and also showing all the emotion in this story?
Sally Green
Gosh, these are big questions!
I know my characters very well and believe in them as 'real' people. I think about them a lot, and especially think about what they want, working out what's important to them and what's not important. That's the first step I guess - answering the question 'What does this guy want?'
The next crucial bit is getting their voice right - dialogue helps as I can work out what they'd say and how they'd say it.
I usually know when it's not working and that usually happens when the character isn't clear to me, when I've not worked them out properly and it may take a few weeks to get a character to work.
Each person comes out unique because people are unique, I suppose.
It's very easy to let Nathan drive the story of HALF BAD as the story is about him but I do spend a lot of time thinking about the other characters, and how they influence Nathan's world.
As for showing emotion - well this is very different as it's not something I spend a lot of time thinking about at all. In any scene I'm just trying to make it as real as I can - and I spend a lot of time on that. I guess I don't write about the scenes that are too unemotional (as that would be pretty boring). Again the scenes are very clear in my head - almost like a film. My writing style is quite simple I suppose, and I do try to edit my work down to the minimum and leave a lot to the reader's imagination.
Thanks for the questions.
I know my characters very well and believe in them as 'real' people. I think about them a lot, and especially think about what they want, working out what's important to them and what's not important. That's the first step I guess - answering the question 'What does this guy want?'
The next crucial bit is getting their voice right - dialogue helps as I can work out what they'd say and how they'd say it.
I usually know when it's not working and that usually happens when the character isn't clear to me, when I've not worked them out properly and it may take a few weeks to get a character to work.
Each person comes out unique because people are unique, I suppose.
It's very easy to let Nathan drive the story of HALF BAD as the story is about him but I do spend a lot of time thinking about the other characters, and how they influence Nathan's world.
As for showing emotion - well this is very different as it's not something I spend a lot of time thinking about at all. In any scene I'm just trying to make it as real as I can - and I spend a lot of time on that. I guess I don't write about the scenes that are too unemotional (as that would be pretty boring). Again the scenes are very clear in my head - almost like a film. My writing style is quite simple I suppose, and I do try to edit my work down to the minimum and leave a lot to the reader's imagination.
Thanks for the questions.
More Answered Questions
Justine
asked
Sally Green:
When you started Half Bad, did you think at that time that it would be a trilogy? I always wonder how much of writing in trilogies is a product of publishers and marketing departments these days. It isn't that I mind having more books to read (not at all). Or is the trilogy something that you, as a writer, had in mind as you were writing. If that is the case, why?
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