Comments on: Getting All Emo on Your Characters http://www.lisapaitzspindler.com/blog/2007/11/14/getting-all-emo-on-your-characters/ Mon, 06 Oct 2008 16:53:58 +0000 http://wordpress.org/?v=2.6.2 By: Carolyn http://www.lisapaitzspindler.com/blog/2007/11/14/getting-all-emo-on-your-characters/#comment-1413 Carolyn Fri, 30 Nov 2007 14:24:06 +0000 http://lisapaitzspindler.com/blog/2007/11/14/getting-all-emo-on-your-characters/#comment-1413 I totally agree with personality playing a role in what you write first. I tend to go for getting the action and the plot right, and sometimes I'll even rejigger my characters to match it better. I don't know my Myers-Briggs thing, but I'm more logic and ideas over empathy, and so that would match your theory regarding what I pay attention to first. But then I do pay a lot of attention to characters' emotions later, and work extra hard on getting them right. I remember this quote from Nabakov, in response of E.M. Forster saying his characters sometimes misbehave and run away with the book, Nabakov goes, "my characters are galley slaves. They do what I tell them." Something like that. I totally agree with personality playing a role in what you write first. I tend to go for getting the action and the plot right, and sometimes I’ll even rejigger my characters to match it better. I don’t know my Myers-Briggs thing, but I’m more logic and ideas over empathy, and so that would match your theory regarding what I pay attention to first. But then I do pay a lot of attention to characters’ emotions later, and work extra hard on getting them right.

I remember this quote from Nabakov, in response of E.M. Forster saying his characters sometimes misbehave and run away with the book, Nabakov goes, “my characters are galley slaves. They do what I tell them.” Something like that.

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