Monday, January 12, 2009

Writing Exercise #8

Think of your favourite character and/or world from fiction. It can be from a book, graphic novel, tv show or movie.
Now write a short piece using that character and/or world.
I don't mean fanfic. No stories about the firefly class spaceship Serenity stopping by your house to pick you up for adventures with Captain Malcolm Reynolds (or is that only my fanfic story?).
Ahem.
Anyway. Write the piece portraying the character and/or world as accurately to the source material as possible. This will make you appreciate how well written the original character is and the tricks the author used to make the character fleshed out, 3 dimensional and likable.
And remember - this story is for your personal writing file. I don't want to encourage anyone to be a plagiarist. :)

4 comments:

Mr. Nighttime said...

Hmm...As gross as he is, that would have to be Ignatius Reiley from "A Confederacy Of Dunces."

I wonder what I could do about him?

Unknown said...

Plagiarism is fun. I got higher marks in school when I copied from several friends. The trick is, we learn while we copy!

Anonymous said...

Where is the line between writing about a hero from say a sci fi promgramme and fan fiction??? I mean what is wrong about writing about Captain Mal Reynolds- why can't a story about him show his character??

Inkpot said...

Hi Mr Nighttime. Mmm... good character but difficult to know what to do with him all right. :)

Hi Shadowthorne. We do learn when we copy, it is just better not to get caught. :)

Hi Anon. What I mean about not writing fan fic is that in fan fic you might write a scene you would like to see in your favourite book etc and have characters behaving in ways that they wouldn't normally so that they would act out the scene you wanted them to do. You might even introduce yourself as a character, albeit with a different name. What I suggest you write is a scene or short story with your favourite character behaving true to his character but in a different setting. That way you will learn more about how the character was developed and what makes him good. As you mentioned Mal - you could write about Mal but set him in a present day or historical story. How would he cope?