Ashbee
member
Reged: 13/06/2008
Posts: 581
Loc: North Buckinghamshire
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For those who write fiction, what comes first: place, plot or person?
I'm new to fiction writing but my most favourite short story to date was character-led. Flo is a feisty 70-something who wears nail polish to match the colour of her red VW Beetle. I think she is who I'd like to be (in the same circumstances) at her age...my husband loved her and always tells people about her when the opportunity comes up. I wear the nail polish but am working on the car...
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issi
member
Reged: 30/09/2007
Posts: 2733
Loc: Surrey
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I would always write first about the person, inevitably a woman of a "certain age". My last offering for a short story was about an artist who I had to portray as unworldly, possibly unkempt, and yet had to be attractive to the hero. For that to work I had to make her love interest completely the opposite, ie, he fell for her because she was "different". I have written characters with a plot in mind but once I start they seem to go off and do what they want to and I struggle to keep up with my own story.
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Ashbee
member
Reged: 13/06/2008
Posts: 581
Loc: North Buckinghamshire
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Isn't it funny how these characters take over! The stories that come easily/easier to me are always the ones where I have a clearer idea of the main character. Sometimes I have a plot in mind but little idea about the characters and those stories are like vats of treacle...
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aggipanthus
member
Reged: 05/04/2006
Posts: 179
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With me it can be either a person - like the guy I saw in the middle of a market town, on a swelteringly hot day a couple of years ago, dressed in a furry black and white penguin suit. WHY??? Not one person batted an eye lid as he sat down on a bench, pulled a bottle of water from a pocket under one wing, took his head off and drank, replaced bottle, replaced head, got up and carried on. Where was he going? There is also an old chap in the village here I have used as a character in a story, and several other people I have come across or know of.
Or it can be a place, often a place which has a certain feeling about it will evoke a slightly ghostly story. A view seen from the car on a day out. There is one particular airfield near here from where Lancasters used to fly and whenever we drive past the end of the runway I look over and am taken back to the 40s, I can almost see land army girls in their dungarees, headscarves holding back their hair, taking a moments pause to lean on their rakes, look up and follow the aircraft as it flies past them in the fields. I can even hear the engine....that gave me the basis for a story, which has never got anywhere, but I keep having a look at it, a bit of a rewrite here and there, a tweak here and there, and submit sometimes to a competition or mag, though the markets are getting fewer.
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issi
member
Reged: 30/09/2007
Posts: 2733
Loc: Surrey
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When I was a young secretary I shared an office with two other girls. They were always contemptuous of a young and very nervous man who used to come in a try to get someone to type up his copious reports. I was such a wimp I just went along with them and although the real me wanted to be nice to him and help him, I treated him with the same disdain as everyone else. I sometimes wonder what would have happened if I had been that bit kinder. I would have helped him, and he would have become more confident. Would a romance flower under the surprised stares of our co-workers? What was he really thinking when girls were so openly rude to him?
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