Friday, 4 November 2011 02:32 pm
(no subject)
![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
deckardcanineI'm taking a risk with my NaNoWriMo story. For most of the last month, I envisioned the hero as a man within a couple years of my age, with either a female friend or a girlfriend. Then a day or two before I started writing, almost on a whim, I decided to let him be married and have a son, 9 or 10 years old. The hero could still be my age, but with the tentative events in his premarital past, I figure him to be 35 or more.
This is risky on my part. Chris Baty advises amateurs not to write characters older than themselves -- a guideline I followed instinctively before anyone told me. More broadly, of course, you're supposed to write what you know. I've never even dated, and it's been a decade since I last had extensive dealings with a ten-year-old (sitting for my neighbor). How can I take this approach when trying for greater credibility?
The thing is, "knowing" is relative. It's not like I'll be drawing on fictional families for inspiration. I have my observations and memories, often vivid. Besides, my story calls for a hero less like myself than any I've written in adulthood, excluding my adaptation of the biblical Jacob.
I might bomb. I might do well enough to merit an extensive rewrite. But I am undeterred.
This is risky on my part. Chris Baty advises amateurs not to write characters older than themselves -- a guideline I followed instinctively before anyone told me. More broadly, of course, you're supposed to write what you know. I've never even dated, and it's been a decade since I last had extensive dealings with a ten-year-old (sitting for my neighbor). How can I take this approach when trying for greater credibility?
The thing is, "knowing" is relative. It's not like I'll be drawing on fictional families for inspiration. I have my observations and memories, often vivid. Besides, my story calls for a hero less like myself than any I've written in adulthood, excluding my adaptation of the biblical Jacob.
I might bomb. I might do well enough to merit an extensive rewrite. But I am undeterred.