❛ the lazy writers ❜ V2

[anxious ghost]

@Rini welcome! Stay away from carrots; they're deadly to evil peeps, and as writers, most of us our evil.

[winged-backpack]

@Rini
Welcome! Stay away from carrots!

Do you tend to have a lot of characters in a story, or just a few mains?

I like to have 2/3 main characters then a few side characters. I find that it's easier for both the writer and the reader to not have so many names to remember and they don't distract from the plot.


Update on the story, it's already on page 4 and Im thinking this is going to end up longer than I was expecting ^^'

[sparrow;]

What's the last thing you researched for a story?
Um, I think it was the laws relating to murder (and how to avoid them). It was RESEARCH. I had a smart bad guy (well girl but whatever) who wanted to kill loads of people without being arrested. In case you were interested, I came up with the thought that she couldn't be properly arrested if she killed all of the judges in the city. Seeing as she doesn't care who she kills, I might actually do that.

Do you tend to have a lot of characters in a story, or just a few mains?
Usually quite a few, but it tends to vary. I'll just focus on the main character(s) but there's loads of other people who come and go with no real importance to the plot. Not a good thing to do, I know, but I do it anyway.

Which made me think of my own question:

Code: Select all

[b]Do you tend to have detailed side characters, or just ones with vague personalities? How much effort goes into the story of your non-mains?[/b]

When/if you make up a language, do you just whip it all up as you go, or do you take already existing words and mix them up with other words (made up or not)?
I don't usually make up whole languages, but when I'm making up words I decide on the real-world language I'm basing it off of. Most recently, I was making a new word in a European-ish, English speaking country. Because quite a few English words are based off Greek, I used Google Translate to try out a few words in Greek with vaguely similar meaning. The word I wanted had to mean magic, so I chose a word that was Greek for power/strength and I changed it a bit so that it fitted better with the accent of the people in my story. Yes, I use Google Translate. Don't judge me.

Rini, welcome to the laziness! Avoid carrots for your own safety c:


Anyway, I hurt my hand yesterday and I was so worried I wouldn't be able to do any writing. I can, but it makes my hand ache (also I can't write on paper, but I never do that anyway so meh). So now I'm sad. That's all I wanted to say. And I hope you appreciate the effort put into me writing this down, because now I have an icepack on my wrist. Not that it's stopping me from writing right now or anything... I shall defy my own brain telling me no. My brain's an idiot anyway. Words words words, wordy words wordily words. I'm totally not insane.

[TheSongOfTheStars]

Do you tend to have detailed side characters, or just ones with vague personalities? How much effort goes into the story of your non-mains?
They end up becoming more like secondary mains the way my side characters stick around. They tend to grow in much the same way as the mains. Of course I do have the hazy looking strangers who pop up to serve their purpose and then leave without a word, but they're necessary.

[Arya22]

@sparrow
Hope your hand gets better soon!

[The Worst Username]

Do you tend to have a lot of characters in a story, or just a few mains?

I tend to try and shove as much complexity into my characters as humanly possible, so I always end up cutting off the characters that don't have such big arcs--my human main cast in a particular story went from eight people to three through the drafts.

In the first story of my current project/series, I have only three characters with voiced lines in English, one cat, a small team of maiacetus, and three "ghost" characters--brought up by the main cast, but they never really make an appearance. So seven living beings that make an appearance and ten living beings overall.

What's the last thing you researched for a story?

Sometimes I'll veer off my main story and work on smaller things; yesterday was one of those days. I'm planning to write a story from the perspective of hens in battery cages. I've been looking up lots of laws, emotions of hens, cage size regulations, ways hens are mutilated and deprived of food and deprived of happiness and murdered...it's honestly sickening, and the research has made me want to stop eating eggs.

Do you tend to have detailed side characters, or just ones with vague personalities? How much effort goes into the story of your non-mains?

I have two types of side characters: those who become mains and those who exist to serve a small purpose, e.g., get murdered. There is no in-between secondary cast. I put a reasonable amount of effort into the former type, and they usually have small character arcs.

[Megaguirus]

Do you tend to have a lot of characters in a story, or just a few mains?

Ahh, I suffer from too many characters. But they're not all mains, they're secondary mains. Typically, in my stories, if the character gets a detailed description of their appearance, more than just "a green dragon popped up" and a name, then you can bet you'll be seeing them again, and again, and again.

What's the last thing you researched for a story?

Pirates, the real life history of real pirates. It's for a novel that I won't be working on anytime soon, mostly because I want it to have a really developed world, but in order to do that, I need it to be the only story I'm working on. Anyways, yeah, it was pretty cool learning about real pirates. There were even many known cases of female pirates, even those who didn't hide their gender! Which is amazing information, because my story has a female pirate.

Do you tend to have detailed side characters, or just ones with vague personalities? How much effort goes into the story of your non-mains?

I put too much effort into side characters. Like I said, if they get a detailed description and a name, then they also get detailed personalities. Of course, I do have those that pop up for a bit and then either get killed or leave, but those are becoming more and more rare.

[Takara]

Do you tend to have a lot of characters in a story, or just a few mains?
I usually have 1-3ish, although I do have one story that has 5-6 (I might have gone a little crazy in that one...).

[DeMaizu]

Do you tend to have detailed side characters, or just ones with vague personalities? How much effort goes into the story of your non-mains?
It depends. On what, I'm not excatly sure yet, but - sometimes I'll come up with a side character or two and spend hours slaving over their backstory, adn then other times I'll have a character and say "Alright, this character is not important. Let's not go into them much."

[your blanket]

➥ marking!
i always loved writing, and i think this thread will be great for me !
nice to meet y'all <3