Oh, hey, look, an entry from Patricia Wrede about character development! (Found the link over at Nathan’s blog.)
I’m a big Wrede fan. Just got another one of her books — it’s on my TBR pile.
If she’d said all this stuff about how she does detailed character sketches before she writes and notes down details about their backstories etc etc . . . I wouldn’t have believed her, I guess.
But no! She’s all like:
I still do most of my characterization by instinct – that is, I don’t get this analytical when I’m actually writing a scene. As I said, for me, it’s more like method acting – trying to be the character for an instant or two, long enough to figure out what to describe.
Which is what we’d expect, right?
And she’s totally right that she has a knack for dialogue and that can carry a lot of the characterization . . . Amberglas in THE SEVEN TOWERS? That was some of the funniest, most effective dialogue EVER and instantly hooked me on Wrede. I haven’t missed one of her books since.
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