Summing up Saturday Part 1

After such a heavy week of exploring our characters I think it’s a good time to relax and take it all in. We have learned a lot over the past week: two days of Schemas and traits (wipe the sweat from your brow stuff), fundamental attribution error (more on change), functional analysis and functional assessment (some powerful stuff here), and last but not least staying motivated (very important).

There have been many great comments:

-Pam Torres from http://soimfifty.blogspot.com/ said, “I think Emily has it right. It's about striving to live a writers life: writing everyday, observing the world like a writer, listening to the people around you, reading, and always working to get better at getting words on the page. [It doesn't hurt to have a few cheerleaders on the side.]”

-Emily from http://eayounker.blogspot.com/ said, “Knowing your character is important but in my mind there also has to be room for plot. Whether you have plot driven characters or character driven plot doesn't matter so long as there is something there to keep the reader involved in the story and give them a feeling of satisfaction when they finish. I love to write but even I get bored if there is no plot.”

-Jennifer Shirk from http://jennifershirk.blogspot.com/ said, “In books, I usually try to show change by how the MC is in the beginning of the story--by establishing what they believe either about themselves or others.
Then you have to give them a lesson that will cause them to change that belief. By the end you can actually see if they think or feel the same way when given a circumstance that forces them to choose an action based on what they believe.”

-April Hoyt (whose blog is private) said, “I think this is important even for understanding ourselves better. To understand why I react to certain stimuli or certain people. Very interesting...”

-http://www.duosays.com/ said, “But the challenge, like you said is to make the antagonist, all characters, essentially realistic. For that they need to have flaws, especially the antag. I like them to have a REASON why they behave a certain way. This for me, gives the MC an edge in defeating them.”

Awesome, these are some amazing comments that have helped me understand better the things we have talked about. I appreciate all of your help and wish I could have put all of your comments up but due to space and time we only get a small taste of what was said over the last week.

So what was your favorite comment over the past week? What post did you like best? What did you learn?