Fic Talk > General Discussion
Just a general pop in thread
mare:
--- Quote from: RokofAges75 on May 20, 2024, 05:37:22 PM ---Google Docs is a decent Word substitute. I like that it saves automatically and is accessible from anywhere, so I no longer have to worry about saving docs to flash drives to move between my desktop and laptop. The biggest downside I've encountered is that it has a word count limit. My super long stories literally won't fit in one document on Google LOL. But I don't even have Word anymore, so it's either that or Open Office.
Thankfully, my 4th graders are too young try using AI. The most they do is plagiarize by copy/pasting directly from the internet, which is painfully obvious. But I feel for teachers of older students. I think it would be hard to detect and even harder to prove, since you can input the same prompt and get a different result each time.
The toolbar keeps popping up each time I open my story, so this time, I let it come up with a list of suggestions. One of the suggestions was: "The sentence beginning with "The tiny bra top showed plenty of cleavage..." could be rephrased to be less sexually suggestive." Considering that sentence was in a sex scene, I'd say being sexually suggestive was the point LOL. It also finds my use of medical terminology in a hospital scene "vulgar" and thinks some of my sentences are too wordy. The last part is probably true, but otherwise, I'll take its advice with a grain of salt.
--- End quote ---
Your toolbar seems like a snob! LOL
RokofAges75:
LOL Right? I think it's a prude! Cleavage... how scandalous!
RokofAges75:
I've been trying to think of a new topic to discuss, so here are a few questions about original characters. When you create original characters, can you picture how they look in your head? Do you base their physical description on real people or make it more generic? If your story were a movie, who would you want to play them?
I wrote a blog about this for my site last night, based on my realization that the woman in the new version of that annoying Jardiance commercial looks just like my Sims version of Dawn, a character from the current story I'm writing. She is not who I picture in my head when I'm writing Dawn, but then, neither is Sim Dawn. They do both fit the description and general look of Dawn, though. (Side by side comparison: https://i0.wp.com/dreamers-sanctuary.com/fanfic/wp-content/uploads/dawnjardiance.jpg) In actuality, when I was creating Dawn, I based her appearance and personality on a friend of a friend that I've only met a couple of times, like ten years ago LOL. Inspiration comes from strange places.
That got me thinking about how some of us (not you, Mare, but definitely me LOL) used to have to find photos of celebrities or models to put in our cheesy banners. I almost always had a look in mind for my character first and then tried to find someone that fit that look, but I wonder if some people did it the other way around. I don't actively go looking for people to portray my characters in banners anymore, but when I describe them in my stories, I do sometimes use real people as inspiration. For example, the other major OC in my current story is Natalie, who I imagine as looking similar to Natalie Portman, Victoria Pedretti, and Minka Kelly. Again, I don't actually picture any one of those actresses in particular when I write her, but they all have the same type of look I had in mind for her. But then, I have other characters that I honestly have no idea who I would "cast" to play them in a movie because I didn't base their appearance on any particular people. I can still picture them in my head, but I don't have anyone to compare them to.
mare:
That's a good question. Who knew you'd be writing about the Jardiance lady lol They do look eerily similar.
I never picture anyone in my mind when I write my original characters. It isn't until I have written them for a little while before an image even pops up in my head. That might be weird, but I feel like everything I do writing wise is weird. Once I do visualize them it's never someone famous. I guess maybe an amalgam of different people. Even when I wrote BSB and now with Succession, the main characters don't always look in my head like how they look in real life. Many times, when I would write Nick, he wouldn't really look like the Nick we know. In fact, some of the time, the Nick I pictured was a brunette. I guess I never shared that before. It's been the same with Roman etc... a little Kieran but a little not.
It's mainly personalities I might borrow from people. I modeled Mimi in my Tumbledown story to mimic Kieran's real life wife Jazz. At least how she comes off in public. But in my head, she doesn't really look like Jazz. I do this in my dreams as well. I very rarely dream about people I actually know. I always see faces that aren't familiar to me, even when they are supposed to be someone I know. I couldn't even really describe any of them the way you just did, because I'm not sure I would be able to solidify one distinct image.
RokofAges75:
--- Quote from: mare on June 03, 2024, 08:42:01 AM ---Once I do visualize them it's never someone famous. I guess maybe an amalgam of different people. Even when I wrote BSB and now with Succession, the main characters don't always look in my head like how they look in real life. Many times, when I would write Nick, he wouldn't really look like the Nick we know. In fact, some of the time, the Nick I pictured was a brunette. I guess I never shared that before. It's been the same with Roman etc... a little Kieran but a little not.
--- End quote ---
I'm the same way! I can picture characters in my head, but it's not a very clear picture. It's like I'm seeing them from across the room without wearing my contacts or glasses - I can tell whether they're tall or short, what type of body they have, their hair and skin color, etc., but I can't make out their distinct features. Even if I could draw well (which I can't), I'm not sure I could draw a portrait of them that I was happy with. When I make them on The Sims, I'm just trying to create a sim that looks sort of like what I see in my head. I think it's because, like you said, they're really just an amalgam of different people's features. I've heard that the brain can't create a new face from scratch, that the faces we see in dreams are composites of faces we've seen in real life. If that's really true, that would be a reasonable explanation for this. When I dream, I usually know where I am and who I'm dreaming about, but the people and places never look the same as they do in real life.
It's funny that you brought up the "canon" main characters because that was going to be my follow-up question. Again, same here - the way I see the Boys when I'm writing about them as characters is different from how I see them in real life. I'm not sure if that's because I've changed them through the events of the story or because I insert some of myself into them or simply because of the way the human brain works, but I do know what you mean. I can't even really explain how they are different - it doesn't come down to something as simple as having a different hair color or missing a leg LOL - but there is a definitely some distinction between the real and fictional versions of them that goes beyond the circumstances of the story.
I was also going to ask about your experience with rewriting a fanfic as original fiction, like you did with Mel's Tree. Did you picture the characters differently in the published version as you did the fanfic, or did you still see some version of the Boys, just with different names?
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