Platonickiss

There are numerous ways to interact with characters in one's story. I have found that different levels of "conscious interaction" produce quite different results.
My favorite method to interact with my characters is to "play God," acting as a omniscient entity that both knows everything about a character and the end result of all actions. I even like to imagine, if a character prays, or curses God, they are doing so to me.
Other more detatched methods work well too. Sometimes, I let the unconscious currents of my mind work at a story. These are the stories that even surprise me; events take place that I have little conscious control over. This often occurs when a character must die, and I don't know why. Sometimes I even keep certain characters thoughts secret to me, so that in writing another character, they have the same sense of uncertainty about the secretive character.
My point is, there are tons of various levels of interaction and control to decide on when one writes a story. I'm interested to know what works for you, and what produces better stories. Share some experience.

Raging_Hopeful

I would agree with the ominescent point of view. I enjoy having the freedom to share or withhold information from the reader. I've never been very good with first person view but maybe I should practice some more of that.

Having a good relationship with your characters is important... even if its a hateful one. Haha, yeah making characters die is always bittersweet but I think all writers have an innate instinct about when it is time for a character to say goodbye.

Thanks for sharing your experiences. I guess we all like to play God now and then.

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imrhati

Most people write from the I AM GOD!!! point of view. some adventurous writers attempt to write from the view of the main character but it rarely goes well. and there is always the this is happening write now point of view that i have never seen go corectly.

silverwriter

adventurous? guess i missed that memo...

i'm a main character kind of woman, but being a goddess suits me just the same. as long as it works and you are comfortable with it - go for it.

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cbrmale

I usually write third person within a single character's point of view. To do this needs plenty of planning because essential elements of the plot that the character is not aware of need to be explained and the explanation must be done in a non-obtrusive way.

My one exception may be to sometimes paint the descriptiveness of a scene in omnisicient prose, just a few sentences, before focusing on the character. Particularly when the point of view passes to a different character.

Schumi

I have to confess in getting into the most awful mess regarding my novel. I made character descriptions and everything, and felt I knew my characters well enough. But I soon learnt I didn't. Originally, my story was supposed to be about a man who had been diagnosed with incurable cancer. But he is no longer in the novel as a character. It has moved onto another character that I created at the same time as the one above. And because of that, the whole plot has changed.

So once I established who the main character was, I began to re-write what I had already done. I chose to write from 3 viewpoints, and very soon, I realised I couldn't do it. Reading over it all now, it just didn't work. For some reason, I was detracting away from the actual point of the novel by looking at things from other characters.

At the moment, I now have the one viewpoint, and I am much happier with it. I'm currently re-writing my first chapter, which had over 3 viewpoints in it. I suppose I was using the omniscient viewpoint without realising it. I don't mind this viewpoint, but for me, I think it will only work when describing a setting or a place. And even then, I'd prefer to do it through the character's viewpoint.

I will be using another viewpoint in the novel, which will be the antagonists. But I won't be depending on it i.e. I will use it only sometimes because too much would be wrong in my view. And also, it will give my main character a break in the story.

The first chapter I am re-writing at the moment is the best writing I have done so far. It contains the most important part. When I read it, I'm there in the scene. It is perfectly clear in my head.

I started writing this novel in the middle of last year, and it has changed completely from what it was. But I don't mind that. I've learnt a lot along the way (and recently, I've finished reading a couple of books by Somerset Maugham, who is a tremendous inspiration to me now).

Rory

I don't play god at all, really. I write from various character's point of view, usually around three different characters. It makes the planning very difficult - it takes me around 2 to 3 weeks to work out the solid details of a new story - but I find it works well for me. I enjoy jumping from character to character, situation to situation. Each character is somewhere different, doing something different, and it all comes together in the end. The most complicated and difficult thing about this is getting the timelines right. Very tricky.

patthager

In writing you can always pull something out of a hat, your rarely up agaisnt a wall (though sometimes it is best to completely scrap a story). If your having trouble deciding on a perspective you can right from the perspective of your ghost who got hit by a car and wanders the earth, or you can skip between 1st person or 3rd person perspectives. You can even write 1st person in a 3rd person perspective (a character in 1st person watching over another characters shoulder). The hat is infinitly deep, never give up because you are having troubles deciding what would the best perspective.

I usely I write from a 1st person perspective, but I do things the character the character wouldn't do. I randomly draw stuff out from my characters memory, like saying "I had only seen one of these before, and that was in the summer of 2045 when I was...". I stay within the characters opinion and values, but that kind of stuff wouldn't be going through a characters head.

The god person perspective limits how much personality you can put into the perspective, so you have to use more clever tricks than most perspectrves.

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God is fighting on both sides of his never ending war, Lucifer is stuck in the middle with ME

darthwader

It's funny, just the other day I was re-reading a part of my story which says:

'On the verge of passing out herself, she just looked at the ceiling and wondered if there was a god out there who had specifically engineered this war to make her life a living hell.'

and after I read that I thought "Hey, that's me!"

Tim S.

I find that it is often good to use both methods when writing a story. You can be God to create the scene, bescribe how it looks, etc, and then in a sense, move into one of the character's heads, if the situation allows it, like a nice long conversation, where two or more people are in a single local, and talking.

For the quicker action sequences, my preference is to be God, observing and connentating on what the characters are doing from a place above them, rather than form inside their heads.

Generally speaking, I tend to go for the latter method for writing, I find it works better for the type of story I am writing.

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"It takes a moment to meet someone;
It takes an hour to know them;
it takees a day to love them;
And it takes a lifetime to forget them."