Saturday, April 26, 2008

Character artists

X-posted from http://theophrast.us

How many of the characters in the stories you write are artists? Any kind of art. What do they do? How deep do you get into it as part of the story? Do you find—or think it's the case—that visual arts would be more difficult to portray in writing—or is it pretty much the same? Unless your character's a writer or poet—in which case, you can simply include some of their work to pull it off—or you're writing a graphic novel, it's tough to get the art across to the reader.

I have three different artsy characters in Seaborn. One who paints and draws, one who dances, one who's a composition major at a music college. I'd guess these abilities or interests help define a character. A dancer would certainly be athletic, someone who plays music, paints or draws might be thoughtful.

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2 comments:

Lori Devoti said...

In my Amazon world there is what I call a "talent group" called artisans. They do things like carve fetishes, and do tattooing. It's actually the first time I've had an artist in a book and they play a really major role.
Lori

Anonymous said...

Cool, Lori! Both visual--and tactile in different ways. I imagine you could describe a tattoo from both sides, the artist and the one receiving the tattoo, almost like describing the painter's strokes from the pov of the canvas.