Alexander C. Kane has fun with his characters. I miss the days of doing that. I miss putting my people in wild situations and then just seeing what happens. I think the crux of having fun with the writing is to challenge your characters in unique ways and to develop characters who have the personalities to do truly unusual stuff. For example: I write a lot of Shadowrun, which is typically described as stories about shadow runners. Okay. So, how about you take that convention and blow it up. No, not in the traditional–write a counter story about someone trying to catch a runner, but in a more interesting way. What does that mean? Off the top of my head I’m thinking about the idea of a runner who overhears someone hiring for a big job and decides to take that information and sell it to the highest bidder, which winds up getting them in a bit of danger… somehow? To make matters worse, the runner whose payday job he is selling out is his sister.
That’s what I mean. have fun. Create dynamic characters and thrust them into situations. To make it even more fun, it could be a basic situation that is only odd or untenable because of who they are or what they can do. A man who speaks with ghosts ends up in a poker game and the ghosts decide to help him until he becomes so emboldened by their aid that they don’t, simply to teach him a lesson… one that he fails to properly learn.
I just want to get back to telling good stories. I feel like I have to remind myself how to do that.