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TPO 6 Lecture 3
Creative Writing
Narrator
Listen to part of a lecture in a creative writing class.
Professor
Alright everybody, the topic for today is, well, we’re gonna take a look at how to start creating the characters for the stories you’re writing. One way of doing that is to come up with what’s called “a character sketch”, I don’t mean a sketch like a drawing, I guess that’s obvious. It’s um…it’s a…a sketch is a way of getting started on defining your characters’ personalities.
To begin, how do we create fictional characters? We don’t just pull them from thin air, do we? I mean we don’t create them out of nothing. We base them, consciously or unconsciously, we base them on real people, or we blend several people’s traits, their attributes into one character. But when people think fiction, they may assume the characters come from the author’s imagination. But the writer’s imagination is influenced by… by real people, could be anyone, so, pay attention to the people you meet, someone in class, at the gym, that guy who is always sitting in the corner at the coffee house, um… your cousin, who’s always getting into dangerous situations. We’re pulling from reality, gathering bits and pieces of real people. You use these people, and the bits of behavior or characteristics as a starting point as you begin to sketch out your characters.
Here is what you should think about doing first. When you begin to formulate a story, make a list of interesting people you know or have observed. Consider why they’re unique or annoying. Then make notes about their unusual or dominant attributes. As you create fictional characters, you’ll almost always combine characteristics from several different people on your list to form the identity and personality of just one character. Keeping this kind of character sketch can help you solidify your character’s personality, so that it remains consistent throughout your story.
You need to define your characters, know their personalities so that you can have them acting in ways that are predictable, consistent with their personalities. Get to know them like a friend, you know your friends well enough to know how they’ll act in certain situations, right? Say you have three friends, their car runs out of gas on the highway. John gets upset. Mary remains calm. Teresa takes charge of handling the situation. And let’s say, both John and Mary defer to her leadership. They call you to explain what happen. And when John tells you he got mad, you’re not surprised, because he always gets frustrated when things go wrong. Then he tells you how Teresa took charge, calmed him down, assigned tasks for each person and got them on their way. Again, you’re not surprised. It’s exactly what you’d expect. Well, you need to know your characters, like you know your friends. If you know a lot about a person’s character, it’s easy to predict how they’ll behave. So if your characters’ personalities are well defined, it will be easy for you as the writer to portray them realistically…er… believably, in any given situation.
While writing character sketches, do think about details. Ask yourself questions, even if you don’t use the details in your story, um…what does each character like to eat, what setting does each prefer, the mountains, the city, what about educational background, their reactions to success or defeat, write it all down.
But, here I need to warn you about a possible pitfall. Don’t make your character into a stereotype. Remember the reader needs to know how your character is different from other people who might fall in the same category. Maybe your character loves the mountains and has lived in a remote area for years. To make sure he is not a stereotype, ask yourself how he sees life differently from other people who live in that kind of setting. Be careful not to make him into the cliché of the “ragged mountain dweller”.
Okay, now, I’ll throw out a little terminology. It’s easy stuff. Major characters are sometimes called “round characters”. Minor characters are sometimes called, well, just the opposite, “flat”. A round character is fully developed; a flat character isn’t, character development is fairly limited. The flat character tends to serve mainly as a motivating factor. For instance, you introduce a flat character who has experienced some sort of defeat. And then your round, your main character who loves success and loves to show off, comes and boasts about succeeding and jokes about the flat character’s defeat in front of others, humiliates the other guy. The flat character is introduced solely for the purpose of allowing the round character to show off.
《创意写作》
独白：听一段关于创意写作的课程。
教授：好，各位，我们今天的话题呢，就是我们来看看怎么样为你在写的故事创造一个角色。其中一种方法就是想出一个“人物草图”，我并不是指像画画那样的草图啊，这个你们明白的。嗯，一个草图呢，是一开始给你的人物性格下定义的一种方法。首先，我们怎样创作一个小说角色呢？我们并不是空想出来一个角色，我是说我们并不是凭空捏造一个角色。我们有意或无意的，会把我们创作的角色建立在一个真实的人身上，或者融合好几个人的特点、性格集中在一个人身上。但当人们提到小说，会认为角色们都是作者想象出来的。但是作者的想象受到真实人物的影响，可能是任意一个人，所以，注意一下你们所遇见的人，班里的、健身房里的、经常坐在咖啡馆角落里的、还有经常处于危险境地的你的表兄弟。我们从现实中采集素材，从真实的人物身上一点一点的采集。你利用这些人，利用他们行为特征的点点滴滴作为你构思你人物草图的起始点。
下面是你首先应该考虑的。当你决定开始策划一个故事的时候，列个单子写下来你认识的或者你见过的那些有意思的人。考虑一下为什么他们很独特或者很讨人厌。记下来他们的不同之处和他们身上显著的品质。当你在创作小说人物时，你经常是把你列在单子上的那些不同的人的一些性格特征结合在一块儿，来塑造一个人物的身份和性格。用这种人物草图的方法能帮助你巩固你的角色性格，就能在你整个故事中保持一致性。你需要确定下来你的人物角色，了解他们的性格特征，这样你就能让他们在一个可预测的范围内？你知道他们在某些场合会做出什么样的表现，是吧？比如说，你有三个朋友，他们的车在高速公路上没有汽油了。约翰很生气，玛丽很平静，特丽莎负责处理这个情况。咱比如说，约翰和玛丽都听从她的领导。他们给你打电话说明发生了什么事，当约翰告诉你他很生气的时候，你并不吃惊，因为出问题的时候他总是很受挫，然后他告诉你特丽莎是怎么处理的，怎么让他平静下来的，又是怎么样给每个人分配任务然后又从新上路的。你还是一点都不吃惊，因为这些和你想到的一样。
嗯，你需要了解你的角色，就像你了解你的朋友一样。如果你对一个人的性格了解的很多，对他们接下来会做什么就很容易预见了。所以，如果你的人物的性格已经确定好了，那你作为一个作家就能够很轻松的把这些任务描述的很逼真，嗯，无论在什么情况下都很可信。当你们在写角色草图的时候，一定要想想细节。自己问自己一些问题，即使你在你的故事里用不到这些细节，那也还是考虑一下。比如说，每个人物都喜欢吃些什么，他们都喜欢什么样的环境，山啊，城市啊，教育背景怎么样啊，他们对于成功与失败的反应啊，把这些都写下来。但是，我也得提醒你一个可能的陷阱。不要让你的角色变得老套。你一定要记住，读者需要知道你的人物是怎样和其他那些类似的角色有所不同的。可能你的人物热爱高山，在一个遥远的地方住了很多年。要确保你的人物不是老一套的，问问你自己，他是怎样与生活在同样环境里的人有着不同的生活观念。一定不要让他成为陈词滥调的一个“衣衫褴褛的山居者”。好的，现在呢，我来讲点术语吧。这是个很简单的东西。主要角色通常被叫做“圆整人物”，次要角色通常被称为，正好相反，“扁平人物”。一个圆整人物是需要充分描述的，而扁平人物却不是，他们角色发展是相当有限的。扁平人物大都是作为一个刺激因素而存在。比如说，你引出一个扁平人物，这个人经历过一些失败。接下来，你的圆整人物，也就是主角，一个爱成功爱显摆的人出现了，在众人面前吹嘘自己的成功，并且笑话扁平人物的失败，羞辱其他人。引入这个扁平人物的主要作用就是为了让圆整人物吹嘘炫耀。
以上就是托福听力TPO6原文中Lecture 3的文本内容，希望大家能够用心体会，更多TPO文本内容小编稍后为您呈现。最后，小编祝大家在托福考试中取得好成绩！
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