I got the answers I came for a fair while ago, haha. I was quite surprised that probably 50-60% of the responses I had already considered, another 10-20% I accidentally included and the remaining well that's just new research . If anything; this thread just validated that I was on the right track... Which is a good feeling. Now I'm just reading through peoples responses, curious about how much longer this will go on for. It's so far from where it started. I just let characters go on their merry way, see where the story takes them. Then when I edit, I make sure that they use their little gestures, their dialogue is true to them, and just triple check they're not doing anything out of sorts for their persona. My characters tend to be Frankenstein monsters built from elements of different people I know. IT's funny, because I even draw some of my characters but when I'm writing I do not imagine that's how they look. They are just gestures really. Settings on the other-hand, I can walk through a setting in my mind. It's a beautiful feeling. I literally make maps based on the way my mind walks through the environment. It's so vivid that my writing doesn't even approach it. I really look forward to the day I have the vocab and reference to really get my ideas across... So; travel travel, read read, read and travel, google and read, read and google travel, then google google and travel to google.
Two observations on this. Not everything that happens on a two-three-more months long trip need (nor should) be included in a story. It would be tedious, boring, and totally disinteresting. It's not necessary to draw a picture of every little thing that happens. Some things are just accepted and we focus on the more critical issues pertinent to the story as a whole. Secondly: Stress of all sorts has been known to stop a woman's menstrual cycle. Training for a marathon has often been known to have that effect. The reason for this is natural preservation. Much like frostbite, where the body shuts down oxygen to extremities, then less vital organs progressively in an effort to conserve heat to the body core to preserve the life, when the body is stressed, there is an inherent mechanic which causes this same kind of protective reaction, retaining the iron, blood, fluids, etc. in an effort to maintain and stabilize the body. In some such situations, it can take as much as 6 months or more for the woman to return to a natural cycle depending on the extent and duration of the causative stress. So, it would not be all that unusual for a woman in a harsh environment, travelling long distances through harsh terrain and in difficult circumstances to stop having a period for an extended length of time.
Actually, T.Trian, I would guess that "word of mouth", as you call it - the personal interactions and observations of others - is probably even more critical to creating original, credible characters. And yet the problem still remains to find a way of transitioning what you have seen and experienced into a three dimensional, 98.6, true to life character. (If you can't give your character a heartbeat, he's only a caricature, a cheap copy of the real thing.) A dozen people can sit down and talk to the same stranger, interact with him, watch him go about his life, listen to his tales of his experiences in the world. Each one of those dozen people would come away with a different sense of who that person is. And, as each one attempts to re-create this man on a page, telling the story of him, some would succeed to varying degrees, others would fail abysmally. A few would produce an image of a man with a full and interesting life. A very few would be able to re-create that man on the page. Their readers would be able to feel the cold sweat on his skin as he prepares to go to war, hear the uncertainty in his voice when he asks the woman he loves to marry him, feel his uncertainty and humility as he holds his firstborn child for the first time, hear the grief, cry with him the day he must bury that same love of his life fifty years later. The difference between merely writing a story and conveying a story is as great as the universe and it is all about the tiniest things that make us human and make us individual and unique. In essence, you are not creating characters, you are - or should strive to - breathe life into them. It's the difference between a good story and a great story. This is because we're not talking about proving a scientific argument, but, rather, creating art. And if you really look at what constitutes a credible character, basically anything is acceptable because, after all, there are over 7 109 000 000 people on Earth and perhaps even more in a fictional world, so it's fairly certain that there are all kinds of weird individuals out there. That is to say, it's kinda hard to go wrong if your goal is to create a realistic, plausible character. Granted, if you really go "out there" with your creation, you have to accept that you are writing an exception, but then again, who wants to write characters who are just carbon copies of one another, all created according to strict standards derived from averages derived from statistics, nothing more? That might be a fun experiment too, of course: how standardized a character can I create and can I do something interesting and original with one? I daresay that writing a woman who dotes on other women is just as credible as writing a woman who simply loathes all other women. You could write something in-between just as well and still remain in the realm of credible and plausible characters; you just have to figure out what sort of a character would inspire you the most. If you've written plenty of tough women who love women, maybe you can toss in one who hates women. Or perhaps a dainty girl who adores or hates women or even visit the middle ground between the extremes. You know, play around with it, experiment, and I'm sure you'll come up with inspiring and original, yet credible characters a-plenty (this isn't aimed just at AVCortez, but to everyone in general).[/QUOTE]
I think we have already established in this thread that some like a tidier sort of description where things like menstruating, shitting, pissing, sweating, jacking off etc. are not mentioned. It's just a different kind of tone some writers/readers prefer whereas there are plenty of writers and readers who do prefer to include the, shall we say "dirtier" aspects of reality into their description to add a different sort of flavor and tone to the story. Joe Abercrombie and G. R. R. Martin come to mind. And it's not like any of these authors (or unpublished writers such as myself and KaTrian) make a point of always mentioning _every_ _single_ _time_ a character sweats, takes a shit, goes for a leak or a wank, or menstruates. No, instead such things are used sparingly to give the story a certain kind of... "stink." Heck, some even manage to tie the bodily function and activities to the plot in one way or another. Albeit, again, sparingly. Once again, in practice, especially in normal life, this is actually pretty rare. Sure, if you're a pro marathon runner with a body fat percentage of, say, 8%, it's likely the menstrual cycle gets broken. But if we're talking about someone who's just on a holiday somewhere, even if they do go for hikes in the mountains, well, of the women I've travelled with, none have experienced that. Granted, the lowest bf among them was 14% (yeah, we measured it), but even her body still functioned normally. Hence if we're writing a woman with a normal body fat percentage who's doing something that's already routine to her (i.e. riding a few dozen miles from one town to the next), it would be odd for the body to start shutting down functions to preserve life when life is in no imminent danger. If this happened to every woman every time she was under a lot of stress, we'd have mass break outs of osteoporosis among university students, female law enforcement officers and soldiers, competitive athletes a year or two before the next Olympic Games etc. Edit: as for your double post, yup, I agree.
