Me and Pat Rothfuss and Amber Benson and Felicia Day Talk About Characters For Roughly an Hour
Posted on May 1, 2012 Posted by John Scalzi 13 Comments
The headline says it. Here it is. Enjoy.
(This was part of the Geek & Sundry debut, incidentally. Why not watch their shows and subscribe to all of them?)
Nerdvana!
“Me and…” ?!!
A prescriptivist should know better. ;-)
Oh my there is Patrick Rothfuss…..
…Excuse me while I go die in a corner
The Problem of MVS: How do we stop him from rotating zombies into our city?
Really interesting stuff. I especially liked Pat talking about disciplining characters like children.
You know cool, funny. talented people – it must be fun.
Felicia Day is a goddess and I want to have her babies.
I get to have her babies — back off
Aw, you made that headline just for me? 8-{D
I’ll have to wait till later to watch, it sounds interesting
This is a really interesting discussion. I don’t think I could pick a single particular character I like, but I can say the kind of character type I’m drawn to. I like characters that get shit done. They say what needs to be said, they do what needs to be done, they kill the bad guys that need to be killed. They don’t get angsty and whiny about it, they just do it. I suppose that’s why I’m such a big Heinlein fan. Sure his characters are archetypes, but they get shit done.
I cheered when Pat talked about disciplining one’s characters. I appreciate that when writing, characters do tend to do their own thing, but I get so tired of the semi-mystical stuff some authors spout on the subject. The writer needs to be in control, and his analogy to children running around was spot-on.
Do you know if there’s any chance of them releasing the audio of this as a podcast? The discussion sounds awesome, and would be great on the commute!
I’ve got to second the Podcast request. I don’t often have an hour to sit and watch something like this. But commute time behind the wheel, when most of my mind is free to ruminate on other things: that I have aplenty. It sounds like a great conversation… does the visual add anything crucial other than faces to the voices?
Mother protagonists who are their own people? Someone should hand Pat Rothfuss some Bujold; Paladin of Souls, in particular. Rattling around the recent Orange Prize short-lists wouldn’t hurt either. Rare but certainly out there.