Today, take a look at the following depiction of mother, or madame, nature. Write a brief scene with her as a character, preferably told from the first person (her point of view) or second (someone with her). Or, free-write or journal about this depiction of Mother Nature and what it means to you.

You might also counter this depiction of Mother Nature with one of your own, describing how you see her or, if you have artistic skills, depicting her in your own manner. How does your depiction contrast or compare with the one below? Why is it different or similar? What do you like or dislike about the original below, and why do you have your own, separate take on things?

Madam Nature by *CrisVector on deviantART

Since J.K. Rowling made her controversial announcement that Dumbledore is gay, many people have been arguing over what ‘right’ an author has to determine the facts of his or her world beyond what’s written in their books. I was over at It’s my blog and I’ll say what I want to (may have mildly NSFW language here and there) this morning and came across Can an author ever truly own her characters? In it Karen Scott responds to another blogger’s questions over whether an author truly does have the ‘right’ to do whatever he or she wants to their worlds and characters:

My answer is that although the author creates the characters, I don’t think she solely owns them. Of course she can do with them what she wants, she has the pen after all, but I think she does owe some consideration to the fans.

Now I’m not saying she should write to please her readers because that would just be crazy talk, but I do think she has a duty of care to the people who buy her books, to ensure that she doesn’t irreparably damage her characters, or totally change who they are.

I have a take on this that comes at the issue from a slightly different direction. Here’s the comment I left on that blog post:

Rather than feeling the writer has an obligation to the fans or readers, I tend to feel the writer has an obligation to the work. E.g., you don’t kill off a character ‘just because you can,’ because that isn’t being true to the work. You don’t have the characters act out of character because that isn’t being true to the work.

I don’t think the writer ‘owns’ the characters, but I’m thinking in a slightly different way than perhaps that implies. Each reader brings his or her own impressions to a work—his own interpretations, visualizations, nuances, etc. To my mind, by the time they’re done reading the book, what they’ve experienced isn’t exactly what the author thought they were putting on paper—it’s more of a jointly-created entity that the author could never entirely predict or shape. And that’s where things get tricky.

I wouldn’t mind Rowling clarifying that Dumbledore was gay if the issue came up, for example, as a possible interpretation of material she’d written, but I just don’t see any point in ‘announcing’ it—it isn’t part of the work in that way.

Rather, when most authors want to explore some part of their world that they haven’t yet, they traditionally do it by either writing a new book or publishing a short story somewhere, possibly on their website if they just want to get the story out there. They don’t generally do it by saying, “oh, by the way, that character’s gay.” Just as we need the proper build-up in a story in order to believe and buy into an unexpected character revelation, we need it to be couched in story in the first place in order to buy into it! Simply announcing such a detail is rather like handing us a two-page synopsis instead of a novel and telling us that’s the story, enjoy.

Today, journal about your own take on the complex issue of ‘ownership’ of a work between author and reader.

Here’s an exercise you can either apply to yourself (by journaling on it) or to a character as a way to explore your fictional characters. As quickly as you can (so as to limit careful conscious thought), list out five major ambitions you have. These can be personal, spiritual, material, interpersonal… anything. They can seem as large or as small as you like, as realistic or unrealistic, as long as they’re major to you.

Next, free-write about why these are so important to you.

If you’d like a continuation exercise for another day, pick one ambition you’d like to actually see come to fruition and brainstorm ways to make that happen. Free-write, thought-bubble… use any technique you can to get ideas out there on the page. Some odd and surprising things might result!

Humour - like romance, like drama, like excitement - needs boundaries. It needs rules, lines, differences, be they social (as in Fawlty Towers), cultural (Borat), gender-based (Tootsie) or moral. As in sex.

This, arguably, is a primary purpose of organised religion. In giving us rules to break it lets us sustain into adulthood a child’s delight in naughtiness. Childish, sure, and deeply, almost definitively human, the urge to transgress is also a constant, renewable source of creative energy.

And the more forbidden the sex - the more illicit, immoral or commercial - the greater the potential excitement, creativity and fun.

The above entertaining quote comes from this opinion piece on legalization of the sex industry in The Sydney Morning Herald by Elizabeth Farrelly. In this case, however, I’m more interested in it for its statements regarding creativity, energy, and humor. Today, write about the subject of boundaries, mores, morals, and their relationship to creativity. How do you think a culture’s mores relate to the creative output of that culture’s people?

One popular form of question you’ll find in memes, online quizzes, and some exercises is: “If you could be any [fill-in-the-blank], what would it be?” Possible types with which to fill in that blank range from serious to incredibly silly, and might include:

• color
• ice cream
• historical figure
• world leader
• cocktail
• flower
• movie

Today, turn this into a two-part exercise. Both ask and answer this question: fill in the bank with your own word or type that you think might lead to something interesting, and then answer it. You can use this as a journaling exercise or answer it on behalf of one or more of your fictional characters.

For all that this has become a quick question tossed out in memes and quizzes, the results can sometimes be interesting, particularly if you delve into “And why?” instead of answering with a phrase, name, or word.

Writers hang around shady characters

Over at the Booking Through Thursday site you’ll find a weekly question about how, when, and why you read. Pick one today—it doesn’t have to be the current question—and journal about it. The folks who participate weekly often write just a paragraph or three, particularly as it’s a blogging meme, but for the purposes of journaling, try to fill one side of a sheet of paper. Either that, or commit to using it as a weekly blog prompt for at least one month, and each week check out at least five other bloggers’ answers to see what other people do in comparison to you.

Here’s another round of a few questions you can ask of one of your fictional characters to help you flesh him or her out a bit more. The number you decide to answer will probably depend on how much detail you go into—the more inspiration you find in a single question, the fewer you need to explore on the whole.

• Bravery: How does your character define bravery? Does he see himself as brave?
• Brat: Who’s the most bratty person your character knows, and what’s her relationship with him?
• Baffle: Write a list of things that confuse and baffle your character.
• Bulldoze: If someone tried to run roughshod over your character, figuratively bulldozing him out of her way, what would he do? Write about a scenario in which this happens.

As I’ve noted before, I like having a wide variety of questions to choose from simply because you probably want to answer different questions for each character you explore, and you might find one question inspiring but not another. However, I don’t recommend trying to answer a huge number of questions for a single character—you can end up burning yourself out on the character before you get to your actual writing! Just pick a few highlights and use those. Even one or two good questions can teach you a lot about a character.

If you prefer to write non-fiction rather than fiction, always feel free to ask character-building questions of yourself and journal about the answers.

Here’s another round of a few questions you can ask of one of your fictional characters to help you flesh him or her out a bit more. The number you decide to answer will probably depend on how much detail you go into—the more inspiration you find in a single question, the fewer you need to explore on the whole.

• Altars: What are the most private and personal day-to-day expressions of religion or spirituality in your character’s life?
• Alterations: What changes would your character most like to make to his or her daily life?
• Acids: What has the greatest ability to eat away at your character’s strength or resolve?
• Application: What motivation best serves to convince your character to apply him- or herself most fully to a task?

  Any evocative word can serve as a starting point for such explorations; you can always open a dictionary to a random page in order to look for more. I like having a wide variety of questions to choose from simply because you probably want to answer different questions for each character you explore, and you might find one question inspiring but not another. However, I don’t recommend trying to answer a huge number of questions for a single character—you can end up burning yourself out on the character before you get to your actual writing! Just pick a few highlights and use those. Even one or two good questions can teach you a lot about a character.

  If you prefer to write non-fiction rather than fiction, always feel free to ask character-building questions of yourself and journal about the answers.

Journaling can provide a wealth of benefits on levels both personal and professional. What place does it hold in your life? What sorts of thoughts do you transcribe in your journal? What benefits do you personally derive from journaling? What more would you like to do with it that you don’t yet?

If you don’t keep up with your journaling—either at all, or as much as you’d like—then write about that. Write about what you’d like to do with journaling; where you see it taking you. Write about the variety of things you might journal about, and if you can, trick yourself into segueing from there into actually writing about them.

Today, write about a movie, television show, or book that served as a particularly formative experience when you were coming of age. It might have directly impacted you in a strong and obvious way, or it might just be one of those low-key experiences that you can never quite let go of and that ripples through your life in odd ways. The piece itself might be what impacted you, or the events surrounding it in your life at the time.