character development...

I was listening to Francis Ford Coppola talk about making The Outsiders movie and he said something about having props to help actors develop the character, even if you aren't filming yet, as a prep thing. I think he's right on that, so I wondered if it would help for writing as well. If you have something tangible that helps give a sense of that character, would it make things easier for writing a character? Maybe you could answer that one, Michelle. Hee hee. If you could pretend to be that person you are writing about or just leave pretending for the actors? I am a visual person, so it helps me to see a picture of what the person might look like, or a pet that they might have. You can tell a lot about a person from the things they surround themselves with, so the theory is that if you are surrounded by things an unwritten character might have, that you can see and feel, then wouldn't that make writing about them easier? The story still comes from your imagination, but the story is giving life to a character. It is that characters story that needs to be told. For me, putting on a jacket that one of the characters might wear would help me to tell their story. I live in my head, always making up stuff that never makes it onto paper. I always liked to pretend to be someone else and do things to get reactions, to see how people respond. Mostly I was torn between being myself and pretending to be someone else. Maybe that was just some escapism for me when I was younger. However, I still do things just to get reactions. Heeheeheeheeeee...One incident involved a piece of toast that had dropped onto the cement area we got served our food in Fiji. I might not have done it if I hadn't seen it being washed. I just picked it up and ate it, I got the reaction I wanted from one guy and the other Abbotsford guy (he was on the Samoa DTS team) just commented and wrinkled up his nose a bit (he knew I was doing it for a reaction so he was warned, but the other guy wasn't insert evil laugh here). There are stories in my head, they just need to get out. There are characters in my head that need to get out, before I live them out, I just really suck at developing characters. If my many ramblings area any indication, my writing is just as disorganized and paragraph free. I just have to get it out and then organize it into a coherent form later, which never happens. It stays in it's messy form. Then it never gets finished because I can't pull my thoughts together and I can't find some of my ideas, as they are written down who knows where. Just some thoughts for the evening. I have been stuck in my head all day and night and I haven't been able to leave, not even at work today. I got annoyed when people showed up because it felt like intruding on my thinking time, which I can't really control. When real think time shows up, I just have to let it do it's thing, if life interferes I have to wait who knows how long until next time and by that time the original whatevers aren't there anymore. So much for finishing Dear Frankie tonight. Oh, well. It can be finished tomorrow, it's all about Gerard Butler... ;) Anyways, falling asleep at the wheel here, so moce...