a) I think everyone struggles with this - holding back ideas because they're too good, too complicated, too epic, etc. I can't think of a particular example, but I'm sure I've done it.
The other side of the problem would be leaving everything in, making the plot much too complex and convoluted because suddenly we have to know the entire life story of a minor character, and that brings in this new plot wrinkle, and so on.
That second one is a problem for me a lot, actually. There are several whole plotlines I had to cut from The Confessor Diaries, for example.
b) Names! I'm not sure I have a set strategy for names. Sometimes, OC or major character, the name just comes to me, and then I'm done; others I have to go through and discard dozens, listening to how they sound and writing them down and everything. I recommend Behind the Name. I often go there and just click the Random Renamer over and over until I see something I like.
c) I'm sort of in the middle or near the end of doing this, actually, and I think it depends on the character. Sometimes I want the name to sound similar, but I certainly might change the meaning, since now I'm probably changing the character's backstory too.
I actually don't often see my original characters as actors. I have sort of blurry images of them in my mind, enough to fit them in a particular physical type but not necessarily to say, 'oh, that's So-and-So!'
Back to the name thing briefly: when I first started watching LotS I knew someone named Cara, only she pronounced it Cair-a, as in Care Bear (or a less weird reference...) and it sort of colored my reaction to Cara at first, until she took over the name in my head. That's one reason I like unusual names, actually. If you know a Richard who's a real jerk, it could make it harder to like Richard the fictional character.
d) I honestly don't think you'll find a writer anywhere who's never revisited the same theme. Most likely your particular topics will always be with you, because they're why you write in the first place. I like the spiral theory: that as you learn more, you go back to the same topics but with new insight. (Or, in one of my favorite lines from Memory, by Lois McMaster Bujold: "The questions stay the same, but the answers change." Not that every answer changes, of course, but still.)
And back to rewriting the same story: didn't someone claim there are only 7 plots? Or something? Whatever it is, it's a finite number, so we're bound to repeat ourselves ;)
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a) I think everyone struggles with this - holding back ideas because they're too good, too complicated, too epic, etc. I can't think of a particular example, but I'm sure I've done it.
The other side of the problem would be leaving everything in, making the plot much too complex and convoluted because suddenly we have to know the entire life story of a minor character, and that brings in this new plot wrinkle, and so on.
That second one is a problem for me a lot, actually. There are several whole plotlines I had to cut from The Confessor Diaries, for example.
b) Names! I'm not sure I have a set strategy for names. Sometimes, OC or major character, the name just comes to me, and then I'm done; others I have to go through and discard dozens, listening to how they sound and writing them down and everything. I recommend Behind the Name. I often go there and just click the Random Renamer over and over until I see something I like.
c) I'm sort of in the middle or near the end of doing this, actually, and I think it depends on the character. Sometimes I want the name to sound similar, but I certainly might change the meaning, since now I'm probably changing the character's backstory too.
I actually don't often see my original characters as actors. I have sort of blurry images of them in my mind, enough to fit them in a particular physical type but not necessarily to say, 'oh, that's So-and-So!'
Back to the name thing briefly: when I first started watching LotS I knew someone named Cara, only she pronounced it Cair-a, as in Care Bear (or a less weird reference...) and it sort of colored my reaction to Cara at first, until she took over the name in my head. That's one reason I like unusual names, actually. If you know a Richard who's a real jerk, it could make it harder to like Richard the fictional character.
d) I honestly don't think you'll find a writer anywhere who's never revisited the same theme. Most likely your particular topics will always be with you, because they're why you write in the first place. I like the spiral theory: that as you learn more, you go back to the same topics but with new insight. (Or, in one of my favorite lines from Memory, by Lois McMaster Bujold: "The questions stay the same, but the answers change." Not that every answer changes, of course, but still.)
I wonder if the difference between a trope and a cliché is how often it gets used. People still like clichés sometimes, after all. 'It was a dark and stormy night' evokes something for the reader.
And back to rewriting the same story: didn't someone claim there are only 7 plots? Or something? Whatever it is, it's a finite number, so we're bound to repeat ourselves ;)