Posts Tagged ‘characters’

What Your Favorite Character Says About You

Tuesday, June 21st, 2022

Instead of feeling guilty about binge-watching a series all day, allow yourself to embrace the intriguing plot that you’re immersed in for those few hours. There is always something that can be learned from watching a film, even an early 2000s rom-com. After all, this form of entertainment can be used to spark your own creativity and imagination. Characters can inspire you and you can even find yourself relating to them and feeling seen. You can use movie elements to enhance your own life. Dialogue about love, conflict, and different passions can teach you new ideas and help you learn more about yourself.

I have an endless list of characters I love and relate to. I love seeing myself and my personality reflected in films and shows. That’s why so many of us get lost in fictional worlds. It provides us with escapism from our everyday lives. I watched the series Gilmore Girls for the first time last year and in a way, it changed how I see the world. I grew a new appreciation for living in my small neighborhood, fun days with my mom, and the joy of going to a coffee shop for a few hours. I saw my relationship with my mom reflected in the relationship between the two main characters, Lorelai and Rory. Gilmore Girls bonded us and made our relationship stronger. Throughout the series, Rory’s drive to succeed motivated me to want to learn as much as I could, take more trips to Barnes and Noble and read for pleasure. I realized how much I love to get lost in a novel because of her character. Lorelai’s carefree personality allowed me to stop taking myself so seriously and embrace my quirks. Watching her on my TV encouraged me to wear fun outfits even when I’m at home in the suburbs, not just at school in a big city.

Spending time with myself at a coffee shop on a rainy day in the city.

When I listen to music, not only do I relate the lyrics to my own life, but certain characters come to mind too. Of course, Taylor Swift has a song for every emotion and situation, so naturally, she has a song that connects with nearly all my favorite characters. This just goes to show how deeply relatable the experiences she sings about are. In “Nothing New,” Swift sings about the experience of getting older and realizing how little we know about the world and ourselves. In Gilmore Girls, as Rory goes through college, she notices she might not know herself as well as she thought she did as she starts to make mistakes. Listening to this song and having a character that also goes through this experience validated my feelings of being unsure about myself from time to time.

As a Taylor Swift fan and lover of numerous drama series, it is exciting to watch adaptations feature Taylor Swift songs. It is about time that her lyricism is used to enhance thrilling moments in film. For example, in the new Amazon Prime series The Summer I Turned Pretty, there are several Taylor Swift songs featured throughout the show. They represent the emotions of the characters and songs like “Cruel Summer” perfectly capture that hopeful feeling that fills the air at the beginning of summer. Swift’s songs add a sense of nostalgia to the series and help better connect the audience to the characters.

Watching The Summer I Turned Pretty.

If you’re ever looking to draw inspiration from a TV show or film character, try to find one that you strive to be like. This doesn’t necessarily mean the most successfully written character or the most attractive, but maybe one that is in tune with their emotions. One that embraces their individuality and is unapologetically themselves. This will help deepen the connection you have with yourself as you realize your experiences are universal.

Use this student discount to treat yourself to your favorite coffee order!

By Jacqueline Rappa

Jacqueline Rappa is a rising senior at the Fashion Institute of Technology studying Advertising and Marketing Communications with a minor in English. You can find her aimlessly walking around New York City while drinking an iced coffee and listening to her favorite albums on repeat.

For over 20 years, the Campus Clipper has been offering awesome student discounts in NYC,  from the East Side to Greenwich Village. Along with inspiration, the company offers students a special coupon booklet and the Official Student Guide, which encourages them to discover new places in the city and save money on food, clothing, and services.  At the Campus Clipper, not only do we help our interns learn new skills, make money, and create wonderful e-books, we give them a platform to teach others. Check our website for more student savings and watch our YouTube video showing off some of New York City’s finest students during the Welcome Week of 2015.

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4 Things to Consider Before Writing a Novel

Saturday, November 19th, 2016

Image Credit: https://thetermaganttarleisio.files.wordpress.com/2011/11/hand_writing.jpg

Image Credit: https://thetermaganttarleisio.files.wordpress.com/2011/11/hand_writing.jpg

1) Characters

Establish your characters. It can be a quick profile to a two-page-long character history. Understand their backgrounds, how their histories shaped them and put them into your narrative, what their purposes serve. Don’t hesitate to cut one if you find that two characters are serving the same purpose (all the friends in a social circle, for example, can usually be condensed into one or two people, unless they’re specifically set as foils to each other).

2) Setting

Know exactly when and where your story takes place. You might just want to write a generic 19th century Gothic novel, but time and place matter. The dark forests of Italy give a different connotation than the swarthy heaths of England, and neither are quite as exotic (or potentially cliché-ridden) as a crumbling castle in Romania. Grounding your novel in a time and place gives it specificity, which gives the readers a concrete understanding of the world that your characters are in. It may be that the characters are used to dreary heavy clothing or terrifyingly sublime views from cliffs, but the readers are not. Familiarize them.

 3) Plot

You don’t have to know exactly how a conflict will resolve, or how it will arise, when you start writing. Often, the plot changes as you write. But you should have an idea of where the character will be at the end of the novel, so that there is some loose structure and an endgame in sight. Some people story board their entire novels; some people just start with a character in a setting and a first line.

4) Writing What You Know

It’s a general truism that writers only really succeed when they write what they know. Drawing on your life experiences in the plot and characters is inevitable. Actively pay attention to the miniscule details in your life, too. Those will help ground your settings and characters; small disappointments in everyday lives, the way some people pick up pennies on the street but not others, the fresh smell of a farmer’s market or the look and feel of a snow-heavy sky—details like these make the background feel real.

Also be careful of drawing too much from “what you know.” Pulling circumstances from your latest breakup or family tragedy is great for details. Being too emotionally invested in your personal reaction rather than the characters’ can easily devolve into rants and references that only really make sense to you. Leave some time when it comes to something that hurts.

Sidebar: For example, a character profile I wrote while I was feeling uninspired: Evelyn Mercer, the unintentional protagonist. A minor character in the fashionable set of Bright Young People in London, Evelyn works for the Special Operations Executive in Baker Street, passing and copying messages in the main office of the branch. The least political of her friends, she would prefer to pretend that there is actually no war; this is just how life is always. She lives in a flat with two roommates near Baker Street.

By Robin Yang

Robin Yang was one of the Campus Clipper’s publishing interns, who wrote an e-book on how to write a novel. If you like Robin’s writing, follow our blog for more chapters from this e-book. We have the most talented interns ever and we’re so proud of them! For over 20 years, the Campus Clipper has been offering awesome student discounts in NYC,  from the East Side to Greenwich Village. Along with inspiration, the company offers students a special coupon booklet and the Official Student Guide, which encourage them to discover new places in the city and save money on food, clothing and services.  

At the Campus Clipper, not only do we help our interns learn new skills, make money, and create wonderful e-books, we give them a platform to teach others. Check our website for more student savings and watch our YouTube video showing off some of New York City’s finest students during last year’s Welcome Week.

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