📙 Part 2: Describe a natural talent for sports or music that you want to improve

This episode's vocabulary

A great deal - a large amount.

Frankly (adverb) - in an honest and direct way.

Adept (adj.) - having a natural ability to do something that needs skill.

One-dimensional (adj.) - boring or showing few different qualities.

Detrimental (adj.) - causing harm or damage.

Ownership (noun) - the fact that you own something.

Progress (noun) - movement to an improved or more developed state, or to a forward position.

Character-driven (adj.) - of a book, play, film, etc., or its' narrative) chiefly concerned with, and developing through, the depiction of the personalities of one or more characters.

Right off the bat (phrase) - if something happens right off the bat, it happens immediately.

Well-rounded (adj.) - involving or having experience in a wide range of ideas or activities.

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Questions and Answers

M: Rory, bring it on.

R: I've been thinking about it a great deal lately, actually. And I quite like to get better at character writing and development in fiction writing, frankly. Since I started doing it at school, I've been quite adept at writing and telling stories. But when I go back and read everything I've written, I'm a little disappointed to find that characters are quite one-dimensional or flat in some way. And that can have quite a detrimental effect on how people engage with my writing. If all they see is a sequence of events happening to people, and not much growth or ownership of situations, then there's little of them to get invested and little of the characters to get invested in that as. I always think that practice makes perfect or practice makes progress, actually. But before trying to write a few character-driven short stories, I thought I would read a few books and see how other authors develop their characters. It's quite a difficult thing to observe, but I'm getting better at it. And hopefully, I'll have picked up a few workable strategies soon. And if not, then it's hardly a disaster because I don't really write books anymore. I don't really publish stories, but it's something that I should probably try and work on. Unfortunately, perhaps because of this, I'm not terribly confident of any success right off the bat. But hopefully, after a few years, I'll manage to write something that has better characterization, though I doubt it will be perfect. On the plus side, at least I know I'm better at writing story-driven pieces, but it helps to have, I suppose a more well-rounded approach to such things. I mean, everyone should try and at least aim for having a well-balanced story, you know, between story-driven elements and character-driven ones. I think that's what makes good stories when you think about it. If you look at what other authors do, they seem to get this quite right. Then again, I'm not very good at one of them. So maybe I'm just reading into this the wrong way.

M: What about your friends? Do they think that it's a useful talent to improve?

R: Um, I don't think my friends have commented on this at all, actually. They probably don't even notice it. But I do and that's the most important thing.

M: Thank you Rory for your talented answer.

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