“Oi, what the hell’s ‘Wit-Ease?'”

Haha, you see, my personified reader, the definition of “Wit-Ease” stems from a concept that… that I just made up. C’mon, I just wanted a unique way of saying “with ease” that implied some kind of thought behind your actions. Being creative’s hard; gimme a break.

Well, now that I’ve said it, I’ve gotta give it a definition. Let’s see… “Wit-Ease” is… well, it’s what I’m doing right now. I’m writing off the top of my head, here.

But I’m not clueless. I have an idea of what I want to convey with this blog (how to help you write easily), and how I want to convey it (the same way I always do: with another character as context).

Chances are you already have the “Wit” part down-pat. Writing with ease, and nothing else, is simply freewriting. Freewriting is a great tool for developing ideas, and doing it on a daily basis helps you develop a fluid train of thought.

But we don’t write thoughtful stories with freewriting.

Chances are that you already know this. And, chances are that you let this fact affect your writing. Don’t be ashamed if you do; so do I. In fact, it’s one of the biggest obstacles I face every time I write creatively.

“What if what I’m writing is pointless? What if it doesn’t sound good, or natural? What if my ideas go to waste?”

Do these thoughts sound familiar? Feel free to comment any other doubts I might not have thought of, but I think I’m right in saying that they all stem from a common artistic tendency to over-analyze one’s own work. It’s possible that you might even be reading this post with one of these doubts fresh in your mind. Well, allow me to put your mind at ease.

…Get it? Because “Wit-Ease?” Haha… god, I fucking hate this term already—

A quick solution to getting your ideas out the right way is often to simply write them. Yeah, it sounds redundant, but you’d be surprised with how many times I’ve sat in front of my computer for minutes on end, out of fear of somehow conveying my ideas the wrong way.

It’s normal to doubt yourself. The trick is to write in spite of yourself — to let your mind loose and just get those ideas down. You’d be surprised with how much easier it is to go back and edit something concrete rather than try to perfect everything in your head. Write with spontaneous purpose — a pre-plotted train of thought.

Approaching your creative efforts in this way not only helps combat writer’s block, but also fits well with most people’s day-to-day activities. Wit on the bus, Ease at school. Wit at work, Ease at home. Wit before you sleep, Ease after you wake up. Sounds perfect, doesn’t it?

Oh, right. We’re supposed to link this back to character creation. Don’t worry; I didn’t forget!

So: how does “Wit-Ease” help flesh out our characters?

Well, first of all, this tactic works wonders with writing dialogue. This ties back in with the concept of empathizing with out characters; often times, what we’d say in a character’s place is what that character should say. If this isn’t the case for you, then I’d recommend taking the time to become more familiar with your characters. That’s what this blog is for!

Spontaneous writing also helps to make your characters’ decisions feel more real. If you plan everything that happens in your story before writing the actual story, it will come across in your writing. Again, get in the characters’ shoes. An impulsive decision should be made impulsively by the author as well as the character.

We’re still not done here. I want to take this concept as far as we can, so for this week’s “character for context,” I’ll be creating a new character right here with you guys.

Let’s establish our Wit, first. This will be a character for a comedic short story that I’m writing for a university course. I’ve already got a rough outline for a protagonist in mind: an anti-social, idiosyncratic high school boy who teaches himself through the internet, and uses this knowledge to troll his peers and teachers with convoluted solutions to problems.

I want this new character to provide the story’s main conflict. I’ve got my Wit for that conflict, too — thanks for a requirement from the course I’m writing this story for. The requirement is to tie the plot in with a scene we wrote for the course a few weeks ago.

My scene involved themes of desire and peace at death, so I’ve decided that this new character will be a ghost who wants to be put at peace. Unfortunately for her, she picked the worst possible person (our reclusive protagonist) to help her out.

Yeah, I decided while writing that passage that I’d make this character a “she.” It doesn’t matter a whole lot, but I figure that it’ll make the protagonist’s interactions all the more awkward, which is what I want for the comedy to work well.

As for traits, I figure I’ll go for a “lighthearted wise guy” to the protagonist’s “sour straight man.” Might sound too cliched, but as I mentioned in my last blog post, cliches are often the foundation to bigger and better things. It’ll be this character’s desires and personality that drive the protagonist to a sort of redemption by the end of the story.

I’ll name her Sylvie. I usually don’t come up with names on the spot, but that sounds like a good one for a whimsical ghost.

One last thing: flaws. Every character’s gotta have them. Hmm, that’s sorta tough.

Well, let’s think back to our plan for a moment. This is a comedic short story. Our protagonist’s flaw is that he’s a tad too misanthropic to be acceptable in modern society. The one thing he’d hate is doing a kindness for anyone for any reason other than to stop them from annoying him.

There it is. Sylvie’s flaw can be that, despite being invisible to everyone except the protagonist, she still causes inexplicable miracles wherever she goes. The reason behind those miracles… well, that can be an answer we save for when we write the story, can’t it?

It may not sound like much of a flaw for someone to cause great things to happen, but for a comedy it’ll work wonders. By the end of the story, all these actions can be tied back to the protagonist. He’ll be seen as a town hero, despite being a jerk. Sylvie will have left an undeniable impact on the world by the end of the story.

And there’s our new character. I’ll be generous and say all that took me fifteen minutes to write. Much better than filling out template after diagram after outline before even getting to the story, eh?

And y’all got an entertaining blog out of this, too. At least, I hope you did. :]