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About This Author
My name is Joy, and I love to write.
Why poetry, here? Because poetry uplifts its writer, and if she is lucky enough, her readers, too. Around us, so many objects abound to write about. Once a poet starts with a smallest, most trivial object, he shall discover that his pen will spill out what is most delicate or most majestic hidden inside him. Since the classics sometimes dealt with lofty subjects with a lofty language, a person with poetry in his soul may incline to emulate that. That is understandable. Poetry does that to a person: it enlarges the soul and gives it wings. Yet, to really soar, a poet needs to take off from the ground.
 
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Everyday Canvas #925565 added December 19, 2017 at 7:10pm
Restrictions: None
Inside a Character--What He Means To Do
Prompt: “A character is what he does, yes — but even more, a character is what he means to do.”
Orson Scott Card
What a character means to do and doesn’t or does, did you ever consider that option in your stories? And doesn’t the same apply to us humans as to what we mean to do? What do you think?
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Shakespeare’s characters, if they intend something, they usually carry it out. For example, in Act 2, Scene 1 of Othello, we find Iago putting together a plan to drive Othello mad because he notes Cassio’s courteous behavior toward Desdemona. Who else but through one’s wife could a villain get to a hero? But even before that, in the first act, Iago shows his hatred of Othello because Othello didn’t make him his lieutenant but chose Cassio instead. It is also possible that Iago couldn’t stand anyone higher in rank than himself, including Othello.
In today’s fiction, intentions need not be carried out exactly as they are intended as long as they are shown as part of a character to influence his or her actions in different ways.
It is not a good idea to point out only what the character means to do and leave that idea hanging, though. A character’s intentions need to be evident in some way.
When we show that a character means to do something--for example, he dreams of putting a knife in someone’s heart--we must follow through with some similar action, internal or external. He may, for example, cause someone else do the dirty deed for him or maybe try to do something bad to someone else and make sure his intended victim gets blamed for it.
Intentions show us who we are. Other people’s intentions also show us who they are. Intentions may show character, but ultimately, intentions won't really matter if they only exist inside a person. Isn’t it true that, in some ways, we are all Mother Theresas? I am quite sure many people would love to do what Mother Theresa could do, and possibly several women and men are doing just that, while the rest of us just keep it inside us.
If intentions are only comforting or distressing illusions, what good are they if they are not shown through some kind of an action!
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