Learning from my previous experience, it was easy getting into the situation of losing your voice when you were writing. To keep the drive, I set my character down at the beginning; it was a half-man who had no place to go. This was a helpful strategy, I also felt freer to write when not regarding it as a story about me. In addition, just like what Neil Gaiman said, your characters are part of you and will gradually separate from you.
My character had gone through five stages. In the beginning, he was just so happy that he felt love and warmth suddenly and wanted to say that out. Gradually, he felt there was something not very fit. He began to think about why and felt disgusted, and he fell into sadness later. In the end, he calmed down and only wanted everybody could be fine in the coming Christmas. It seemed random, but what my character faced was just the gap between unideal reality and pure love and one’s native wishes.
After finishing the draft, I started to think about how to perform it to my audience- I decided to use the robot’s voice. It used s digital voice to say those strongly emotional sentences, and the contrast between the robot’s emotionless voice and my content is what I want my audience to feel. It showed the mixture of detachment and zeal and created the view of an outsider; like the set of the empty stage, the robot was watching everything in distance.
Moreover, I created many pauses between sentences or words when the robot spoke to provide space for the audience to feel emotions. One of them asked me how I made this, but the emotions were not from the robot’s tone but from the audience themselves. This is also why I love performance; it is the result between the performer and audience, and it must be real.
Overall, learning from this experience, I will also focus more on the organization of show and my computer skills next time. To become a better writer, I will keep practising my English, keep thinking and creating, and more importantly, keep living my life with a bare heart.