Sunday, September 26, 2010

Characters

Honestly, I may have wrote about this before, but now I can write about it as someone who has actually wrote a book(albeit unpublished, but hey, I"m one step ahead of those who say "I'm going to write a book someday...") I’m going to talk about how I’ve gotten to know my characters on my first WIP. I’m sure this will differ from others and I’m sure it will probably vary a bit for future books I will write, but for now…
I had a general idea of the characters I wanted and I started with their names. Depending on about how old they were supposed to be, I searched up popular names from their birth year or there abouts. Then I read through the list and picked the name I felt suited each character best. After that I did a short description on each character. I included who they were, what they looked like, things they would do in the book and other characteristics. With my lead girl I had a “daydream” about how she felt towards the beginning/middle of the book. And then…
I wrote the first draft aka D1. As I wrote D1 I got more of a feel for the characters, who they were and what motivated them. Frustratingly enough I found that my lead girl wasn’t quite as, assertive and outgoing, as I thought in the beginning. So as I wrote I started to change her to how she really was.
When I went back to do D2 I changed all of the “wrong” things about her that were at the beginning. Any responses or thoughts that didn’t ring true to the “real” girl, I fixed. I also ended up switching the motivations a little bit of two of my lead 2ndary characters. Also before I continued on to D2 I wrote/rewrote/detailed out those character descriptions from before D1 existed. They are a great reference for detailing the book and for getting me back into my characters heads.
As for where I’m at right now…aka having just finished D3…I’m keeping in the front of my mind who my lead girl is, and how she’s feeling about everything whether it’s what I’m editing right now and I speculate about later chapters too. I can only hope that in my next book I am more comfortable about getting to know my characters having at least some experience to rely on, even if I have to be flexible.
And if I'm being honest, I'm getting to know a new set of characters too. A lot of things aren't concrete because I"m trying to be indirect about the "start" of my next WIP. So far, I've got a list of who's going to be in the book(subject to additions, of course ;) , a name picked out for my main chick, ideas of names for some of the other characters, some motivations for and what happens to some of the characters. In an effort to continue concentrating on getting my current WIP published, I'm holding off on any "serious" work. And by serious I mean that it is my main priority and I want to up the word count every day.

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