..is freaking hard. Originally, Kimber was just going to get a little glimpse of Cal, right as he died. But then the kid started talking, and now he's sweet and I don't want to kill him!
I made the mistake of telling Tom this as I was writing last night.
"The character you're killing off... who are they closest to?"
I thought about this for a moment. "Probably his sister."
"Have her be the one to kill him."
"WHAT!?"
...for dramatic purposes, he is, as usual, entirely correct. But I can't do that!!! It was going to be hard enough to let this poor little child die of some disease. But... to have that guilt cling to little Evelyn, would be a nice, if horribly sad, touch. Even if she just *thinks* she killed him, some coincidence or another. But... I still haven't thought of any way she could influence his death. I have no idea. We'll see if I can polish off this scene tonight... or if I'm going to weasel my way out of finishing it for another day. ^^;;
Showing posts with label character development. Show all posts
Showing posts with label character development. Show all posts
Thursday, November 26, 2009
Monday, November 23, 2009
semi-autobiographical
All my characters are, to some extent or another. I can write their interests as well as I can, because I share them - I love that moment during photo development, where suddenly a blank white page shifts and grows shades and an image appears like a ghost. I love bringing out the thousand gradations of color in a scene when drawing it, bringing to the fore the pinks in green leaves, the yellows in gray stones.
But this is my new favorite observation - about myself, as well as Kimber:
I'm an awful judge of any measurement that's bigger than my sketchbooks.
So true it's ridiculous. I hate it when directions tell you something is 100 feet, 200 feet, away. I have no idea what that looks like. Everything I do, I visualize how it would fit against an 8 1/2 x 11 sheet of paper. I was trying to visualize the 5" diameter given for a clematis flower - they vary, I know, and I have a hunch some variaties can get like 10" across or something insane, and I spread my fingers apart against the short edge of a sheet of paper. I also have a good idea of 11", 17", and 18", 24", 36". Fifteen feet, not so much.
But this is my new favorite observation - about myself, as well as Kimber:
I'm an awful judge of any measurement that's bigger than my sketchbooks.
So true it's ridiculous. I hate it when directions tell you something is 100 feet, 200 feet, away. I have no idea what that looks like. Everything I do, I visualize how it would fit against an 8 1/2 x 11 sheet of paper. I was trying to visualize the 5" diameter given for a clematis flower - they vary, I know, and I have a hunch some variaties can get like 10" across or something insane, and I spread my fingers apart against the short edge of a sheet of paper. I also have a good idea of 11", 17", and 18", 24", 36". Fifteen feet, not so much.
Sunday, November 22, 2009
what happens when you're not paying attention...
Writing this whole historical society meeting section, I didn't plan the characters ahead of time. At all. Mary is vaguely related to a character I thought this story was going to have (though it turned out not to), but the other two just wandered in and started talking, breaking up the monologue.
And it wasn't until just now, as I was trying to wrap up the scene, that I wrote:
“I think that's about it,” Mary says, tapping her fingers thoughtfully on the table. “Anything else you two want to add?”
John and Susan
And then burst out laughing. JOHN AND SUSAN are my freaking relatives, that live in a little town not far from here. They pop into the store now and again. Susan's the sister of one of my grandparents (I always forget which side of the family is which). I had no idea, until this very moment, that I had unconsciously named my characters after them. The characters, I should note, were never intended to resemble them, though it occurs to me now that the Susan in my head looks a smidge like the Susan I'm related to.
omfg I am not going to be able to finish that sentence as it stands. I can't put the names together or I won't stop giggling. DAMN YOU SYNAPSES! Fire in ways that are HELPFUL!
And it wasn't until just now, as I was trying to wrap up the scene, that I wrote:
“I think that's about it,” Mary says, tapping her fingers thoughtfully on the table. “Anything else you two want to add?”
John and Susan
And then burst out laughing. JOHN AND SUSAN are my freaking relatives, that live in a little town not far from here. They pop into the store now and again. Susan's the sister of one of my grandparents (I always forget which side of the family is which). I had no idea, until this very moment, that I had unconsciously named my characters after them. The characters, I should note, were never intended to resemble them, though it occurs to me now that the Susan in my head looks a smidge like the Susan I'm related to.
omfg I am not going to be able to finish that sentence as it stands. I can't put the names together or I won't stop giggling. DAMN YOU SYNAPSES! Fire in ways that are HELPFUL!
Friday, November 20, 2009
language and names
So in today's chunk, I had to fix the fact that I had the little girl saying "okay"! I know the origins of the word are pretty murky, but I'm pretty sure it wasn't in polite language use in the late 1800s, early 1900s, which is vaguely the time period I'm working in. Also: her mis-pronounciations started with a fortuitous typo, for which I am very grateful because it helped me give her a personality. She's adorable! I love her.
Thank goodness her name checked out. I was writing in the Starbucks on campus - no internet means I can churn out a day's worth of writing in like an hour. So when I went to invent names... I couldn't check my handy-dandy reference site. But, after a few minutes' thought, I realized I could narrow it down a bit anyway - noooo Biblical names for the kids. That was a nice break-through. The father, for as little as he wants to do with the kids, would definitely have put his foot down and refused to listen to Biblical names day-in and day-out around his house.
Evelyn popped into my head, I'm not entirely sure from where, but it was pretty - and, luckily for me, #125 in popularity in 1890. Not so high that it would be a common name, but high enough to be plausible. Her brother, I had a rougher time with, and subbed in Jared for a bit, but on checking the list, I found Avery, which I liked way better. Avery and Evelyn. The names sound really cute together. :)
...I had noooo idea what to name their dog, so I kept my eyes open while scrolling through the list. The name Rollie is somewhere in the top 500 for that year, and while I am totally unable to picture a kid surviving school with the name Rollie, I can totally see a couple little kids naming their dog that.
Thank goodness her name checked out. I was writing in the Starbucks on campus - no internet means I can churn out a day's worth of writing in like an hour. So when I went to invent names... I couldn't check my handy-dandy reference site. But, after a few minutes' thought, I realized I could narrow it down a bit anyway - noooo Biblical names for the kids. That was a nice break-through. The father, for as little as he wants to do with the kids, would definitely have put his foot down and refused to listen to Biblical names day-in and day-out around his house.
Evelyn popped into my head, I'm not entirely sure from where, but it was pretty - and, luckily for me, #125 in popularity in 1890. Not so high that it would be a common name, but high enough to be plausible. Her brother, I had a rougher time with, and subbed in Jared for a bit, but on checking the list, I found Avery, which I liked way better. Avery and Evelyn. The names sound really cute together. :)
...I had noooo idea what to name their dog, so I kept my eyes open while scrolling through the list. The name Rollie is somewhere in the top 500 for that year, and while I am totally unable to picture a kid surviving school with the name Rollie, I can totally see a couple little kids naming their dog that.
Sunday, November 15, 2009
note about the name
I FINALLY NAMED MY MC!!!! I was wondering when that was going to happen. But when she walked into the psychics, I realized, holy crap she'll have to give her name. She doesn't have a name!!! ahhhhhh!1!!
So I brought up the list of five or six names that I was considering. Kimber really was the one I liked best all along (yes because of Jem), and it didn't seem to jar with the character in my head. But then I realized I needed a last name. DOOOOOM! I was going to snag something out of my own family history, but the few I could think of offhand didn't suit, and the one I like, I think I used in something else recently.
The site I got the rankings of first names by birth year doesn't do last names. But it gave me the idea of pulling up some kind of census. A google for "North Carolina census" eventually led me to a site with all sorts of things I didn't need. I started going off some random military listing from the 1800s, but then I found an actual listing of all the surnames in the state in... 1880 or so. Only, you know, a century earlier than my story... but her family lives in the state, so it's reasonable that some ancestor was there in 1880.
One of the first names that caught my eye was "Benton"... which is Kimber from Jem's last name. Couldn't do it, though it sounds so nice. I eventually came back to Bennette though, because, well, it really did sound good, as well as plausible, I think there was someone in my school with Bennet for a last name. Decided to change the spelling a bit though, that "e" on the end was too much.
BUT, the real reason I wanted to make a post about her name. I am NOT having the psychic constantly calling her by name in order to remind myself what her name is. (I've been test-running the name in my head for a few days, though the final decision wasn't made until yesterday.) Nor is it in celebration of her finally having a name, or to hit you over the head with it, now that it's finally in here. I promise, it's only because that's the way this woman talks - I'm sure you've run into that sort of person too, intent on making a good business-like impression, calling you by name to make you more comfortable or make your experience more personal or whatever their reason is.
(Personally, it always makes me feel really, really awkward. But I have a reclusive streak, so maybe it's just me.)
So I brought up the list of five or six names that I was considering. Kimber really was the one I liked best all along (yes because of Jem), and it didn't seem to jar with the character in my head. But then I realized I needed a last name. DOOOOOM! I was going to snag something out of my own family history, but the few I could think of offhand didn't suit, and the one I like, I think I used in something else recently.
The site I got the rankings of first names by birth year doesn't do last names. But it gave me the idea of pulling up some kind of census. A google for "North Carolina census" eventually led me to a site with all sorts of things I didn't need. I started going off some random military listing from the 1800s, but then I found an actual listing of all the surnames in the state in... 1880 or so. Only, you know, a century earlier than my story... but her family lives in the state, so it's reasonable that some ancestor was there in 1880.
One of the first names that caught my eye was "Benton"... which is Kimber from Jem's last name. Couldn't do it, though it sounds so nice. I eventually came back to Bennette though, because, well, it really did sound good, as well as plausible, I think there was someone in my school with Bennet for a last name. Decided to change the spelling a bit though, that "e" on the end was too much.
BUT, the real reason I wanted to make a post about her name. I am NOT having the psychic constantly calling her by name in order to remind myself what her name is. (I've been test-running the name in my head for a few days, though the final decision wasn't made until yesterday.) Nor is it in celebration of her finally having a name, or to hit you over the head with it, now that it's finally in here. I promise, it's only because that's the way this woman talks - I'm sure you've run into that sort of person too, intent on making a good business-like impression, calling you by name to make you more comfortable or make your experience more personal or whatever their reason is.
(Personally, it always makes me feel really, really awkward. But I have a reclusive streak, so maybe it's just me.)
Thursday, November 12, 2009
confession
Guess who needs to stop making fun of people for joining Team Edward (*gags*)?
Maaaybe the girl who continually writes pale slender young-looking old-souled impossibly pretty men, who probably did sparkle back when they were still angels. Fallen angels are pretty darn close to vampires, especially the way I write them.
And then I go and fall in love with them, even while I'm terrified of the things they sometimes do.
...this was not intended to be a Phisto story, but, OH LOOK, THERE THEY ARE.
*loves them anyway*
Maaaybe the girl who continually writes pale slender young-looking old-souled impossibly pretty men, who probably did sparkle back when they were still angels. Fallen angels are pretty darn close to vampires, especially the way I write them.
And then I go and fall in love with them, even while I'm terrified of the things they sometimes do.
...this was not intended to be a Phisto story, but, OH LOOK, THERE THEY ARE.
*loves them anyway*
Monday, November 9, 2009
random actions
I love it when characters go running off and doing silly things for basically no reason. Yesterday, my main character suddenly felt terrified and ran away from the garden. Today, because a good song came up on her (i.e., my) iPod, she decided to take off for a sprint all around the garden, laughing and singing all the way. It's actually making me smile.
...when stuck writing, some people fall back on quoting books, or movies, or having characters sing "99 Bottles of Beer on the Wall". While I pride myself on never having gotten *quite* that desperate... my characters do tend to listen to music. A lot. This year's character has a music collector for a father, which means she has a good knowledge base lurking in her head. That paired with listening to music as I write (which I basically always do), means LOTS OF FREE WORDS WOOOOOO!
^~_~^
...when stuck writing, some people fall back on quoting books, or movies, or having characters sing "99 Bottles of Beer on the Wall". While I pride myself on never having gotten *quite* that desperate... my characters do tend to listen to music. A lot. This year's character has a music collector for a father, which means she has a good knowledge base lurking in her head. That paired with listening to music as I write (which I basically always do), means LOTS OF FREE WORDS WOOOOOO!
^~_~^
Friday, November 6, 2009
first write-in
...my sixth year, and today was the first write-in I ever managed to get to. Three other people turned up at one of the coffee places on campus, and someone was good enough to bring a power strip, and holy crap if I didn't write a good 2000 words in, what, three hours? With loooots of talking in between. One woman, I actually had a class with a few years ago. The other girl loves Batman and was raving about the audiobook version of the novelization of the newest Star Trek movie. The guy is going to go poke around an abandoned sanitarium like next week, he's using several abandoned places in his story.
This, is pretty freaking awesome.
I have people to share my NaNo experience with - people who understand the excitement of wordcounts, the frustrations of plot, the ridiculousness of characters. And I have things in common with these people! I always forget how nice that feels, the only people I've hung out with in ages are my coworkers. And while some of them are pretty awesome people too, and I even have a few things in common with some of them... it's a really great feeling to just sit down with some people you've never met before and just fall into conversations.
NaNo makes it so much less awkward, too. When there's a lull in the conversation, you just go back to the writing you're supposed to be doing. When you get stuck, you start talking again. You have people to remind you how to properly use quotes inside of quotes. It's a very cool thing.
Tomorrow night after work, I'm going to Tim Horton's until Tom gets out of work. It's one of my favorite places to write, and while most of the local NaNo'ers are meeting in the afternoon, it's sounding like a few will drop by at night, so that'll be good.
It's so strange having my wordcount already DONE for today, and it's nowhere near midnight! (Not being able to access the campus wifi - since I don't have an active student network account - was probably a VERY, very good thing.)
Also, regarding today's chunk: 1) I've never actually seen documentation of street names and things changing like that, it just totally makes sense to me that they would. I know growing up, we always had our own names for places - one particular intersection up the street was "four corners", the dirt road leading to a farmer's cabin was "Swyers Road". 2) I was not expecting my random zoning guy to be so entertaining! I was cracking up as I pictured this guy in this little office throwing maps all over the place. He's adorable! He made me so happy today, I had no idea how I was going to make today's section interesting, and then he showed up!
This, is pretty freaking awesome.
I have people to share my NaNo experience with - people who understand the excitement of wordcounts, the frustrations of plot, the ridiculousness of characters. And I have things in common with these people! I always forget how nice that feels, the only people I've hung out with in ages are my coworkers. And while some of them are pretty awesome people too, and I even have a few things in common with some of them... it's a really great feeling to just sit down with some people you've never met before and just fall into conversations.
NaNo makes it so much less awkward, too. When there's a lull in the conversation, you just go back to the writing you're supposed to be doing. When you get stuck, you start talking again. You have people to remind you how to properly use quotes inside of quotes. It's a very cool thing.
Tomorrow night after work, I'm going to Tim Horton's until Tom gets out of work. It's one of my favorite places to write, and while most of the local NaNo'ers are meeting in the afternoon, it's sounding like a few will drop by at night, so that'll be good.
It's so strange having my wordcount already DONE for today, and it's nowhere near midnight! (Not being able to access the campus wifi - since I don't have an active student network account - was probably a VERY, very good thing.)
Also, regarding today's chunk: 1) I've never actually seen documentation of street names and things changing like that, it just totally makes sense to me that they would. I know growing up, we always had our own names for places - one particular intersection up the street was "four corners", the dirt road leading to a farmer's cabin was "Swyers Road". 2) I was not expecting my random zoning guy to be so entertaining! I was cracking up as I pictured this guy in this little office throwing maps all over the place. He's adorable! He made me so happy today, I had no idea how I was going to make today's section interesting, and then he showed up!
Thursday, October 29, 2009
plot...maybe. a character, at least.
There might be one. Okay, not really, anyone reading this knows my writing better than that. BUT! I wasn't really as in love with the idea of doing a series of short stories as I was a month ago, it's just not really exciting me. Coming up with eight gazillion new characters all month, and not having a chance to really dig in to any of them...just felt like a chore. So, we're going Requiem for a Princess with this (I realized last NaNo that that is the novel I want to write), and getting a main character, who somehow or another is going to learn the stories of this garden.
In Requiem (which is by Ruth M. Arthur, and if ANYONE can find me another one of her books - written mostly in the '60s and '70s, nothing left in print now - I will bake you so many cookies in gratitude you'll think it's Christmas), the main character learns the story of a girl from centuries earlier via a series of dreams. They're incredibly vivid dreams, but that's still a pretty plausible thing, and the main girl finds juuust enough traces around the house to find proof of the dreams.
I ran into this problem last NaNo, too - finding a way to reveal the secrets of a location. Tom refused to let me have my main character find an old journal or diary or anything, and I grudgingly agreed to think of something else. Going on the fact that cameras, by their very nature, "see" things differently than human eyes, I let things show up in the girl's photographs that she didn't see herself. That worked. This time around, I have no idea. I really like the idea of psychic imprints in locations, and I'm totally fascinated by the Moberly-Jourdain incident... but getting "a feeling" about a place is far too vague for my purposes, and out-and-out seeing things will make my character sound completely crazy.
I have... oh, three days to figure this out. Good times.
In terms of plot... there should really be some issue in my main character's life that the garden's stories resolve. I'm trying to decide if artistic burnout is dramatic enough - I don't think it is, but it feels dramatic enough when I've had it so much lately. I have a few story elements sketched out, but we'll see what happens.
In Requiem (which is by Ruth M. Arthur, and if ANYONE can find me another one of her books - written mostly in the '60s and '70s, nothing left in print now - I will bake you so many cookies in gratitude you'll think it's Christmas), the main character learns the story of a girl from centuries earlier via a series of dreams. They're incredibly vivid dreams, but that's still a pretty plausible thing, and the main girl finds juuust enough traces around the house to find proof of the dreams.
I ran into this problem last NaNo, too - finding a way to reveal the secrets of a location. Tom refused to let me have my main character find an old journal or diary or anything, and I grudgingly agreed to think of something else. Going on the fact that cameras, by their very nature, "see" things differently than human eyes, I let things show up in the girl's photographs that she didn't see herself. That worked. This time around, I have no idea. I really like the idea of psychic imprints in locations, and I'm totally fascinated by the Moberly-Jourdain incident... but getting "a feeling" about a place is far too vague for my purposes, and out-and-out seeing things will make my character sound completely crazy.
I have... oh, three days to figure this out. Good times.
In terms of plot... there should really be some issue in my main character's life that the garden's stories resolve. I'm trying to decide if artistic burnout is dramatic enough - I don't think it is, but it feels dramatic enough when I've had it so much lately. I have a few story elements sketched out, but we'll see what happens.
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