I have no intention to start. I'm going to talk about characters and NaNoWriMo.
I'm writing a new character, Niki Gipsiss, for my NaNoWriMo project. I wouldn't exactly call this endeavor a novel. It'll be novel length, and it'll have a plot somewhere under the excess verbiage. I'm not padding my word count, just exploring the thoughts, feelings, and histories of this new set of characters.
Before I go on, let me reassure my dear readers, that Bo Fexler is no going away. I love her character. If Niki ever develops, she'll just share time with Bo. Maybe I could do two novel series, one with Niki and one with Bo, alternating books or something. Of course, first I have to get ONE series going... but I dream big. Very big.
Anyway, Niki is very different from Bo. She's not nearly as hot. She's attractive, but more in your average girl sort of way. Brown hair, brown eyes, only slightly taller than the average woman (5'6 to Bo's 5'10 1/2"). Niki's more cute than ohmyfuckinggod hot.
Right now, I'm noticing that Niki doesn't have much character. She's pretty vanilla. Bo's got serious attitude that oozes from her every sentence, swing of the hips, and curve of the lips. She's a bad ass right to her core.
Niki's different. I'm have some trouble figuring out what her flavor will be. She needs some sort of character, but it's not that easy for me to just come up with one. Especially since I tend towards the bitter and snarky... like Bo. I don't want to write another type of Bo-character.
But I'm going to give Niki 50,000 of her own words to figure out who she is. I think it's time to stretch my writerly abilities and see where it will take me. Maybe no where-- maybe I am a one-trick pony.
At least it's a fun trick.
Keep track of my NaNoWriMo progress on the right over there with my NanoCat progress meter. Mew.
Thursday, November 6, 2008
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6 comments:
There's nothing wrong with dreaming big. Sounds like your new character needs something to jar her out of her vanilla world. A lot of people just skip along in their own little world until something slaps them square in the face and wakes them up. And just ignore me if I'm sticking my nose in your creative juices. I tend to get over-excited about the writing process.
cool word verification: womasm
Hi Sandra--
I've got the event that changes Niki's world, but so far she doesn't seem to be reacting to it. I can't hold off the stunned shock much longer... I gotta figure out how she's going to take it? Anger, cold-hearted revenge, worry about bigger problems?
She seems a little too average and ordinary... is that bad? I dunno. Bo was more fun because she was so kick-ass and so sharp.
Maybe she needs someone to drag her kicking and screaming into the situation, forcing her to face it. Sometimes a partner can strike the sparks that make a story come together. I've know several women who wouldn't get out of their own way unless someone was pushing them.
My tendency is to write characters who are extraordinarily rational-- their focus becomes "solve the problem" (probably because I tend to think that way myself. =/)
So, she's all focused on what she has to do. No emotion.
Must find emotion. I wonder if there's any in the fridge... ;-)
One last thought. Maybe not being able to react is your emotion. Maybe she did react once and things went bad. Like trying to stop her father from beating her mother which only made her father madder and her mother was killed. Not necessarily that but you get the drift. Fear is a powerful emotion. She'd have to fight herself before she could attack her problem.
The character is my last novel showed litte emotion, but this time I'm trying to embue both women with more. It goes against my grain though. I must be basing them on someone but I can't figure out who because I am very emotional--not crying but in terms of joy and despair.
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