This week I have started my prep for NaNoWriMo (aka National
Novel Writing Month). This is an event that I have never participated in before
but am determined to complete this year. If you want to find out more info on
what this is please click here. Had a look? Seems fun? Seems like
something you want to join in on? Please do! I may need someone to sob
alongside me.
Yes, this is yet another of those many things that I promised
myself I was going to do and this does mean that I’ll be going ‘off-grid’ from
a lot of (or all) social activities in November but you’ll have to be kind and
leave me to it. I don’t necessarily want anything to come of this aside from
the simple act of having done it.
I genuinely thought prepping in August was quite far in
advance but as it turns out it really isn’t. Especially when the thought of
writing 50,000 words of absolute festering tosh is a real possibility. Lots of
people have already begun their prep and so I have decided to join them, being
a little late to the party as usual, but at least not missing it.
I have a story idea that I am planning on using for a
NaNoWriMo but it needs a ton more fleshing out and so the three areas that I’m
having to give some focus on are:-
·
Characters
·
Setting
·
Plot
I’m hoping that the more deeply I delve into the characters
and the setting the more nuances to the plot I’ll somehow unearth. At the
moment I have disjointed ideas but no way of connecting them.
It’s sort of feeling like dot-to-dot just without the number indicators.
First things first, I am starting this prep with characters.
There are a lot of very useful websites which provide
suggestions or advice on how to create your characters and there are also a lot
of websites which provide questions aimed at getting you to dig a bit deeper
into your characters and make them appear real. Even if that character is a 7
foot, fire breathing lizard with 8 eyes and 4 arms. Somehow you need to connect
that 7 foot reptile to your audience. By the way, this is not my main
character. My main character Lizzie McLizardFace only has 6 eyes*
Some of my favourite websites I’ve been using for character
creation are below:-
This website is a good leaping point. It suggests activities such as taking a Myers-Briggs test as your character,
filling in a character questionnaire, focusing on the material objects that
your character would own, building a scrapbook of their life and finding them a
theme song.
Another website (which I can’t remember) actually suggested
building a play list for your character or a mental book shelf for them. What
are the songs they would listen to? What books would they read? You could
probably even go as far as asking what items exist in their fridge. What do
these things tell you about that character?
I did a random shuffle and these were the first five songs
on my iPod:-
1.
Fold – Jose Gonzalez
2.
The Power of the Babe – Dave Bowie (from Labyrinth)
3.
Stellar – Incubus
4.
Gypsy – Fleetwood Mac
5.
Good Luck – Basement Jaxx
The books on my bookshelf currently consist of a lot of ‘How
to Write’ non-fiction stuff, books by Neil Gaiman, Terry Pratchett and Alice Hoffman,
and then The Night Circus (by Erin Morgenstern), Jonathan Strange and Mr
Norrell (by Susanna Clarke) and The Diary of Anne Frank. That’s to name a very
select few.
My fridge contents contain an opened bottle of Prosecco,
unopened/ unused vegetables and a lot of cheese. Not too sure what any of this
says about me.
I have already done three Myers-Briggs tests, one as
myself and then two as different characters. My profile for those of you who
are interested is INFJ aka ‘The Advocate.’ I made Huw take one of these ages
ago which he probably doesn’t remember! He came out as an ISTJ personality aka ‘The
Logistician.’ Having read his profile I would say it’s actually pretty close.
If you are interested have a look at the INFJ here and see
whether you think this is accurate based on what you know about me. I’d be
interested in what you are if you take the test (here). See whether I think it
is accurate based on what I know about you!
The below links are to some very detailed character
questionnaires. Some of the questions do overlap but I found out of all the questionnaires
I’ve found, I liked these ones the most:-
For funsies I also like to assign an alignment. This may be
a conversation that I have had with you in Real Life™ as to what alignment we
would be. Character alignment is based on Dungeons and Dragons and looks at an axis
to determine where a character ‘fits’. This has been adopted by multiple
fanbases, some alignments can be found here or if you just Google your
favourite fanbase followed by ‘character alignment’ I can assure you that you will
find something. Quite often the same character will crop up in different
alignments and that’s the glory of viewer/ reader interpretation.
TvTropes does a wonderful job of explaining what each
alignment means:-
I think I may be Neutral Good. Check it out.
I have clearly gotten link happy today. Now I am off to
complete numerous questionnaires.
*this is a joke. Just in case any of you think I am going
down the hard sci-fi/ Scientology route. Which I most certainly am not. Now I’m
a bit worried that I’ve mentioned Scientology in my blog. For all I know the
Scientologists could be reading this right now and are preparing to take me to
their leader. I don’t want to meet Tom Cruise. I find him terrifying.
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