Preparing NaNoWriMo 2008 (2)

Once we’re past the “three-weeks-to-go” mark, my fingers get itchy every time I come near a keyboard. I want to start writing. Which is, of course, completely against the rules. But there’s a way around this dilemma: character sketches.

I’m not good at plotting. Apart from a few key events, I’m generally clueless what is going to happen in my novel. For this approach to work, I need to know my characters almost better than myself, and I use character sketches to find out all about them. Once I know how they behave in everyday life, I’m confident I can bring them to life in the more exciting situations we will face in November.

So I send them food shopping, to the dentist and the birthday party of their least favourite aunt. It’s fun, I find out things about them I never imagined, and it helps me to re-establish my writing routine.

Preparing NaNoWriMo 2008 (1)

“First, find out what your hero wants, then just follow him!” – Ray Bradbury

That sums up how I come up with novel-length stories. Creating and plotting a novel is all about my characters. I need to know who they are, where they come from, what they want, and what the worst thing is that could happen to them.

I don’t think about them as characters but as people; people I want to get to know. I “interview” them to find out as much about them as possible. I use the questionnaire from the Gotham Writers’ Workshop excellent Writing Fiction guide – I highly recommend the book, but there is a downloadable version of the questionnaire.

The most important thing about creating characters is to keep checking that I’m interested in them and what happens to them. The way I see it, if I don’t care about my characters, why should anybody else care?