Hello, My Name Is... (NaNo Prep, Week 2)

Getting to know your characters is an essential part of writing; but also one of the hardest.

I've been working on Reincarnation for over four years. (FOUR YEARS. That's, like, high school.) Because I've been working on it for so long, I know the characters backwards, frontwards, sideways, and upside down. To use an overused analogy, I know them like the back of my hand. (Insert obligatory "Oh hey, that's new!" joke here.) I know them better than they know themselves, and working on the story always gets me excited--like I'm meeting up with an old friend.

The thing is that the only reason I know these characters so well is because I've been working on it for so long. To be honest, I thought I'd have finished this story a long time ago--but at the same time, I'm glad I didn't, because getting to know y characters this much has proven to be an incredible improvement to the story--to me, at least. 

The problem with this, though, is that now I don't know how to learn about my characters any other way. I can't spend 4+ years on every story I write--and where NaNoWriMo is concerned, I only have 30 days. So how am I supposed to get to know my characters on the same deep, personal level? 

This is the part I'm always scared about. I'm worried that my characters are inconsistent, unrealistic, or just plain boring. I'm constantly hoping that my characters will actually seem like real, relatable people. I try filling out form after form after form, filling out character biographies that ask about everything from their favourite colour to their biggest fear--even if they themselves don't know what that is. Even after all that work, though, it never quite seems to be enough.

It turns out that the best way to get to know your characters is to discover them through the story.

Whenever I start a new story, I tend to start with a vague idea of what the character's like in my head. It's more of a feeling or aura than a description--because as it turns out, I'm much better at showing, rather than telling. As I go through the story, from the first page to the last, I get to know my character a little better. And with each chapter and each rewrite, they become deeper, vibrant, and much, much more real.

NaNoWriMo is filled with such spontaneity, such on-the-fly excitement that it provides the perfect opportunity to get to know your characters in such a fashion. I mean, you'll have to rewrite it all, anyway. Let your characters change directions as many times as your plot does. That's the only way you'll find out what truly works.

Until later,

- Justyne

How To: Revise Like an Amateur

Things that I am a self-proclaimed expert on*:

- Disney World
- Sims
- Procrastinating
- Overthinking things
- Avoiding adulthood
- Writing a term paper in eight hours the day before it's due
- Smiling at rude people when I really want to punch them in the face
- Making lists

*Disclaimer: May not be 100% accurate

Notice how nowhere on this list does it say, "Revising a novel". Also notice how the title of today's post does not, in any way, promise advise from a pro. This is advice from an amateur, aka someone who is 0% sure of what she's doing 100% of the time.

Then again, when do I ever?

I've written first drafts before. Dozens...maybe even hundreds of them. Trust me when I say that I'm very, very good at writing crappy drafts. But do you know how many of them have made it to the active revising stage? Like, .7 of them. And none of them have made it past that to the end.

Honestly, I find that revising can be very overwhelming sometimes. You have to sift through all 50,000+ words of your story--which, come on, is a lot--figure out what works and what doesn't, what to cut and what to add in. Are you telling me that after 30 odd days of pouring my blood, sweat and tears into these words, I'm supposed to cut half of them out? Or, God forbid, start over completely?! No, thank you! Me and this sorry excuse for a novel will be over there in the corner if you need us. Who needs to be published, anyway?

I suffer from a little thing I like to call Perfectionist Writing. That is to say, I have a very strong tendancy to edit as I write--to change something midway and double back to fix the beginning, or to rethink every word or phrase I type as soon as it appears on the screen. You know what that results in? A big wad of nothing. A mountain of unfinished projects, half-assed premises, and characters that are flatter than my nonexistant rear end.

So yeah, that's my first tip. TIP #1 - DON'T DO THAT. Complete your first draft à la NaNoWriMo. Get it down first and leave the rest to Future You.

TIP #2 - LET IT BREATHE

Your novel is finished, and it is flawless. Perfect. A true classic in the making. Go ahead and allow yourself to live in that beautiful fantasy for the time being.

Let your novel sit for a few weeks, maybe a month. Work on something else. Go for a walk, enjoy the sun and the fresh, beautiful oxygen. Appreciate the world around you, because it's not gonna look so great once you dive back into your fiction.

When you come back, read it. All of it. And try not to cry.

TIP #3 - OUTLINE. TWICE.

Or three times or four, however many it takes to work out that muddled plot of yours...but make at least two. The first will be sort of a reversed outline of your first draft. It'll have everything that happened and with accompanying notes of the things you already know need fixing. (It's okay if this list is a mile long; that's normal.)

The second is where you fix them--or attempt to, anyway. I think I'm on outline number four right now. But hey, sorting through a broken outline is a hell of a lot easier than sorting through a broken draft, so have at 'er.

TIP #4 - POST-ITS

I am enraged to have neither been introduced to this method sooner, nor to have thought of it myself.

PLOTTING. WITH POST-IT NOTES.

Clear that bedroom wall of those ancient Jonas Brothers posters and grab yourself a fresh pack of post-its (or several, of varying colours and sizes, if you're an absolute dork like me) and a sharpie. Make a few headings for chapters and leave space underneath for your plot points.

Plot points. On post it notes.

Dedicate each post-it to a different event. Major, minor, whatever you want. Put them in their designated chapters, move them around. Add new ones in, throw old ones out. Reverse the entire plot! SO MUCH EXCITEMENT AND FUN! This method allows for complete scatterbrains like myself to actually organize our thoughts and get our act together!

TIP #5 - THE MASTER OUTLINE

This is the most extensive, in depth, pain in the ass document you will ever create, but holy crap will it ever be helpful! I recommend doing this digitally, but if you would rather use the equivalent of the Amazon Rainforest in paper, then be my guest.

Because this document? It's gonna have your plot--extensively. Like, Wikipedia-synopsis-of-your-favourite-movie extensive. It's gonna have timelines, from years before your story starts to years after it ends. It's gonna have character biographies and backgrounds--everything from their favourite colour and whether or not they still love Let It Go, to their deepest fears and bigger-than-life dreams. Do they have a weird habit of waking up exactly seven minutes before their alarm everyday? Include it. Include everything.

Keep this massive beast saved. Everywhere. Twice. Keep, like, twelve back-ups of this thing, because it'll be hell if you lose it.

TIP #6 - REWRITE. LIKE, A MILLION TIMES.

Or rather: don't be afraid to rewrite it a million times.

Rewriting is scary. It's like throwing everything out and starting from scratch again, which can seem super discouraging; almost like all the work you originally put into it was a waste.

But it wasn't a waste, as unlikely as it seems. You can't get everything right on the first try, and your novel is no exception.

Rewriting takes a lot of time, though. The more you work on your plot outline beforehand, the fewer times you'll have to rewrite it later--so if you're not satisfied with the outline, take another look before you dive back into writing. But if you're getting restless, go ahead and dive back in. Planning is boring sometimes, and all work and no fun will just make it harder to find the motivation to work on it.

TIP #7 - KNOW WHAT WORKS

There's a difference between giving up and knowing that a story just isn't working. Unfortunately, the line between the two can be blurred and faded when you're feeling down and discouraged.

I haven't quite mastered the art of telling them apart (like....at all). I'm not sure that there is a way. All you can do is set it aside and let it breathe for a bit. If you find yourself letting it breathe more than drowning it in the sweat of hard work...well, maybe that's a sign.


I will admit: most of these tips and strategies are still in the experimental phases. But they've been working okay so far, so hopefully you'll find some use for them, as well!

Until later,

- Justyne

Musicals

I love musicals. No, that's wrong. I adore musicals. I wish everyday life could be a musical. (If it was, then maybe I wouldn't sound like a dying cat when I sing.)

Characters are motivated by desire. Everyone--rich, poor, happy, sad, confident or not--has something that they want. Maybe they think it's impossible. Maybe they've spent their whole lives working towards it. Maybe they don't even know where to start, and have spent years staring up at the sky, waiting and wanting and wishing for it to happen.

Plot is moved by a character's actions. A character's actions are fueled by want. Therefore, the plot is moved by the desires of the characters.


I love Disney movies--although whether I love musicals because of Disney or the other way around is unclear. Either way, when it comes to the franchise I generally have two favourite songs per movie:

1) The romance song (Think I See the Light from Tangled or A Whole New World from Aladdin.)
2) The opening "dream" song (Think Just Around the Riverbend from Pocahontas or For the First Time in Forever from Frozen.)

I love the romance songs because...well, hello, cute and adorable Disney couple together-ness. But I love the opening songs even more because they're fueled by the passion of the protagonist.

Exhibit A: The Princess and the Frog. Girl dreams of owning her restaurant. Works two different jobs to save money. Finally makes enough for the down payment of the building, thus taking one step closer to making her dreams a reality. Walks inside her future restaurant and BAM! Musical number. "I'm almost there!"

Exhibit B: Mulan. Girl wants to make her family proud. She follows the routine, tries to meet the standard expectations for women in her society--and fails. She wants to bring honour to her family, yes, but not at the expense of who she is. Spies on her apparently disappointed parents and BAM! Musical number (albeit a much slower song). "When will my reflection show who I am inside?"

The thing that makes these songs so great is the passion behind them; the desire to reach what seems impossible at times. These characters know what they want, and they tell us through (an extremely catchy) song. They show us their motivation, their inspiration, their greatest dreams. They give us a look inside themselves, so that we can care for them for the rest of the roughly 90 minute production.

When I'm developing characters, I like to take a song that I feel summarizes their motivation and imagine them singing it. I like to picture them bursting into song, telling the world, "This is what I want!" I feel like the song helps me map out their journey over the course of the story. (Hell, sometimes I plan out a whole little musical for them...yes I'm weird I know.)

So what about you? Do you pick out songs for your characters?


Until later,

- Justyne

Knowing Your Characters (BEDS #5)

How well do you know your characters?

I like to think I know mine pretty well--I will admit, though, I know some better than others. Some characters I know right off the bat, better than I know myself. I know how they would act in any given situation--what they would say, what they would do, what they'd be thinking. I can tell you about their entire growth as a person, from start to finish--how each event in the story affected them, for better or worse.

Other characters I don't know nearly as well. Other characters are harder to read--they take longer to look at, to figure out how their mind works. These are the characters I have to wrestle with--argue and fight and plead with until they give me just a glimmer of what they're like.

I mentioned, once, the problems I was having with a current WIP. It was causing me immense frustration, to the point that I just wanted to pull my hair out by the roots. (And I really really really love my hair.) I knew something was wrong with it--I just didn't know what. Even after changing the plot drastically from what it started as, I was still lost.

Why? Because I didn't know my main character.

Virtually every other character in this story was one I knew extremely well--it was just the protagonist, who was telling the story, that I was having trouble with. I didn't know who she was, really--I knew what she looked like, I knew what was supposed to happen to her, but nothing clicked as easily as it had with other characters.

Until I realized: I couldn't relate to her.

Relating to a character is extremely, extremely important--my characters have always been close to me, because in some small way, I've always been able to relate to them. I like to think that there's a part of me, of my life, in each of my stories, and most of it lies within my characters.

This character, this new protagonist, is one I've been visualizing since I was fourteen. I thought it'd be easy. I thought she's practically write the story herself.

She didn't.

It was like trying to converse with someone you have nothing in common with. It's not that I expected to relate to her situation exactly--I'm not exactly royalty--but no matter how hard I tried, no matter what angle I tilted it, I couldn't find the common ground. I couldn't find a way to relate to her, to parallel our lives.

Until suddenly, recently...I did. My life started to shift and change, my heart along with it...and, with one tiny nudge, everything clicked into place.

Having common ground with your character isn't always a necessary thing. I've written plenty of characters, at one time or another, that I had nothing in common with. But sometimes, when something isn't working...when, no matter how much you push or pull, it just won't budge...sometimes, finding common ground can help. Just starting from one simple emotion--one simple, familiar twinge of the heart--and building up around it can work wonders.


Until later,

- Justyne

People (WFMAD Day 23)

I torture my characters a lot. I kill their parents, put their closest friends and loved ones in utter peril, and just put them through extreme emotional termoil in general. It may be cruel, but it's part of my job description.

Characters are the most important part of the story, I think. Part of it is because, without them, there wouldn't be a story to tell--it'd basically be a painting. (Except with, y'know, words.) 

The other part of it--the bigger part--is that the characters create a portal, through which we can access these stories. Crafting characters when writing is incredibly hard, because the characters are the ones we're supposed to relate to. We're supposed to sympathize with them, understand their situation, and root for them as they move through the plot. In order for there to be a plot, things have to happen. It just so happens that that most exciting things are also the most tragic.

Think about it: a story about a character, whose life is nice and pleasant and enjoyable. Nothing bad ever happens; it always works out. Doesn't seem very interesting, does it?

Let's face it: if everything worked out all the time, if nothing actually conflicted with our characters to make them act out against it, our stories would be bland. Boring. Absolutely agonizing to sit through. We need our characters to experience the bad, the terrible, the heartbreaking. It's hard to sympathize with someone whose life is seemingly perfect; how many of us can actually say the same of our own lives?

(Put your hand down, you are full of crap and you know it.)

More often than not, the main character is forced to learn something; about themselves, and the world around them. If they learn nothing, or if there's nothing for them to learn, then their role as a character isn't given room for growth and change. Character development is key; it works with the conflict, with the everlasting tragedy that is the character's. The conflict challenges the character, paving the way for the story to take off. The development makes the story worthwhile; like something bigger than the original goal has been accomplished.

And without the characters, none of this is possible. It is those characters, with all of their quirks and traits, that truly makes a good story.

Until later,

- Justyne