Break for Christmas and New Years

So I'm going to take a break from posting for the next couple weeks, just to get through the craziness that accompanies Christmas and New Years.

I wish everyone a very merry and blessed Christmas and safe New Years. See you in 2011.

A Quick Post

Just wanted to put up a quick post. Work was absolutely insane today, so I didn't get the chance to write the post I was planning to write. Instead, I had to find every school in a school district in South Carolina.

So to make up, here's a link to Michael Buble singing "Baby, It's Cold Outside" instead. I love this song. :)

Names, Names, Names

So I know I talked about names in my previous post about characters. But I like them so much I wanted to do another post on them. Only I wasn't really sure what to write about them. Loving something and knowing how to write about it are two different things.

So names. Why do I think names are so important to a story? Well think about the effect a name has on your impression of a person. When you hear a name you automatically get an idea about how the owner of that name looks, acts, and even thinks sometimes. Things like your past experiences have a big influence on how you look at the owner of a name. For example, I have an (unfortunate) dislike of the name Angela because of a particular childhood acquaintance. There are other names that I dislike because of my past as well. In fact, there are whole name books dedicated to looking at how names are perceived. My favorite is The Baby Name Survey by Bruce Lansky. My friends became slightly obsessed with it when they started looking up what the book said about their names. If you're curious, you should check it out. It's pretty amusing, and sometimes, scarily close to accurate.

I talked about how I choose names in my last post. I always find that part of the naming process one of the most enjoyable and frustrating parts of the whole character creation process. Sitting down with my pile of name books (one that has lots of unusual names and spelling variations, one that I can search for names by meaning, and one that I can just skim through for the more popular names), my laptop (babynamesworld.com has an excellent search function; babynamewizard.com has some amazing tools for checking popularity of names), and paper and pencil to jot down anything that strikes my fancy is my favorite way to spend some time. There are times I've spent an hour or more looking up names, comparing how they sound or feel, whether they fit with the idea of the character I have or if they make the character take an unexpected turn. Each part of this process is so fun to me.

Why do I spend so much time on the names? I mean besides being a little obsessed with names. Well I mentioned above how they change the way people see your character. To me, they help define the character. Until the character is named, it's almost like they don't really exist yet. Once they have that name, the name that says exactly the right thing about the character and their history and their place in the story, then they seem to be real to me. They come alive, ready to play their parts in the story.

So you see, names are one of the most important parts of creating a character, at least to me. It's also one of the most satisfying.

Short post, I know. But if I keep writing, I'll just start sounding crazier than I already do. :) See you on Thursday!

Characters and Why I Love Them

On Monday I talked about where my ideas come from. Today I'm going to talk about where my characters come from.

One of my favorite authors, Tamora Pierce, talks about her characters on her website. She takes portions of people around her and bases characters on them. Other times she bases her characters on pictures of random people she collects.

I take a similar approach to creating characters. Most of my MCs start out as some reflection of myself (something you might quickly notice if you get to read more than one of my stories). Actually Alana, the MC of my WIP was me when I started writing the story as a teenager. Writing was a chance to take myself of crazy adventures I would never actually get to do in real life. As I've worked on the piece, Alana has become her own person, but there are still distinct pieces of me in her. Aspects of her personality, likes and dislikes, and even how she looks are taken largely from my own life. How are we the same? We both like to read; we both love horses; we both have a sarcastic streak. How are we different? She has an easier time speaking her mind than I do; she goes to public school; she's an only child; her parents are divorced; and most importantly, she is a mage. There's lots of other similarities (our hair color) and differences (she took riding lessons as a kid).

What about my other characters? My male MCs or supporting characters. Where do they come from? Well, as far as MCs go, I usually find some way to (at least at first) base them on a guy I know. When I was a teen it would be the guy I had a crush on. As I got older, they transformed from a single guy I knew to a more general male figure. I have to say that my male MCs are somewhat more varied than they used to be.

As for supporting characters, those are usually just people who pop up when needed. I need a best friend for an MC and suddenly I see the perfect person. There are two best friends for Alana in my WIP (well actually three.) One of them is actually based on my brother to a point, but only slightly. The other, the girl, is completely made up. I realized Alana needed a female friend and she just presented herself to me, fully formed. The same with the third friend. I needed a character to perform a particular part and this character just stepped up, ready to be put into action. That's how most of my supporting characters are. They seem to show up where I need them in the exact form that I need them to take. It's like they're real people raising their hand and saying, "Over here. I'm the one you need." And surprisingly they are a pretty varied group.

Names are another thing altogether though. They are probably the hardest thing for me to come up with for a character. My MC was pretty easy. It was her name that gave me the idea for the story in the first place, but it took me quite a while to come up with names for the rest of the cast.

I have found that it seems a little easier to make up a name for a character in my fantasy world than it is to find the right name for characters in my "real life" stories. Making up names seems second nature to me, perhaps because I've been doing it for most of my life. My brother and I would make up whole worlds, and I came up with the various names for the races and people we created. So coming up with the perfect fantasy name is usually pretty straightforward. When I have to look up names for my non-fantasy characters (and some of the fantasy ones too) it gets harder.

See I'm a little obsessed with names. I own ten or more baby name books and have for years. My friends thought I was crazy. So did my family. The reason I have the name book is because I'm also obsessed with name meanings. If I'm going to use a name, it needs to really mean something and that meaning usually relates to my story somehow. I have used names for the way they sound before, but not often. One example of that rare occasion is when I needed names for five sisters. I chose names that went well together and fit the girls' personalities more than anything else.

So that's my character creation process. Sometimes it starts with a name. Other times it starts with a need. On occasion it starts with a physical description. But in the end, they all turn into the characters that are just right for their stories.

Where Ideas Come From

Lots of writers talk about where their ideas come from, or even just where ideas come from in general. It's something they're asked about constantly. "Where'd you get the idea for that?" "How did you come up with this?" How writers come up with they're ideas seem to be something everyone is obsessed with. Famous authors often tell us. Stephanie Meyer got the idea for Twilight from a dream. (Not that I like Twilight. I'm just using it as an example.) So where have I gotten the ideas for the stories I write? Today I tell you.

My current WIP is probably my oldest idea. I have to say it's also probably one of the oddest. It started with a name. My MC's name actually. I stumbled across the name somewhere and saw that it (supposedly) meant "from a distant place." (Of course, now when I look up that name, it doesn't mean that, but I swear it did on that day. Weird huh?) From that name's meaning came this idea that has over the past ten years (I was 15 when inspiration struck :) turned into a novel somehow (still not totally sure how it happened. But it did, and I love it.)

Some of my other ideas for stories came from a random phrase, just one line or another. Out of them sprang entire story lines and characters. I haven't gotten a chance to flesh out some of them, but others certainly show potential. Others came from games that my brother and I came up with when we were kids. A couple others (only two) came from dreams that I had (yeah I know. It's a little nuts, but hey, it happened). Still others came from watching movies, reading books, and lots of other places.

I'm hoping that a few of these ideas will turn into more novels. With a lot of work, some of them might. Others I know are destined to stay the little snippets they started out as. If you

re lucky, maybe you'll get to see some of them when I get them published.

Now it's time to go back to resting (I got sick this morning, so I've been resting all day, per the better half). I plan to post another blog on Thursday. See y'all then.

The Scary Truth

So I've been reading Natalie Whipple's blog lately, and a couple of her recent posts about being on submission have kind of, well I don't really know. I suppose the right word might be 'unsettled'. I think they've unsettled me. Or maybe shaken me and my faith in my writing career.

She's been talking about how long she's been on submission (15 months) and how this is affecting her. And something about what she said struck a chord with my very insecure self. You see, I have this massive fear (which I'm sure I share with most would-be writers) that I will get my current WIP all shiny and polished and send it off to agents and no one will pick it up. Or the agents will like it and then not be able to sell it. I've been working on this novel off and on for about ten years now. Granted, I took some long breaks, but has basically been my life for the past two to three years. Finishing it, editing it, having it critiqued, editing it again. And the idea that I might not sell it is down right terrifying. When you've poured so long into something, the idea of it never seeing light is unimaginable and too much of a reality at the same time.

Now don't mistake my meaning here. I know that there are lots of authors out there that spend ten or more years on a single novel and get it sold. But from what I understand, they mostly have books already in print. Until this past week, I hadn't really considered what I was going to do if I couldn't sell my book. Now I can't think of anything else. I've been frantically trying to come up with a contingency plan for a couple days now. The question "What am I gonna do if I can't sell this," keeps swirling around in my head, and I can't seem to escape it.

Of course, all of this seems like doomsaying since I haven't actually started querying agents. What can I say. I've always liked to be ahead of the curve. But kidding aside, I do want to have a backup plan. So I've decided to start working on a second, unrelated novel in hopes that by the time I get ready to start submitting I will have a second option should I run into trouble.

On a slightly unrelated note, I am up to over 68,000 words on my WIP. This is pretty big considering earlier this year I was just hoping to get to 50,000 words. Now, I might (hopefully) hit 70,000 words. That's kind of incredible to me. Sometimes I wonder how I managed to get that many. And sometimes if I'll ever have enough.

Well, I'm off now.