Character Ideas: Part II

This week, I'll tell you where I got the idea for Raelin.

I actually kind of hate the story of where I got the idea for Raelin because it's a little similar to the story of another author of a rather well known set of books about sparkly undead creatures. (Yes. I'm being vague on purpose.) If that doesn't tell you where I got the idea, well. I don't know. Keep reading. Actually, keep reading anyway.

So the idea for Raelin came to me (cringe) in a dream. This is, in fact, the only time in my entire life this has ever happened. Which is a little odd since I have rather vivid and strange dreams that I remember long after I've had them (I still remember dreams I had when I was 10). Despite my propensity for strange dreams, I had never gotten a story idea from one. Until I dreamed about Raelin.

Since the dream was rather different than the ultimate story, I'll go ahead and tell you about it. In the dream there was a girl who kept having visions about another girl she was searching for. She was accompanied on this search by a guy that she was both annoyed with and attracted to. The majority of the dream took place in a tavern where the girl and her guy companion were being attacked by people who didn't want them to find the person they were seeking. There were green laser beams and over turned tables involved. After a while, I woke up.

I'm not sure, but I think I immediately knew that I could use this dream as a starting point for a story. It was obviously going to be from the searching girl's perspective. A lot of the details changed, and in the final story there are no green laser beams. But the bones of the story are there.

That is I got the idea for Raelin. She literally came to me in a dream.

Next week I'll talk about where I get ideas for non-MCs, like love interests and minor characters.

Listy Wednesdays: Places to Go

This week I'm going to get a little personal in the list and give you a list of places I want to visit. I'm not sure how long it will be, so we'll see when it's done. As usual, in no particular order, just as I thought of them.

1. London
2. England in general
3. Ireland
4. Italy (again)
5. Greece
6. Spain
7. Paris (mostly just the Louvre)
8. Saint Petersburg, Russia
9. Australia
10. South Africa
11. Jerusalem
12. Japan
13. India
14. Jamaica
15. The Caribbean in general
16. Los Angeles
17. San Fransico
18. Washington D.C.
19. New York City
20. Florida
21. Hawaii
22. Alaska
23. Cancun
24. Chile
25. Brazil

Oh look. I actually made it to 25. Guess it's a good thing I mixed cities and countries together into a single list. ;)

What's Going On with My Draft

This past week I don't think I got as much written as usual. Once more my wrists were bothering me, so writing was difficult. Still, I got a little done each day. My word count is now at 23k. That's 4k words last week. Not bad for bad wrists.

I'm deep into the middle of the book at this point, which is really my least favorite part. Although, currently I'm working on one of my favorite moments between my MC and her mother. It's actually the midpoint of the novel, so a new major revelation is uncovered. Actually, two. One that changes my MC's understanding of her life and one that changes her understanding of the mystery she's working to solve. I can only hope that it comes out as well as I hope it does.

I'm still not utterly in love with the story as a whole, but I'm feeling a little better about it this draft than I was with the first. I think finding Raelin's voice really helped. I'm still worried about the overall plot, but for the most part, the story feels pretty good at this point. We'll see if I still feel that way next week.

Character Ideas Part I

I'm not sure if I've written about this before or not, so I'm going to write about how I come up with ideas for my characters, both main and supporting. I think this is going to be a series of posts, so stay tuned for each week to see how I came up with various characters.

My MC ideas come from a variety of places, though usually it's from something having to do with the story idea itself. Every once in a while I'll get an idea for a character without a story attached, but most of the time the two are inexorably linked.

The idea for Alana actually came from her name. Well sort of. Back before I even had the idea for Alana, I was looking through a name book (something I do quite often. I have a thing about names). While I was browsing, I came across a name that meant "from a distant place," or something along those lines. I remember seeing that and thinking that that would be an interesting story. A story about a character who got taken to a distant land and their name meant "from a distant place."

This sparked idea after idea, and I eventually wound up with the original plot line for what would become Alana's story. Now, obviously Alana doesn't mean "from a distant place" and I'm not even sure how I got to that name, since I could have sworn at the time it was the name I saw. But that doesn't matter. The key was that this name's meaning got me thinking and then suddenly I had a character and the bones of a story to go with her.

Next week I'll post about how I came up with Raelin.

Listy Wednesdays: Literary Characters

This week you get a list of my favorite literary characters. I only came up with 20 this week. As always, they are in no particular order.

1. Meliara Astiar from Crown Duel
2. Eowyn from The Two Towers and the Return of the King
3. Faramir from The Two Towers and the Return of the King
4. Tris from the Divergent Trilogy
5. Keladry of Mindelan from The Protector of the Small Quartet
6. Cinder from the Lunar Chronicles series
7. Cress from the Lunar Chronicles series
8. Percy Jackson from the Percy Jackson and the Olympians and the Heros of Olympus Series
9. Annabeth Chase from the Percy Jackson and the Olympians and the Heros of Olympus Series
10. Trisana Chandler from the Circle of Magic and the Circle Opens Quartets
11. Elizabeth Bennet from Pride and Prejudice
12. Cassia from the Matched trilogy
13. Cat from the Heist Society series
14. Tally from the Uglies trilogy
15. Four from the Divergent trilogy
16. Briar Moss from the Circle of Magic and the Circle Opens Quartets
17. Hermione Granger from the Harry Potter series
18. Laurie Holbrook from the Lauren Holbrook Series
19. Eff from The Thirteenth Child
20. June Iparis from the Legend trilogy

Drafting Progress

I didn't get as much written this past week because my hands were acting up. The second draft of First Sight is now at just over 19k words. Not terrible, but not necessarily great.

My goal most days is to get at least one full scene done. If I can, I try to do more like 1.5, but I can't always do that. It depends on how much new material I'm adding in each scene. This past week I added quite a bit to one scene and completely changed the way it ended. When that happens, I don't get as many scenes done, since I've just added to the one I was working on.

I think that's my favorite part of redrafting is finding the places where I can make the story better by adding to it or changing a few things. It's also the hardest part, but it makes it worth it.

World Building Issues

As I've been working on First Sight, I've discovered some issues with my original world-building.

When I first started writing the book, I really wanted to set it in a world that was quite different from the world of Alana's book. Alana's world is small and very uniform, to a point. There's not by way of ethnic or cultural diversity. It's just the nature of the story.

Knowing that, I really wanted First Sight to be different. I wanted it to be a world where lots of ethinicities mixed together in a big melting pot of a city (since most of the story is set in a city). I wanted to have characters from different ethnic background mixing freely and to see lots of different types of people. So that's what I started with.

As I kept working on and thinking about the story though, I realized something. The way the plot works is highly dependent on my characters living in a country that is fairly secluded from the rest of their world. Suddenly I had a problem. How do I have an ethnically diverse yet highly secluded setting? I realized that I don't really think it's possible to have both?

So what's a girl to do? I'm still working on the story. I think I've come up with a solution, but sometimes it's hard to let go of one's original ideas. Still, I know I'll come up with something. I just haven't quite figured it out yet. One thing is for sure. I really want something that's diverse. I just have to figure out how to achieve that and to achieve the goals of the story in a way that's actually believable.

It's things like this that make me love world building.

Listy Wednesdays: Movies

Today I'm going to list a bunch of my favorite movies. They come from all different genres and, as usual, are in no particular order.

1. Pride & Prejudice
2. The Avengers
3. The Proposal
4. Lord of the Rings: Return of the King
5. Captain America: The Winter Soldier
6. Beauty and the Beast
7. Tangled
8. Frozen
9. Lord of the Rings: Fellowship of the Ring
10. Pirates of the Caribbean: Cures of the Black Pearl
11. Star Wars Episode IV: A New Hope
12. 27 Dresses
13. Letters to Juliet
14. Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers
15. Star Wars Episode VI: Return of the Jedi
16. Star Trek (2009)
17. Iron Man 3
18. Miss Congeniality
19. You've Got Mail
20. Ever After
21. Mulan
22. Inception
23. The Dark Knight Rises
24. The Princess Bride
25. The Hobbit (both of the two that are out are tied)

Drafting

I'm still working on the draft of First Sight. The going is slow, but steady. I've been able to write a little over 17k words on this draft. Over the course of typing, I've actually added about 4k words. Which is good because the original draft of the novel is just over 40k words. That's really short, I know. Hence why I'm happy about the expansion.

That's one thing I've noticed about my writing that I'm interested to see if it will carry over into the first draft of whatever I write next. I write short first drafts. The first draft of Alana was only a little over 66k words. While this is still technically an acceptable length for a YA fantasy novel, it's on the short side. Most fall well into the 75k+ range, even for first novels.

So with both the first drafts of my two novels being on the short side, that makes me wonder if my next novel's first draft will also be on the short side. Perhaps it won't be, since I seem to incorporate the things I learn each time I write something new. Still, I have noticed that I tend to write economically and then come back and add more later on. This just seems to work for me. I get the bones down and then come back and flesh it out later on.

What about you? Do you tend to write long and edit down later or write short and add more later?

Emotional Writing

One of the biggest things I've struggled with as a writer is allowing my characters to show their emotions. It's something that I am continually working on. Probably because emotions aren't exactly my strong suite, in writing or in real life.

I've never been the best at expressing how I feel. I'm what some people call a stuffer and others call a bottler. Something happens and I take everything I'm feeling, good or bad, and I shove it down inside where people can't see it. I try very hard to make sure people don't see when I'm upset or mad or annoyed or anything. I also try very hard to simply not feel those things. I'm a bit weird like that. Showing or feeling emotion wasn't terribly highly encouraged in my family, so I just learned to not do it.

The problem is that this has made it hard for me to get emotional in my writing. I've been told that sometimes my writing comes off as too detached. This is particularly problematic since I tend to write in first person an that means you should be privy to all my character's thoughts and emotions.

I'm working on it though. Hopefully as I work with critique partners I can conquer this terrible detachment and get to the heart of my characters.