Category: fiction

What I’ve Learned: Creating a Character Sketch

For the longest time, I have been a discovery writer. I’ll have a vague idea of a plot and a vague idea of a character, sometimes a name and sometimes not, and then I will discovery write. At least that’s how I used to write.

For several years, my writing process was that way. It has been that way for several projects as well, where the characters show me who they are as I write their story.

Back when I was in school for my Bachelor’s, I was asked to create a character sketch before I even wrote the work the character was going to be in. I’ve tried it a few more times since then, for a few new projects.

Here’s a few things I’ve learned from that experience:

A Character Sketch can show you a character’s past.

Part of the character sketch I had to make for the class I was in involved making up a past for the character. While the story was loosely based off an idea I had, I didn’t have a main character for a while, so I had no idea what her past would be. It was interesting to figure out the MC’s motives of why she became who she was and what led her down the path to being the main character.

A Character Sketch can help map out the plot.

Originally, the plot was way different for the short story. The main character was meaner, bribing people to make herself feel better, a little sweet and sour action. In the character sketch, I realized the turning point in the story would be when the main character faced something she had never faced before. That helped me both build the character and build the plot.

A Character Sketch can make a character feel more real

Usually about half of the sketch doesn’t really end up in the written work explicitly.

While most of the sketch doesn’t appear, it does help to know what makes your character tick and by extension, how they would react to the world around them. An example is in the piece I wrote for my short story class. My main character is in the job she’s in because her grandmother passed away and it affected her.

The whole character sketch may not be helpful for the reader, but it does help the writer get a more concrete feel for the people they create.

I’m not sure if I’ll keep the process of creating a character sketch first. I like to write my first drafts by discovery, with loose enough outlines so my characters can surprise me. Maybe in second drafts, or on a deadline for shorter works, I might, but we shall see.

Every project is different, but I do enjoy trying new things.

 

What I’ve Learned and Week Three Updates

This November has been a whirlwind of emotions and words. This is not the best November I’ve ever done (I have done crazy word counts in previous years somewhere between 90K and 100K), but it is the most consistent.

I made myself a promise this year to hit the minimum of 1,667 words every day and update every day to make sure I get all the badges on the website. With all of the allegations and drama over on the website now, it seems a little less important now, but I still want that success for myself.

In the meantime, for the rest of November, I’m going to keep writing and forming my own habits. That’s what this month is about first and foremost, finding the magic of a new novel and documenting how long it takes me to get words down and write a book with minimal distractions.

Here’s how I did in week 3:

Day 15: 2311 in 1 hour and 10 minutes

Day 16: 1885 in 45 minutes

Day 17: 1767 in 45 minutes

Day 18: 1704 in 37 minutes

Day 19: 1730 in 45 minutes

Day 20: 1869 in 45 minutes

Day 21 1724 in 40 minutes

Monthly Total: 42,681

Here’s a few takeaways I’ve picked up over the last week.

An outline is crucial

Before the month started, I wrote an outline for the novel. My writing journey has grown and evolved from when I first started at 13 and each project is different, but for the last few years (especially since I’ve been working on an ever evolving series or two), I haven’t been using outlines, I’ve been letting the work surprise me.

For this year, working on a brand new project (for the first time in almost two years), I decided I needed an outline, so from start to finish I wrote down an outline of what I wanted to happen and loosely when.

So far this month, I’ve gone off outline a few times with the first time being super uncomfortable and the next few times feeling more comfortable. My outline is not in the best order, but it helps to know that I can play around with where things are.

For example, my main character wasn’t supposed to interact with her best friend until the 10th plot point in my outline, but there was the perfect place to introduce her earlier so I did. Another example, as I’ve been writing, I’ve realized my main character was too passive, so I added in a scene where she wasn’t so passive.

That’s probably why it took me 18 days to get through the first page (landscape) of my outline.

Also, post-its have been the perfect tool to get through the day and list a few plot points I want to hit, but not be too overwhelmed by the whole outline.

It is entirely possible to write when you think you don’t have time.

There was almost a day this week that I didn’t write at all. I had a busy day with social things and a hectic morning, so I figured I simply wouldn’t write. The timing was weird, I couldn’t sneak away and put a few words down, I was drained and exhausted. I could and did make every excuse, but ultimately, before I went to bed that night, reason kicked in and kicked my butt.

I almost lost a near 300 day streak of writing because I “didn’t feel like it”. I would have lost par of 1,667 daily and my motivation if I had a zero day. It would have been harder to get back into the story that the interest was already flagging on because I’m getting into the muddy middle.

I wrote that night, I snuck in 45 minutes right before midnight and while it was hard to get started, I made it happen. I couldn’t be happier with the results.

There have been several days where starting to write has been difficult, but by the time I reach my daily goal I don’t want to stop.

Getting started has been the hardest part.

Self made deadlines are the best ones to break

One of my other goals this month, outside of writing a novel, has been to blog regularly and post over on Medium and Substack. I have a weekly schedule of when and where I want to post, but similar to the story above, the day was not conducive to any kind of creative work and it just so happened to be when a post was due.

Thankfully, the post was mostly complete, it just needed a few last minute edits. I beat myself up over having a “late post”, but overall the more I thought about it, the more I accepted that sometimes posts will be late or off by a day. The important thing is that I did post and I did keep up my streak. The important thing is I’m getting content out there.

November is for words, December (and beyond) is for editing

This year, my typing skills aren’t quite up to snuff. Currently, I have acrylic nails that are beautiful, but quite dangerous when typing. Autocorrect and acrylic nails are a great combination when it comes to writing a novel, so there are several instances where at the beginning of the month I was erasing and cursing and annoyed, but now I just roll with it.

Now, for ease of time and storytelling, I simply put the offending word (or the word I wanted) in parentheses and keep moving forward. I can edit later, now I’m telling myself the story and getting through my outline.

See you next week!

 

Wednesday Works: The Mirror

She had lived in the old house for as long as she could remember. Her parents had lived in it even longer, and so had their parents and so on and so forth. If she did the math right it was her great x7 grandfather who had built the house for his wife. She had died before it was finished, but he still built it exactly as she had wanted it.

Over the years, family members had added on and changed, but the one thing that remained unchanged was the foyer. The front door had been repainted too many times to count, one over the other, and each morning more multicolored paint chips fell onto the porch. The carpet had been torn up, tacked form, replaced with wood, back to carpet. The rugs needed to be replaced.

The one thing that didn’t change in the foyer was the furniture. A small table by the front door where the lot of the family placed their things when they came home. She still had the scar from where she had smacked into the corner of the table when she was 2 and a 1/2. She still placed her keys there when she came home.

A fancy China cabinet stood across from the front door, taking up space and showing off their fancy China from the civil war era. The China had long been a topic of discussion, from when it was new, to the last 50 years or so when they toppled over and no one could figure out how to open the cabinet and fix them without shattering them. They had simply stayed that way for years.

By far, her favorite was the ornate mirror that hung on the wall near the stairs. It had been there since the very beginning. All her ancestors had used it to catch their last looks before leaving the house.

She used it then to catch her last look before heading out on a date. He would be there any minute.

“You gonna go out looking like a painted up whore?” The reflection of her great great great grandfather’s ghost appeared in the mirror behind her.

In the next instant, her great great great grandmother appeared next to him in the reflection. “Give her a break, Clem,” she said with a reassuring hand on his ghostly shoulder. “That’s the style these days.”

“Thank you, Grammy Charlotte,” She said as the doorbell rang. “You all be good tonight and don’t let Louis argue too much about the china. Nothing can be done yet.”

Grammy Charlotte rolled her eyes. “That man and his damn china.”

November Results and December Goals

Thank Goodness November is finally over. I usually love November for the intense joy of writing, but this November has kicked my butt in too many ways. I’m excited we’re now in December, a brand new month, with brand new goals, but that also means the year is wrapping up. Time to get my butt in gear and finish the year strong.

Here’s how I did in my goals.

November Results

NaNoWriMo

NaNoWriMo could have gone better this year. With oral surgery, a wedding to attend, antibiotics, cough medicine and everything else that went on this month, it was a struggle to find the time and the energy to sit down and write words. At one point, I was even close to 10K behind, but I slowly started to crawl my way back and try to make a dent in the actual novel I should be working on and not all my side projects. Thankfully, the last day of the month, I crossed the finish line on multiple projects and reached the 50K mark.

Continue Edits

This month, edits were stop and go. There were a few days where I was consistent in editing, and then there were more days where I wasn’t consistent at all. Unfortunately there were a lot of zeros on my spreadsheet for editing, but I expected that with it being NaNoWriMo and all. Drafting is definitely quicker than editing and usually gives me more words. But I did learn a decent trick over the last few weeks of editing backwards and keeping the story fresh in my head. Hopefully it helps me edit more words as we roll into December.

One Short Story/Finish a Short Story

This month, I worked a little bit on everything. I started a new short story and added that to my ever-growing list of short stories for the year. I finished two short stories this month and nearly caught up in my short story per month quota. By the end of the year, I hope to have 12 short stories that I can edit next year and see where they end up.

NYC Midnight’s 250 Microfiction Competition

The NYC Midnight Microfiction challenge went well. I was able to throw it together in a few hours, right in the heat of COVID and more than enough cough medicine to kill a horse. The genre was romantic comedy and I hope I caught enough romance and comedy to make it shine in only 250 words. Now I wait for the results.

Word Count: 50,721

Toward the end of October, I fell down my stairs and had to nurse that back to health with a metric ton of Ibuprofen and Tylenol. Then the first week of November I had oral surgery and had a tooth removed and had to take antibiotics and narcotics (which always make me queasy), then finally the week after that, COVID finally caught up with me and kicked my ass. Toward the end of the month, when I finally started to feel like myself again after a few days off, I managed to catch up on all my projects for the month. I really found the community of writers in my local area which helped me find the final push I needed to get some things done.

For the first time, I published some of my microfiction to Medium. You can read it and follow me here.

December Goals

One Short Story

I already have my idea for the short story in December. I already have a good portion of the short story from November mapped out. I’m hoping to work on both in the next month and finish my goal of 12 short stories this year strong. It’s been a really good year for short stories and I’m looking forward to adding another story to my ever-growing list.

Continue Edits

Edits are picking up again after NaNoWriMo and now that I have a direction, I’m ready to get moving and make as much progress as I can before the end of the year. I’m thinking if I spend at least thirty minutes a day doing some kind of editing, I’ll have more than I started with at the beginning of the month.

Poetry

On a whim, I signed up for a poetry competition. I’ve been looking for more publishing opportunities, and that will hopefully include poetry one of these days. The goal for the competition is one poem a day for 21 days. Either way, if I manage to get a few poems down, it’s more than what I started with at the end of the month.

What goal are you trying to wrap up by the end of the year?

March Results and April Goals

March has been absolutely crazy, with a lot of weird and bad news. It seemed like everything seemed to consipire against me completing my goals and making progress on anything really. The whole month of March was not a good writing month, or even a good school month, and I felt like I was just spinning my wheels and waiting for the next setback.

March Results

Write One Short Story

The short story started out so well at the beginning of the month. Then, I had my first non-writing day in 277 days. After that, the short story seemed to flounder and then stay on the back burner for school and work and anything and everything else.

Finish My 2021 NaNoWriMo Project

It wasn’t in the cards this month to finish my 2021 NaNoWriMo Project. With hectic schedules, more in-depth homework assignments and new stressors, it just wasn’t the month to finish anything. I’m hoping to take a break and come back to it fresh in the next couple months.

Attend a Writing Conference Online

This goal is actually one I have been able to somewhat complete. While I didn’t actually attend any of the live conference, I am able to watch the recordings and gain the knowledge from them. I am excited to gain more knowledge from this conference and learn all I can.

In March, I read three books that I honestly did not think would be my cup of tea, but pleasantly surprised me. I didn’t really think I would like spicy adult romances with smut in 90% of the chapters, but the story sucked me in and I couldn’t put it down. Unfortunately, it adversely affected my writing time, so I aim to find a balance over the next few months.

March was quite a tough month. I got some bad news regarding a beloved family pet, Hazel, and the last bit of the month was touch and go as far as everything goes. She turns 14 today, and I am hoping to give her the best birthday ever. Please, if any of you have pets, give them a nice cuddle or a treat and show them you love them.

Hazel

Word Count: 3,509

April Goals

Finish/Write One Short Story

I have to say, I really enjoyed the short story I was writing for March before everything went to pot. It is a really strong idea and I want to see it done, and possibly work on the second half of the story in April. I’m hoping to get back into my routine of writing daily again, especially since March was so hectic and not a good writing month at all.

Camp NaNoWriMo

This year, for Camp NaNoWriMo, I’m not planning on working on one project, but multiple. A short story, a memoir or two, poetry, edits. Anything and everything, I am counting toward Camp NaNoWriMo, and I’m hoping to have some fun with it.

Poetry

April is National Poetry Month, and I’m hoping to get a small piece of poetry written every day to encourage the habit of writing every day again. Who knows? Some of it might even be half decent.

NYC Midnight’s 100 Word Microfiction Challenge

I’ve signed up for the Challenge and I’m really hoping that at 100 words I can find some time to get it done between homework and all of the other creative projects I have going on. Here’s hoping I can make it happen.

I’m really hoping April is a better month than March was, for multiple reasons.