Character Development

Hello all!

I have worked on this every day this week! I am excited about this accomplishment because now I feel that I can get a lot more done from here forward. There's not much left to the semester, but I believe I can get a good chunk written by the time this project is presented. At this point I doubt I will finish the book in less than a semester, showing the past performance does not guarantee certain results (although the story I wrote in about a semester required a lot of editing afterwards and still does).

What did I write this week? A picture came across my social media which showed 45 questions to answer about a character, and if you could answer all of them, then it was a well developed character, While I didn't have the same amount of time to write every day, I did work on these for the characters I've met so far. I've finished the questions (or very nearly have) for Jessie, Alvin, and William. My plans for this week are to work on this every day (at least up through Friday, when my wisdom teeth come out), and finish with character development.

Catching Up: The Last 2 Weeks

Hello all!

The last two weeks have been pretty busy for me, which is why I'm behind on the blog posts. The SAT and one college visit, as well as homecoming, are behind me now with another college visit and my wisdom teeth coming out during the rest of this month.

I got into a bit of a slump in the midst of the past two weeks. That is, writer's block. So, I did some character development and ended up writing an in-depth back story for the twins. I'm not sure how helpful the back story will be to the book, if at all, but it's better to be writing something than staring at a blank page. Besides, you should just get everything down on paper first. It doesn't have to be good; that's why there's editing.

I'm working my way up to writing something every day. I'm beginning to favor Alvin, and I've been writing a lot about him lately. His back story is great and a little cliche, but I really enjoy it. His dad grew up as a mixed kid in 70's-80's New York and his mom grew up traditionally Chinese and a fire elemental in San Francisco. They met in college and decided to have a farm together after they got married where they lived off everything the grew. So, Alvin and Jessie grew up on a farm and loved the animals and being with nature, etc., but they wanted to go to the city for college, so they did. They got in some trouble in college, though, because even though they loved the city it still had problems and they wanted to fix them so, being college students in an unfamiliar city, they did something stupid and tried to fight crime with their nonhuman abilities. Well, turns out nonhumans have gangs too. That's how they met Genesis, and she got them out of trouble and helped them to find better ways of helping the city. Alvin runs a food bank that grows the food they give out to people so that everyone has access to healthy food, and on the weekends he volunteers at animal shelters.

It's hard as a writer to pick the stories worth telling. Alvin's is a great one, but I'm not sure if his should be the main one for this book. But you also have to remember that everyone is the main character of their own story. They don't know that they're side characters in the story being told; they have their own motives and reasons for doing things that aren't just to advance the plot. You have to think about the kind of person they are and what they would do in a situation. That's why character development is important: you have to get inside their heads and understand why they do the things they do.

This week I'm going to try to write every day. I feel very behind and very stressed out in general, not just this project but school is nuts right now. There's something about October and November that makes me feel rushed and behind. So, I will try my best to get as much as I can done this week.

Hectic Week= Not Much Done

The pageant is over and I am still working on catching up on sleep. I got about two pages written on Friday in class of the book and that is about all I have accomplished this week for the project. I really need to step my game up because if I only write during class I will not finish by the end of the semester. I'm still not sure where this story is going; everyone has left Genesis's apartment except for Mark the human and they're talking about life and what it means to be human. Something will have to happen soon or the reader will get bored. Hell, I'll get bored.

So this week I plan on coming up with some sort of "This is how much I need to write this week/each day so that I can be done in time" thing. I saw something on Facebook or tumblr (some social media website) that was "how to push past the bs and write that novel" as well as one for editing, something that I need for this project and the stories I've already written. I would add a link, but there's plenty of cursing so this is basically it:

1. Write 5 days a week
2. Write 350 words per day
3. Embrace today
4. Write through fear and doubt
5. Give yourself permission to suck

And for editing,

1. Edit 5 days a week
2. Edit 5 pages a day
3. Rewrite at a rate of 350 words/day
4. Diagnose and repair
5. Slow and steady wins the race

I'm not sure if I want to start out writing this much per day with my schedule, but I think I'll try my best to work up to this because these are good habits for me to have since I have so many stories going on.