I wrote a good deal of a post concerning what I did over the weekend, which was work on my fake language. But once I found myself explaining how various letters were pronounced, I needed to put a stop to that. Suffice it to say, I made up some verbs, but for some reason pronouns are really hard.
I'm not going to spend too much time talking about that, since I'm not even sure if it's going to be used right now. I have a vague idea about a post-apocalyptic dimension where the inhabitants speak this language, but I don't know at this point. They won't be able to say much at the moment anyway, since they don't have any nouns. It's all just, "I want. You go."
What I usually do when I'm trying to plot out a story is to write down what I know. Over and over. So I would have it in OneNote, where I keep all my writing crap. Then I would write it down in my pocket notebook on my lunch break. And then in the binder I keep by my bed for such occasions. And then maybe on my phone.
It's like I'm trying to recreate the original document everywhere, since I don't always have access to it. And it feels like I'm accomplishing something, even though I'm not usually adding anything new.
I bring this up because it's taking a determined conscious effort not to do that for each blog post. Just tell you the same thing over and over. That's no good for anyone. You get bored, and I don't come up with anything to add to my plot.
I have determined that the female member of the friend group is named Andrea. And though she's a bit of a tomboy, she's not going to go by an androgynous nickname, because I hate when fiction does that to show that she's cool and one of the guys. Those of you who know me will see the irony in that.
Since I've thrown a girl into the mix, it seems like there should be some kind of romantic subplot. Or a love triangle, where the two guys vie for her affections. Well, we're definitely not going to do that, because I hate love triangles with a burning passion. It's cheap, manufactured drama. But that doesn't preclude a romantic entanglement between any two of these people.
The fact is, I don't know if I want to do it, just because it's expected. You think, "Two of these people are going to hook up." But what if they just… don't? Is that me taking the easy way out? Or being a prude? Maybe.
Before we really get into whether these people want to do whatever with each other, I should probably give them personalities. I mean, Tony's entire personality is "wanders off." And he really does need to do it more than once, before it all goes to hell for him. I want there to be a situation where the reader is like, "Oh no, he's going to wander off now, isn't he." And then they watch (or read, I guess) helplessly as he does just that. But it's a fine line. You don't want to go all the way to Too Dumb to Live. Because then they're happy when he meets a gruesome end. You don't want that.
That's the next step, folks. Creating characters your readers don’t hate. Stay tuned for next time when we cover the five ways to not make your protagonist an obnoxious prat.
Just kidding, I have no idea what's coming up next time.
See you Friday!
When we gave my oldest son his name, Nathan, we said "we will never shorten it; he will never go by Nate; his cute face will always be Nathan". Almost 17 years later and more often than not, we call him Nate, and I've even heard him introduce himself that way. It just evolved into that. I'm just saying that Andrea is a very pretty name, but when she is hanging out with a bunch of dudes, they are going to definitely call her "Andy". It rolls. It's a guy thing to do. Maybe she won't like it, but how often does that stop fellas from doing it. They'd do it because she didn't like it. I don't think that is fiction. I'd do it. ;)
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