In Between the Murders

Here we are at the tail end of Camp NaNo: April Edition. I took a nice break from my vampire novel and wrote something completely different. I set myself a nice, easy little goal of 2,000 words, just to get me writing, not to stress me out. I ended up with over 4,000 words. A tiny victory.

It was just a little half-baked story about time travel, but it did make me realize something important. I had the basic setup in place, and I had an idea for something that would happen, you know, later. Like, there would be other things, and I would build character relationships naturally over the course of these things. And then when I got to the later thing, it would be more… not just sensical, but more satisfying. Like we earned it. But I got bored and skipped over all the in-between things, and then the big scene was just lacking in… stuff.

Making Friends

Revision, or rather, rewriting of Cold Blooded continues. Yeah, this is what I'm going to be talking about all the time for the foreseeable future, so buckle up, buttercup.

A new hurdle has presented itself, in that I need to know how to make friends. That is, I need to characters to become friends within the next, say, 20,000 words. Which, now that I say it, is a lot of words, and I should be fine. But there's still the how. I can't make friends in real life, how am I supposed to make them in fiction? Basically, Des, my main character, has recently met another character, and they need to reach a certain level of trust by the Midpoint.

But, like I said, I have about 20,000 words to get there. So let's focus on the here and now. I'm currently writing a scene in which the ice cream shop is featured on an episode of some show on an ersatz Food Network. To be honest, I don't know if this part is going to make it to the final cut, but I'm going to act like it is until that decision is made.

Until We Have Faces

I nearly forgot to write a post this week, as my days off have been spent playing with larger scale murder than usual. I just got the game Plague Inc: Evolved on my computer and I'm trying to wipe out humanity with fungal spores. Mankind is surprisingly resilient.

So anyway, writing and stuff.

Camp NaNoWriMo starts on Monday. I'm super excited. Yeah, I realize I've been struggling with this dumb story for months, but I'm starting to feel it again. I've got my main character back in my head. He had become kind of nebulous and faceless (I’ll get into that in a second) and it was hard to actually get him to be in the scenes. But he has coalesced back into a solid form, and is behaving like a human (or nearly human) again.

The Name Maketh the Man

I'm working on stuff, I swear. I'm just not making a ton of progress that would be exciting to hear about.

I've done a little bit on plot stuff since last time, mostly I've been figuring out character stuff. Like giving them names. And faces.

So in my rough draft of Cold Blooded, I gave the serial killer a name, but it only mentioned once, kind of after the fact, and I kept forgetting what it was. So I've given him a new name and started to figure out his place in the story.

The vampire hunter never got a name at all. Until now. And just by giving him a name, I've started to understand his background, and where he's coming from. It's like a jigsaw puzzle. It's all a big mess of pieces, but once you snap a couple into place, you start to see where the others go around it.

Something to Believe In

I have found religion.

Okay, well, not me, but my character. Andrea. I had all these little bits and pieces about her, and they suddenly all made sense when I gave her a Christian upbringing. Like, there was something in her backstory that, well, technically didn't happen, but it almost did, and she'd just as soon forget about the whole thing. I was never quite sure why. Whether it happened or didn't, it wasn't wrong. Unless you've got some traditional values. Also, this kind of explains why she is one of six children. Not to say that Christians have the monopoly on large families, it just seems like it's more common.

This is a new thing for me. I've been writing NaNo novels since 2010, and a good handful of short stories before and after that. And I don't think I've ever had a main character (or a character who was in more than a scene or two) who was religious. It's going to be an interesting thing to write. I'll try not to offend anybody, but I make no promises.

This revelation has made me realize that my three characters fall on a spectrum of Purity vs. Corruption.

Oh, the Places You'll Go

This was one of those days where I wrote a good chunk of a post, before deciding it was no good and starting over. I also had to make time for Lego Jurassic Park and at least two naps, and well, here we are.

I have a week left before Camp NaNo begins. Which means I need to get my ass in gear, regarding an outline. Now, I've determined that the first chapter or so should establish these characters on their road trip. They'll make stops, fight over snacks and music, and just… do things young 20-somethings do.

Characters and Creepiness

NaNoWriMo 2017 is over. I did not reach 50,000 words. There's a first time for everything.

But along the way, I did have some fun, and I learned some things. We have a lot to go over today, which should be a nice change from my recent rushed posts that trended a little on the short side.

First off, I never did quite pin down Andrea's personality. I went on a whole quest to find her a soundtrack, or at least a theme song. I couldn't find anything. And the music is important because it's how I get into a character's head. It's something they can relate to, and I can understand, so I know how they feel about things. Why don't I just imagine how they feel and cut out the musical middleman? Sorry, I don't work that way.

Open Doors

So it has come to this.

The Waffle House.

Now, I don't know a lot about Waffle House. We don't have them here. What I do know is they never close. Even in the face of natural disaster, if they can be open, they will be open.

I also know that the Waffle House is a nexus between dimensions.

Unexpectedly Jentacular

All right, this post is going up super late, but here it is. It's been crazy busy lately, with not a lot of exciting progress on the writing front.

I've moved beyond the timeline splitting part of the story, and our heroes have continued on, hoping to make it to that all important something in California. Whatever it is. They would have just kept driving if they could, not stopping for a second. But, well, the limitations of modern machinery. So they have to stop for gas.

And at first, everything seems okay, like all the weird shit is behind them.

The Road Ahead

I had an idea, recently, about naming chapters or sections in my NaNo novel after road features. I picture, in a print version, at the beginning of each section is an image of a road sign, and then the applicable title.  Like this:

So the bit with the diverging timeline would be called Fork Ahead. And Roundabout, pictured above, has something to do with a time loop. Those are the only ones I'm sure of at the moment. As though I'm ever sure of anything.

Picking Up Strays

I've been thinking about additional characters. What sort of interesting folks are our three heroes going to come across? Will any of them tag along for the ride?

My reason behind this idea? Well, I've been listening to a lot of Fall Out Boy lately, for some reason. And so all these bits and pieces of songs keep popping up in my head and giving me ideas. I'm sure I've mentioned it before, but music is a huge inspiration for me, for writing and otherwise. The inspiration for the current idea? This:

"I don't know where you're going but do you got room for one more troubled soul?

I don't know where I'm going but I don't think I'm coming home"

- Alone Together

Some New Information, Maybe?

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."

Moving On

I was going to write this post about another little thing I realized about my villain, but I'm not going to do that, because it's not terribly exciting. So here's where I'm at. I've created this very dramatic relationship between these two characters, which is going to make for a very dramatic story. And also a very boring story. They say you should write the kind of books you want to read. I wouldn't want to read this. It's a domestic drama set in space. It's not fun. I want to write something fun.

"So make it fun," you might say.

That would be the ideal, but sometimes stories go into a tailspin of mediocrity and it's hard for me to pull them out of it. They just get worse and worse until they crash in an explosion of disappointment and I shove them in a drawer. Sometimes my attempts at writing better just makes the result worse. Of course, it's also possible that I've just learned more, so now I can see how bad it is, but the writing itself remains the same.

I don't think I'll be writing the space story for NaNoWriMo. From what I have, my characters are kind of interesting and have some potential, but I can't slog through 50,000 words of the inevitably boring plot right now. I might come back to it later, maybe write a shorter story. Something where I don't need to add chapters of filler just to meet the word goal.

Now, you might say, "But I thought it sounded like a great plot." And maybe it is. If you're into family drama. I want an exciting, fun story with adventures and explosions. But the corner I've plotted myself into precludes that. Now everyone has to deal with their emotions and grief and try to find a way to move forward. It’s super dramatic, and super boring to me.

So now I have a month and a half to figure out something better, something more exciting. Stay tuned, I guess?

I'll see you Tuesday.

Conflicting Ideas

My villain character creation is by no means complete, but I think I have a good idea of what kind of a person she is. I understand her reasoning. The question that is now arising is what is she going to do about it? What actions is she going to take against the protagonist?

Now I know the relationship between the two of them. They were basically family once. Now everything's gone and broken. How far is she going to go? Does she want him miserable, or destroyed?

Where Do Space Babies Come From?

The quest for Elsbeth's backstory continues, and the other day, I asked myself, "Self, what did happen to the boy's father?" The boy of course being her son, who still doesn't have a name. I think I thought of something, but then forgot it immediately.

Anyway.

My initial thought, a month ago, was that family dynamics are just different in space. But then Tycho, the protagonist, had both parents and lost them both, collectively, together. Implying a typical family arrangement.

So the question returned. What happened to the boy's father? He can't be dead, because there's a limit on how much tragedy I'll dole out per person. Yes, even I have limits.

Staying on Task

Well, here we are again. And I'm woefully unprepared, as usual.

I keep coming up with all this other stuff for the space story. The protagonist has appeared, complete with a name for once, but I keep pushing all that aside. Because I have to finish Elsbeth. I have to make her a real person. This is what usually happens, and why I end up with shallow characters. I get distracted by shinier parts of the story, and abandon the boring details.

So here I am, wondering how Fomalhaut and Aldebaran¹ figure into this story, with this ship endlessly coasting among the stars, but I have to stay here and decide on my antagonist's political views. And religion. And what word or phrase she uses a lot.

I had one goal. Make one good, solid character. And my god, is that hard.

Family Comes First

So here I am, trying to complete Elsbeth as a character, trying to figure out all these stupid little details. But then I stepped away from all these questions and asked something that might actually matter: What kind of a mother was she?

I did a little backstory freewriting, and I learned some things. The most important of which was that the protagonist of this tale was orphaned at the age of 12, and since he was her son's best friend, Elsbeth took him in. He became like another son to her. And her boys always had each other's backs. Until they didn't.

Grinding Gears

The quest for character creation continues. Today we're going to talk about those little things that people hate: pet peeves. Now, I'm only going to say that phrase once, because I hate it, for some reason. I think that's one of those things that people call "ironic" but is actually something else.

Anyway, I think dislikes are just as interesting as likes. What drives a person to hate something? Why do those things bother them? Are they like me, in that they just dislike the thing and don't have or remember a reason behind it? Did someone once do or say the thing, it all went bad, and now that experience has ruined the thing for them forever?

In Space, No One Can Hear You Mispronounce Their Name

I'm going to talk about names. Weird names, specifically.

I have a lot of opinions on weird names. They tend to crop up in sci-fi and fantasy, and sometimes, they're terrible. If I'm considering reading a book, I will turn right around if the characters have stupid names. I get a newsletter or whatever for free or cheap e-books, and I have seen some awful names. As in, they took a perfectly normal name threw it in a blender and hit puree. They were trying to make something exotic, probably, but you can still tell what name they started with.

Also, names that are unpronounceable. I narrate everything in my head, so it's important that my brain can articulate a name. And if everyone in a story has weird, unpronounceable names, especially if any of them are similar to each other, I'm going to continually forget who is who. That's why I haven't read The Kalevala yet. It's Finnish mythology, which I'd like to know more about, but Lemminkäinen is the only name I can ever seem to remember.

It Took Everything to Get Me Here

I keep finding myself getting distracted from my task of creating a complete character. "What about the world-building?" I ask myself. "What about the soundtrack?" I mean really, what kind of music does a future space faring society listen to? Probably something electronic and computer generated. Which is unfortunate for me, as I have a longstanding hatred of electronic music. Except this, for some reason.

Anyway, I have all these questions I'm supposed to be answering for this character. Here's a few as an example:

• What are their biggest secrets?
• What makes them laugh out loud?
• What is their best childhood memory?
• Do they have a natural talent for something?