Wednesday, November 23, 2011

11/23/2011 Writing Wednesday - NaNoWriMo Edition!

Hello! Yes it still says 'Nano' edition up top because I'm not sure what magician worked out their 'you'll be done by ___ day' thing on their site, but if my average word count is 2200 and they say I'll be done on the 22nd with 3800 words to go, they are not correct. I will however, be done today, so yay almost celebration times!

I thought I would talk about characters a bit more today. I was talking to my boyfriend about his own story, and he said he needed to develop the characters more before he could dive into it a bit more. I thought about this and realized that each character, whether they're main characters or secondary/support characters should deserve a full background story. If they have a name, and are even a shred important to the story, you should at least know where they're coming from, that way you know their personality, their drive, their motivation for helping/hindering the party of protagonists, everything.

I think I said it before that I feel that my time being a table-top gamer has helped me with this greatly. The characters that I have made have all needed backgrounds in order to be played correctly, during party creation the players all need to know if they're going to be good/evil and why their characters have chosen that path. It's the same for writing, and as I said, it goes for every character. From the normal person who has been given super powers, to the all-powerful one that no one can determine for certain if they're descended from a God or are one. It's backstory that really makes the character, take Superman for instance; he's nigh-invulnerable, does pretty much everything ever and always wins even after being killed. This is a character no one would care about if it weren't for the fact he was raised by the Kents (spoiler alert?) in Smallville, KS and learned the importance of humanity.

Long story short please gives your characters backgrounds, it makes them so much more interesting and helps readers get attached to them. It's the reason why if you choose to kill off someone incredibly important to the main character, or hell, the main character, you get the reactions that you do. It's the reason why the 'big reveal/twist' is so important, because those are the scenes people are going to be talking about for decades to come.

Thanks for stopping by! I'll be back Friday after stuffing myself with delicious turkey. Happy Thanksgiving to all of you who celebrate! I'm thankful to all of you who have made this blog a success and have helped it get over 500 hits. I'll see you all then!

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