Sunday, November 9, 2008

Delusions of Time

I sat down at 11:00 today to write my Nano quota. I reminded myself of the wisdom of knowing more than I plan to write--of knowing the motives behind character's actions and knowing their pasts, even if their pasts are never, ever going to make it onto the page. Having fuller characters makes every story better. So I decided to write new character profiles today. I had three to do, with thoughts of flushing out Mr. Dark and Deadly from book one. Character profiles, for those of you out there without privileged, insider information into my computer, are three-page forms in which I fill out everything from the character's name, age, height, and birth date to their strengths and weaknesses, their friends and enemies, their hobbies and motives, and their philosophies and family. In essence, I try to capture everything about a character that makes them a person, well-rounded and believable.

It ended up taking nearly an hour per character. It was fun, but damn! That was time-consuming!

So even though I started over six hours ago, I've just finished with Nano. My eyes are beat. My thoughts are sluggish. But the good news: I'm over two days ahead of my Nano schedule!

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Wow! You're soo productive. I did pretty well myself today, but by that I mean I edited and made revisions to 3 and a half chapters. Keep up the good work!