Character Development

Aedan is back to writing

Please don’t think I am writing from any position of real experience since I’m still poking around with the idea of writing my first novel. The fact is that like most anybody starting down this road, I’ve never had anything beyond editorial letters published. However, the little experience I do have tells me there is nothing more important than properly developing a character.

Solid and deep characters present tons of material to write about and perhaps more importantly, provide background and context to assist in deciding how a character will react when the story takes a turn you didn’t expect.  The story heading off into uncharted waters was something that caught me by surprise when I first set out to write a novel nearly 2 years ago. That was when I realized the importance of taking the time to do an extensive character development despite initially thinking the work sheets I’ve seen were just fun exercises.

Currently, I am working to a development sheet that has grown over time from both my own experience and from that of others.

If you would like a copy of this form, you may download it here:  Comprehensive Character Attribute Form

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Sticks in the Fire

Too many sticks in the fire

Sticks in the fire.  I suppose one might think of marshmallows and fun evenings when they hear those words. Then some of us might feel the weight of being overwhelmed when those words are muttered.  I’ll raise my hand to be included in the latter group.

Creativity has a way of consuming us. I suspect that is why it is so easy to get lost in it and sometimes lose track of the reality around us. Over the last few months I have struggled had many moments in which I stopped and asked myself what exactly it was I was trying to accomplish. At the same time I was struggling with the long list of things I am ‘trying’ to do while accomplishing very little, the primary drive of my computer held up the white flag and walked out on me.  A week later, I am still finding things that i need to re-install and settings to adjust.

What, you might ask is trying to overwhelm me? Not only are new RL work pressures and making little progress in non-creative efforts adding to my love playing with images captured in SL, but the joint effort with Trina has both opened new doors and brought new challenges.  I now have a use for OBS Studio and Davinci Resolve and need to create poses and animations using Blender and the Avastar addon. It is all so necessary for what I want and enjoy doing but there is also a decent learning curve with each of them.

On top of all of this I am also feeling a desire to start writing again. Not too long ago, well, actually about 4 months ago now, a tune I heard generated images for a story that was begging to be told. I anguished over this because I didn’t feel I yet had the skills to do a video story yet, nor the time to invest. I feared it would just wither away. Recently, while watching and listening to a youtube video about storytelling and film making, (another time sink while doing chores around the house), something was said that brought me back to this story begging to be told.

While re-examining the characters in the story I realized that I had already started a story that included one and bringing this new character into that same story could be a perfect marriage. These thoughts were new inspiration to begin writing again – to go back and edit the story I had started. This was a push to start writing something every day. A week has passed with nothing more than half of a character sheet completed on this new character. 

This week I am making an effort to identify the best times for me to work on different things, to determine which creative juices flow at which times of the day and give them a chance.  Being a morning person, I’ve always felt that writing early in the morning is ideal for me…and here we are.

 

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