Blog series idea: Character Challenges

I've had a lot going on recently, and it's been causing me issues with blogging and online time in general. I figured I would try out something fun for awhile to get back into blogging. I may or may not stick to my previous Sunday schedule. My thought is it may be better to post when I have something to write about instead of trying to fight with the words on a specific day of the week. At least while I'm getting back into the swing of things.

So, one of the things I'd been thinking about offline is human behavior patterns and how they can be applied to fictional characters. After earning my BS in psychology I do tend to mull over behaviors more then other people do. Then I had an idea moment, that it would be fun to have blog posts about a particular behavior along with how it might play out with a fictional character. I'm also hoping that it might help other people reading my blog to ponder over different things, or at the very least be fun to think about how their characters might act in the various situations.

With writing I've never been one to get much out of those character trait lists. I know other people do, they just don't work well with my style of creating characters. I like being able to let my thoughts flow and interact with other character related ideas. It's hard for me to go down a list and figure out each one at a time. If anything I like Holly Lisle's flow chart she has in her create a character book.

That all being said would anyone be interested in playing along with me? Anyone is welcome to add their thoughts about the behavior/situation in the comments and/or how their characters might act. Either way it's something that will be fun for me to write about.

So I Joined Goodreads

Thanks to a blog post by Karen I've decided to sign up over at Goodreads. I've only poked around the site a little so far, but I like what I've seen. It's handy how they have different shelves to add books on, especially the "to read" one. I've been on Librarything for awhile now, which is useful to catalog owned books, so it feels weird adding things on Goodreads that I don't own. I only have so much real shelf space for books at home, and some of my books both loaners and owned are sitting around the house in various locations. (And yes, I do have plans to buy another book case or two sometime soon).

Anyways, I figure I'll spend some time this weekend adding books to various shelves on Goodreads. I'll probably start with the to read shelf so I make sure to have a handy list of books I want to buy or borrow. Though the ones my mom loaned me will probably be read first so I can return them to her. Then at some point I can use my Librarything list to add books to the 'read' shelf on Goodreads.

Further down the line I'm planning on integrating some of the Goodreads widgets onto my website. I have a page for reading, and haven't been sure how to organize it. With the widgets it will be easy enough to quickly display what I'm currently reading along with some of my favorite books. It will be interesting to build virtual book shelves as I enjoy reading many types of books.

So, anyone else on Goodreads? (Or Librarything?)

Location Location Location

So yes, a post with location in mind, as applied to writing. I'm going to attempt to not have this post sound to disjointed. Bits of what I want to say have been floating about today and yesterday. And it doesn't help that the longer my blog sits without an update, the harder it is to relax and write a new post.

Anyways, yesterday I spent my day out and about town. My mother and Aunt came up to attend the Lilac Festival. While the lilacs were mostly past peak after our early warm weather the crafts were wonderful as always. There are a variety of artisans for the arts and crafts show, with jewerly being heavily represented. With the bright sun we had yesterday, it was the perfect day for the jewelers to show off their wares. Everything sparkled in the brilliant sunlight. With the nice weather the festival was packed, and we had to make our way single file through the throngs of people. But I still enjoyed some shopping and walking along the flowers. Even with the lilac blooms past peak, their fragrance still hung in the air.

With the festival being as crowded as it was the three of us decided to eat elsewhere. Which is how I'm leading up to the writing related point that's been dancing in my mind these two days. There is a wonderful coffee shop turned cafe in the village of Fairport, nestled on the Erie canal. As we were strolling along from the parking lot to the cafe the bells of the bridge started clanging, signaling the lifting about to start.

Now I used to live within walking distance of this bridge, I've seen it lift and lower countless times, both as a pedestrian and while in the car. But yesterday there was a woman with her son there as well, both curious about the bridge. While we all waited for the bridge lift-lower cycle, the woman and her son were speaking to the bridge operator. It was neat to hear the operator talk about the history of the bridge. Some of the facts I knew, while others I didn't. I'd already know that the bridge 'corners' are all different elevations, but I hadn't realized that the bridge lacks right angles and that the counterweights weigh differently from each other. As I stood there and listened to the exchange, and watched the boy's curiosity, I could look at this location like it was new to me.

This got me thinking about how in any setting, be it modern or speculative, the difference between locals and someone newer to the area. In more subtle ways then having someone be totally lost. It also got me pondering about how different characters will react to the same setting, even a group of 'locals'. One person might be more interested in all the gears working to raise the bridge, while the next might be put off for the wait. (For the record there are steps so pedestrians can cross while the bridge is up, the only wait is when it is moving). Or maybe someone might feel a historical connection to something in the setting.

Here is a web page with a nice amount of pictures of the bridge. This is a lift bridge, not a draw bridge. The whole bridge lifts up, staying horizontal. It's not like in Blues Brothers where halves of the bridge raise independently.

To Edit Mounds of Boxes

Well, I missed my Sunday blog posting time. I've had a death in the family last week and am working to get back into my normal routine (grandparent-in-law). To make a long story short I ended up working on something around the house which needed attention, thanks to one of my friends volunteering to help.

Unpacking boxes, yes boxes. My husband and I moved over the summer, and our back bedroom ended up being storage area central as we brought our belongings into the house. As I'd been going through some of the boxes they ended up in various stacks as well as being spread around the room. While the cats enjoyed climbing over and around them, the space wasn't fit for us to use. It was quite overwhelming glancing in that room, but my friend and I made short work of the mess. We went through various boxes, sorting things and condensing other things down into shared boxes. There is still plenty more for me to go through, but now most of the floor is visible and the remaining boxes are neatly stacked against two of the walls.

As I prepare for revising a first draft novel of mine I keep getting the feeling of looking at a messy room of boxes. Boxes with who knows what sitting in them, waiting to surprise me. And yes, possibly some good surprises in there as well. There is some of that nervous trepidation of looking at the room as there is to thinking ahead to my rough draft.

Update in Progress

Yes, I decided it was time to work on the layout of my blog to do something different than the default layouts. I started with the Minima template and edited the code from there, starting with adding a background. Said background is from an image I made awhile ago, which matches my website header image. I'm using the same color scheme as well to tie things together nicely.

I still have to play with the colors a bit more along with the header for the blog, but so far I like how this is turning out.

Goals for April

What is that saying, "April showers bring May flowers"? Seeing as how I didn't accomplish many of my March goals I almost feel like I should advance that saying a month. Though I've decided to simplify my goals for this month because I suspect I put to much on my plate for March.



What I really want to accomplish most of all is getting through a novel revision or two this year. My goals for this month are set with that in mind. April is going to be a preparation month for actual revision in May. Why May? Well one of the LiveJournal communities I belong to is doing a May writing challenge, and I chose revision for my goal for that. (The point of the challenge is a choose your own goal).

So my goals in specific:
~More world building for my mining mystery (2yn).

~Revision outline finished for mining mystery (so can revise in May).

~Be more regular about writing in my journal. Yes, I recently started an honest to goodness paper journal. I figure I can write whatever off the top of my head, along with things I observe through the course of the day.

~Work on establishing my writing schedule.

~Haiku a day

~I'd like to critique if I can fit some in with my other goals. (I'm trying not to overwhelm myself with things to do).

And slightly off topic, but I'm reading Harry Potter (again) and something Dumbledore said to Harry near the end of book 2 sticks in my mind as relating to character development: "It is our choices that show what we truly are, far more than our abilities." I'll be keeping that in mind as I'm working on my characters more this month.

So, here's to April preparations bringing a productive May revision. I'm aiming to get through about 20k worth of my first draft, in the first of many revision passes.

Good luck to everyone else with their goals for this month.

Steampunk Fantasy Short Story

So I decided to write a fantasy short story, with some steampunk elements in it. With setting aside my science fiction short I wanted something else short to write for the end of this month. Over at Forward Motion for Writers, they are holding their March Madness challenge. I signed up for the 1k a day level, the challenge running the last seven days of the month. That makes 7,000 words I'm aiming to write, which is a bit long for one short story. For the challenge I figured I can write two short stories for the word count.

I'm a little over 1,000 words into the story so far and it's fun. There is a bit of a challenge with this being my first steampunk piece that I'm writing. I didn't really plan it out to much ahead of time, aside from the basic idea of my main character ending up in a magical world with air ships and other strange workings.

Yes, short blog post is short. I missed my usual Sunday post yesterday and am writing this on my lunch break.

Probably not a short story

But I'm okay with that, really.

Awhile back, I wrote about how I was working on a short story which would be history for a group of related novels I'm writing. Back in that post I had joked to myself that I didn't want it to turn into another novel. Yet now with the planning I've been doing for this short story it feels like there is enough going on so that it won't fit into the short story format.

Backing up a little bit, going forward at the same time. Last year I wrote the first draft of a science fiction mystery novel which takes place a few hundred years into the future. My main character is on a mining station in deep space somewhere. While that novel is set only on the mining station, the characters involved are part of a human race which has spread out to the stars. The time in which the novel takes place humans have been living on different planets for generations. Based on the colonization patterns and life on the planets, there are distinct cultures between them. People travel between the planets, and the planets are organized in some sort of interplanetary government. I also have other novels in mind that take place in this set up.

When I was doing some of the initial planning for the draft I had mapped out a vague time line of how humans had made it from Earth to the stars. I wasn't doing anything to detailed early on, only enough to get me to what I needed for the draft. With this time line I had decided that humans had a base on a planet just outside of our solar system from which they had a nice launching point to start exploring the planets which end up populated for the novels. With still settling on names for everything at the time, I called this the "Alpha site" since it's the first step to the stars. (Then I called the first planet settled Beta, as the next place humans moved onto from there).

Now that the first draft of the mystery is finished I've been looking at more world building to flesh things out better in preparation for revision. In the mean time I'd also been thinking it would be fun to write a short story. Inspiration hit and I thought, wouldn't the founding of the Alpha site make a great short story. So this month and last I've been writing down various scene and world ideas, figuring out the events which lead to the Alpha site being set up. Of course as I worked the more ideas generated other ideas. I've got a few different conflicts going on, and some thoughts for a decent cast of characters. People are involved with getting the mission ready to travel to Alpha, and then there is the crew of the shuttle.

Taking a step back and looking at what is involved I realized that at the current level of detail this is more than what would make for a decent short story. There are to many things happening and to many characters, if I confine it to a small space (pardon the pun) then it will feel to disjointed. This realization gave me a choice; I could take out part of the story to simplify it, or I could turn it into something longer.

While I'm not saying that this will be a novel, I have decided not to remove anything for the sake of length. The events that transpire here are all involved in a pivotal moment in history for the formation of civilization in my novel(s). My goal here is to best tell that story. If on further work it looks like it might stand as a short, fine. But if as I suspect it wont, then I'll work out the details and figure out what format will work best with the telling. I can always come up with something else if I really want to write a short story for the purposes of working in a short story format.

First Blossoms of Spring

Yes, off topic post is off topic. Well mostly. I have been thinking a bit about the plant life in different areas in the world my fantasy novel takes place. I did mostly want to post this to share some signs of spring. Here in New York State our snow is melted and it's starting to get greener around here.



Photo taken by me yesterday, in my front yard.



And one more, the trees in my back yard as seen from the front yard. The zoom on this camera rocks. I didn't realize how much the trees back there were budding until I was taking the pictures. (I was taking pictures of the nests).

Magical Fantasy, revisiting

One of my March goals involves working on my Magical Fantasy novel. I finished the first draft over a year ago and haven't done much with it. Revision time is looming ahead. Instead of simply diving into the revision I'm in the process of taking time to step back and look at the novel.

Tonight was the first part of that process (officially at least) with the really high level work. I took some time to write out the major conflict points (again), and also what goals I have for the novel, and my promise to the reader. In promise I mean what am I setting up in the first few pages that will be out there for the reader to keep reading and will continue through the book. With a mystery novel you have the sleuth character discovering the crime, and the promise of the book is being able to read along with the sleuth's investigation. For my novel the promise is a work in progress, but I have more thinking to do on some of this work yet. I'm not going to worry about it.

I also spent some time writing about the main conflicts of the novel. The major one is for the main character (Trenkisa) to set out from home and find what she wants to do with her life. At the start of the novel she's at home with her family, and expected to follow in the family trade (metalworking). I'm still working out the details on her conflict some more. Like figuring out if she's traveling to look for magic users, or if she's traveling simply to find something new. Either way magic is involved in the plot, but the character's motivations will shape the novel.

I mentioned doing a practice query with this novel a short while ago. I'm still planning on that. After I finish with the conflicts and novel goals/promise I'll put a query together. I am also planning to read through the first draft and jot down what jumps out at me. Then I'll create a revision outline and dive in.