Friday, August 7, 2009

Getting to know you

So I’m 1500 words into the second novel and it’s proving tricky. Just like that difficult second album. (Although maybe that only applies to bands who’ve had a mega-successful first album? Currently, I have a very long Word document and not a lot else).

I’ve (kind of) decided on a plot, created a few characters, made up some suitable names, but the trouble is I don’t KNOW these people. I don’t know what they look like, what they have for breakfast, or how they’d act in any given situation. They are cardboard cut-outs.

I miss my characters from The First Novel (TFN). I spent three years with them, and I think I got to know them pretty well. They were real people (please forgive me for sounding crazy here). These new folk are strangers.

There’s only one thing for it: I’m just going to have to spend some time getting to know them. I hope hope hope they have something interesting to say for themselves.


Song of the day: Gives you hell by The All-American Rejects

2 comments:

  1. A good exercise I like to do every now and again is take one of the trickiest characters and write a passage about them doing something totally unconnected to the story, just to hang out with them a bit and learn more about them. It works!

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  2. Good idea! But it does mean writing something that's not going to add to my word count... eek!

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