For a while, it feels as if I have been struggling to get my novel moving forward at a steady pace. In fact, I have been annoyed with almost every attempt I’ve made to get through the book’s start. I had to sit back and figure out what was causing these foolish moments. They seemed to be popping up out of nowhere. Well, what I was calling nowhere turns out to be somewhere.
Somewhere happens to be one of my favorite stages of writing. Character building. Since I love this stage I thought it wouldn’t cause me any problems. Oh, how wrong I was.
I have made a few attempts to build my characters to find their best creation. I would start creating the main woman only to realize something didn’t seem right. My answer to the problem was to erase her build and start fresh with a new character. Eventually, I settled with her new build and tried to write chapter one. As I was writing, I realized I was accidentally pulling old ideas into my new idea. An honest mistake and it’s not a major issue as long as I can piece it together properly in my story. Too bad I wasn’t doing that.
The original plan for my main female character was for her to be a beautiful science professsor at Ohio State University. The idea was to made her jaw-dropping attractive but too smart to care about flaunting her appearance. My first attempt to write my story with this in mind almost instantly failed. It became clear I needed to adjust my original plan a little bit. I adjusted it but I still couldn’t get her personality across correctly. It was obvious I had to change her build…again.
Since I didn’t want to risk losing everything, I printed the pages of my first character sheet out so I could put them aside. Just in case. Then I deleted the starting idea from my computer so it would be easier to create a new person. I want to create a new character, but there’s a chance I may say her original build was better. Since I saved my original plan, I can always go back if I decide that is still the way I want to go.
Once I get all the characters into a solid build, I believe the story will jump to life like magic. I think it’s okay to go back and reanalyze any character if you are having troubles fitting them properly into your tale. If you don’t have a solid build of your characters then there’s no way you can have a solid build of your story.
Let me know what you think in the comments!
Writing My Career 