NaNoWriMo Prep: Character Development I

When my then-boyfriend-now-husband introduced me to the delights of old fashioned D&D style computer games, it was love at first sight (ha! spot the deliberate-ish ambiguity!). And while playing the games themselves is magical, for me the best part is usually ...dum dum dum... the character creation. 

How most of these games work is that there are a certain number of parameters (race, character class/type, abilities, appearance, skills etc...) which you get to adjust (using a limited number of points in each category) to "create" a relatively unique character. Certain parameters affect each other - for example, if you choose to create a elven mage then you are likely to put more points into intelligence than strength: mages need intelligence to cast spells rather than strength to fight. But once you've put more points into intelligence, then you can't put many points into shields, because your character is too weak to carry a shield. Instead, you have to give him points in unarmed combat, or healing. You get the idea.

The point is, I've always wondered how much this kind of thinking could translate a) to thinking about strengths and weaknesses of real human beings (in fact I once led a youth group session on understanding and accepting yourself through computer games...interesting!) and b) to creating characters for my writing. Well, my friends, the time has come. I have designed a form to do exactly that. It is based partly on the D&D notion of basic characteristics and skills, partly on the Enneagram - an interesting idea which I stumbled across on Wikipedia (bless you, Wikipedia!), and partly on things that I know I will need to know based on the specific needs of my story.

So without further ado...

The idea is that I will either fill it out manually (leaning that way, to be honest) or digitally for each of the characters/suspects in my NaNoWriMo attempt at detective fiction. Where are the details, you ask? Why isn't it filled in already? What about all the other important and relevant questions? As you saw, this is part ONE of my character development. I will get back to you with tweaks and changes to the form once I have started using it in earnest. But I was too excited to keep it to myself a minute longer. 

What categories would you include in a character development form? What parameters am I missing?

yours thoughtfully

jjr

Planning vs Pantsing - NaNoWriMo 2013

I know it's early, but as you know I am already chomping at the NaNoWriMo bit. For those who don't know what NaNoWriMo is...it is an epic challenge: write a novel in the month of November. 30 Days. 50 000 Words. Yes, that is the correct number of zeros.

I won NaNoWriMo last year (by that I don't mean "came first" or anything. EVERYONE who finishes 50 000 words is a NaNo winner) and am firmly addicted to the rush of hurtling through a story at 1 667 words per day. The feeling is kind of like caffeine on a high. So naturally I want to do it again. Duh.

Now according to the NaNo lore and prophets, there are two ways of writing your NaNo novel. Planning (self explanatory) and Pantsing (flying by the seat of your pants). Last year, having discovered the notion of NaNo in the 20s of October, I pantsed it. Largely, anyway. I had a more-or-less chapter plan scribbled somewhere on a piece of paper. I had a couple of characters developed a couple of days before starting...but that's about it. Perfect for my episodic, fantasy-ish romp of a story. Short of words for the day? Insert a new species of monster, and some flashy spells. 

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But this year I'm thinking about emulating some of my favourite authors of all time and writing a golden age style detective story. Think Dame Agatha and her coven of cronies. Ngaio Marsh, Dorothy L Sayers... *happy sigh* I do love a good murder mystery. If I had the creative energy to write Poirot or Lord Peter fanfiction I SO would.

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But...one small problem... as we all know, a good detective story is built on timetables, and alibi charts and stuff. Turning clocks back, train schedules, tide tables, that sort of thing. Just the sort of thing which is impossible to make up on the fly. Not at 1000 words per hour, anyway. And in any case I may, possibly, skip over those pages in detective stories. I want to get to the good stuff, you know?

I have some ideas about how to do this without making myself miserable with tables and boring alibi charts, such as making characters like I would create computer game/dungeons and dragons characters. If and when I carry these ideas out, I will share them. Judiciously, of course, so as to save you all from the spoilers.

But basically, if I want this year's NaNo to be a win for me, and if I don't fall back on the interesting zombie apocalypse/teacher twist that is still a valid possibility... I need to start planning. Like, now.

So, er... bye! No time to talk. I'm planning...

yours prudently

jjr

Birdies

I got the know-how to make these little darlings from here... have a look at Elvie's plagiarism story, by the way. Isn't it tragic? Just goes to show how careful we all need to be in this age of internet inbreeding!

In any case, I find these guys incredibly soothing to create, a kind of hiatus in stressful times... you should give it a try:

Remember that time when...

...the till at Pick and Pay went on the fritz and started adding VERY EXPENSIVE red cabbages to our grocery shop... LOTS of them!

Great hilarity between ourselves and the staff as they desperately tried to stop the madness (it didn't work), called higher and higher up managers (all while the invisible cabbages continued to mount up) and eventually had to crash the system and had to start ringing up our groceries from scratch on another till!

I guess with 66 giant red cabbages the cabbage party is at our house?

Though maybe we can't afford to have a party now that all our worldly possessions will have to be sold to pay off the cabbages...hmmm...

Certainly provided enough laughter for the weekend!

Attack on Weathertop - LEGO

I heart LEGO! Recently we've been going a little bit LEGO crazy, especially with the Lord of the Rings/Hobbit series (since I also heart LotR) - this is our newest "investment"...

Lunch at Redberry Farm

On Friday we went strawberry picking at Redberry Farm! It was a marvelous outing, and very reasonably priced at R15 for a small bucket, and R25 for a big bucket.

It was nice and shady in the strawberry tunnels...

Unripe strawberries - the farm utilises crop rotation to make sure there are plenty of ripe ones in all the open rows though - and the beautiful strawberry flowers. But still more exciting is when you strike gold, with some perfectly ripe, juicy fruits.

Bingo!

 Yarhar, don't be stealin' my strawberries matey!

Buckets of strawberry goodness... Have I overloaded my container?

As you can see, the small buckets were quite large enough, but they didn't last long when we got back to the tearoom. There is something magical about still warm, freshly picked berries.

And then, because we weren't already spoiled enough, we had a simply delicious lunch, eaten against the spectacular backdrop of the Outeniqua mountains...

And although there were strawberries with everything (check out the strawberry garnish on my chips!), my favourite was still the jam-packed fresh strawberry milkshake.