Photos and Settings

This week I've been hunting down various photos to depict the settings for my novel. The town where it takes place is one close to where I live. Although I love my own town it isn't particularly picturesque, and I wanted somewhere pretty for my setting. Well, yes, and somewhere more romantic!

I still have a few photos to find -- other settings, as well as making up some floor plans for the various buildings and houses in which my characters will spend their time.

I already have photos of my main characters, but I'm still looking for just the right pics for some of the other major players.

And I wrote. So far I've written 122 words of another of the character arcs. Things are beginning to get exciting now, as I see how my characters' personalities react with one another.

Character arcs are not all I'm trying to work on. Some time ago I chose a birth date for each character, so now I need to work out which generation they belong to so that I can add further layers. This is such fun!

Previous attempts to write this novel have mainly backfired because I hadn't a clue what I was doing. My characters were badly formed, and I hardly knew them.

Knowing my characters is truly what makes the difference for me. I tried those long character sheets that ask you to describe what kind of toothpaste they use, or the colour of their favourite pair of shoes, but I couldn't motivate myself to ever answer all the questions. Heck, I didn't know those things about myself (well, the shoes, maybe!)

But now I know the characters' personalities, I find I can more easily answer the questions on the character sheets. Yay! Success at last.