With NaNoWriMo fast approaching, it seems I should get a few more words out about what I’m doing to prepare for it.

Last time I discussed my NaNoWriMo prep, it was to hone in on a genre that I wanted to explore. As I mentioned, the November novel is my chance to try new tones, genres, voices and styles. Since I don’t do a lot of present day fiction, the urban fantasy genre seemed like a good little niche to poke and prod. It’s adjacent to my regular writing enough that it could be relevant to my stories while being different enough to exercise those creative muscles.

Now, the nice thing about prep is that nothing is set in stone. Things can and, generally do, change. I’m still planning on doing an urban fantasy but my original idea for characters is slowly changing while I consider my option. And speaking of characters, that brings me to my next step of prep.

In my writing, I love to focus on characters. Motivations. Histories. Relationships. Philosophies and ideals. These heady psychological concepts let me put my education to some us but generally help to shape the different people that drive the story. Of course, there is no telling what characters will pop up in the plot, especially since I hardly plan any of my first drafts. But what I will focus on is the main character. And I have several tricks for creating them.

My go-to development method is simply take someone I know and use them as a template for my writing. My friends and family are sprinkled throughout my writing in various forms. Granted, we’re all multi-faceted individuals. Our personalities are not a weekend shopping list of traits but an ever changing kaleidoscope of ofttimes contradictory and inconsistent behaviours and beliefs. That is to say, while I base my characters on people I know they are hardly ever recognizable as the people I know. Generally, I’ll focus on one portion of their personality and design around there.

Take my sister for example.

There are numerous moments where I have based a character on my sister. The most obvious is… well… her D&D character in my short stories. Those stories, written in a somewhat generic fantasy setting, took moments of our lives and recast them as though they were Dungeons and Dragons inspired adventures. As such, Kait’s character (inconspicuously called Kait) was a small town teacher who had a fondness for hikes and rocks. So this fantasy Kait was classed as a ranger and, taking inspiration from the source, was a ranger who had a knack for getting lost and possessed little sense of direction. Furthermore, she loved collecting things and carrying around a large backpack filled to the brim with the random junk she’d find on their adventures.

I like to contrast this lighthearted, clumsy ranger with Therese from my Thyre story. Both had the same inspiration and yet I feel the characters are more different than they are similar. Therese of Thyre’s fame may have shared a love of reading and books but she was a standoffish woman with a cold, controlling attitude especially towards those she felt were foolish or below her own intellectual capabilities. Her prickly exterior naturally led her to having few friends and associates but despite that she had a complicated relationship with her cousin. Her domineering attitude provided an anchor of sorts to his free spirit even if her acerbic wit often manifested in barbed banter between these two seemingly close relatives.

Now, is my sister this cold cousin? Of course not. Nor would she hopelessly be lost in a forest or feel unnecessary compulsion to squirrel away every little bit of coloured string or shiny rock she tripped over. That’s the fun of using real people as templates. Especially those that you are close to. You know how they would react in a multitude of situations so you have a start for your fictional individual that is both real and grounded. But more than that, you can practice the ever enjoyable “what if” scenarios. What if Kait could speak to animals and follow the spirits of wanderlust? And how would that change her? What would stay the same?

Of course, these were early stories where I was a novice at character creation. I will admit that as time goes on I’ve relied less and less on real world templates and have developed my characters wholesale from my imagination. However, now and then, I’ll still pluck the technique if I’m in need of a quick side character that I don’t want to spend a lot of time developing. Or, as is the case here, if I need inspiration where I have no initial spark of creativity.

It was over the weekend when I was attending the first birthday of a friend’s child that I realized I have never written a character based on him. I’m not sure how that happened but as I was struck by that revelation, it did get me thinking. Now, I certainly don’t have any full ideas yet. However, I have a template for a character and oftentimes that’s all I need. What part of his personality will fuel my story? I don’t know. But that’s the fun of writing for me. It’s a practice of exploration and knowing who leads the adventure, even if I don’t know how they’ll lead, is often enough for the first outing.

There is one other element of my writing that I’ll be porting over to this November novel. I quite enjoy playing with expectation. In particular, I have fun turning the mundane into the exciting and the exciting into the mundane. For example, my Red Sabre novels follow a band of rail pirates. Yet though it sounds like a colourful life (and it is!) I also like to think how the day-to-day activities of their lives would exhibit. I don’t place the events of a Red Sabre novel around the height of their explosive adventures. Instead, their adventures grow out from typical problems whether that be finding food, employment, repairs or simply a place to relax after long days of travel. I like buttressing the grand vistas of a new world and the excitement of a gunfight with a glimpse into the actual work it takes to get there.

Likewise, I enjoy playing with things in the inverse. Several of my stories follow rather boring people doing boring things with their lives. That is until everything is upended up the extraordinary. My Middle School Can’t Be This Haunted and Never Ever After are probably the best examples of these janitors turned main attractions. Sophie Caroll in Never Ever After is a girl who works at a laundromat. Her favourite thing in the world is a trashy B-tier television show. She has no skills. She has no great friends. She mostly is spinning her wheels until her life ends. That is, of course, until a school of fish burst from one of her washing machines and a talking red panda convinces her to tumble through a modern wardrobe into a world of crazy creatures and landscapes.

So a young, new father puttering away with his job is definitely something I will play with. And I think this pairs well with the urban fantasy genre. Course, now I have to consider what actually makes my urban fantastical and decide whether I want to take this story more into a mystery or a horror direction. Considering that really I have a likely audience of one for this project, however, I’m more apt to make this a mystery. Plus, it will give me more mystery writing practice.

And, at the end of the day, this is largely practice.