Well, here we are at the final NaNoWriMo prep before the actual NaNoWriMo! So anything else I do after this is all going to be my own personal secrets! Ahahaha.

But let’s recap where we left off. I had decided on an urban fantasy genre, though whether that’s from a horror or mystery angle is yet to be determined. My last entry I settled on basing a character on a friend of mine who I haven’t used as a model yet. Today, I will be hammering out some more details.

Having focused on a model for my character, I now need to establish what that character is. Now, I’m not going to say what is or is not based on the real world model. It’ll just start doing a rough character sketch. I’ve talked before about character sketches for my stories. These let me get a good grasp of their personality. They usually form as a short story about a pivotal moment in their life. Here, it will mostly be a stream of consciousness of my thoughts.

But before I begin that, I need to lay out a few more of my thoughts.

I’m thinking this story is going to have at least two major characters. In my early musings I wanted to have some non-authority associated individuals looking into a mystery. I had an early vision of a mystery lovers club that meets to discuss unsolved cases and try to apply their love of mystery novels in solving those cases. I then thought this would be a cute way to start a mystery by having a person appeal to them for help in doing something (leaning towards a missing persons case). I’m leaning towards a young character who has joined this club because they’re smitten with a girl that attends and wants to get in their good graces. This will tie in to some of my other character’s design.

First, I’m leaning towards a young father. I mentioned before that I like taking the mundane and making things extraordinary from there and what could be more mundane than parenting? There’s feeding, napping, diaper changes and bathing. Sure, it’s a rewarding and exciting experience. But let’s be honest with ourselves, we really don’t care to hear about stranger’s struggles about waking up at 2 am to give their child a bottle. I think I’m also going to make him a single father. With the aforementioned missing person’s case, I’m leaning towards the mother having “left” one night, possibly without warning. The story could then pick up this personal tragedy if the mother was roped into the events of the novel in some level. It will also force the character to continue down whatever road unwinds before them.

Alright, we have a single father. What else really defines a person? Well, their occupation. This ties back to the earlier paragraph as I decided this person will be a teacher. However, I don’t see a teacher attending a mystery appreciation club even if he is looking to get back into the dating pool. And I would like to write some scenes of him trying to go on dates while dodging the fact that he’s a father and worried someone else’s kid will turn off dating prospects. So I will need some tie with this character and the young paramour. The easiest solution, to me, would to make him the teacher of the other. I can worry about the details of how that plays out for later.

Lastly, I want some personality quirks for my character. While I have a rather sombre backstory, I’d actually like to contrast that with a sun disposition and childlike wonder for the world. I recall how amused I was when in Japan and seeing all the adults obsessed with Pokemon Go. And while I’m not going to lean into some other intellectual property, even if there’s no chance of infringement, I do like the idea of him preoccupying himself with chasing down digital “pokemon” or whatnot while weird things are happening. I’m also tempted to wrap this phone game into the greater story and it got me thinking.

Way back in university I came up with… well… I don’t even know what to call it. I was working on a project with Derek to make something and ended up making all this complicated lore for supernatural entities, different realms of reality and a whole slew of other stuff. It never really materialized into anything, however. But while thinking about this character and musing of a Pokemon alternative, I recalled this concept. Loosely titled Plemora, it would make an excellent game and if the game itself ties into the urban fantasy, would cover a whole lot of groundwork that I won’t have to do later.

A brief rundown of the Plemora was that our world was simply one layer of a multilayered existence. Entities from a higher layer had a tendency for coming down into ours to avoid conflicts there. Oftentimes this led to them being hunted and, given the physics of the world, they might be chased into lower layers of ours. It was a weird blend of things like Planescape and White Wolf roleplaying and I certainly have no interest in trying to make this story an introduction to that mess. However, it certainly works perfectly for a stupid mobile game my teacher can obsess over and since it dealt with demons… well… let’s just say that I have some ideas to consider in regards to my paranormal portion. Whether I will have sympathetic, intelligent demons that pass for human like… alright I don’t watch or read a lot of urban fantasy but that’s what I imagine Supernatural or that tv show about Satan were like. Alternatively, I can make them more mindless and beastlike in the vein of Stranger Things or Lovecraft Country.

And I likely won’t make a decision until I’m halfway through November anyway!

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.

So, with today being the first day of October, Kait actually suggested that I do a little series of blog posts detailing my preparation I do for NaNoWriMo.

For those who don’t know what Nano is, it stands for National Novel Writing Month. I was made aware of this auspicious occasion many years back when Derek introduced me to the concept. He actually wanted to participate one year and, having failed in prior attempts, thought bringing in a friend would be the motivation to take him across the finish line.

It wasn’t.

However, it got me into the process. So, the gist behind National Novel Writing Month is to get people writing. You have a full month to get 50,000 words to paper, word document, reed scrolls, human skin or whatever other material you like to use. And if there is one thing I learned from Felicia, in order to hone your craft you must constantly be practicing. So, I have found a lot of success and use for the NaNo competition. First, I have beaten it for… well… a number of years running now. And I certainly can feel the difference in my writing if, for nothing else, the 1,666 words a day limit is no longer daunting. I can still recall struggling until the late hours of the morning trying to hit my word count. Now, NaNo is more of a little vacation. If… vacationing was still work but just less stressful.

See, I like to use my November writing month to take on a project that’s less serious. These are my experimental stories. Ideas that are a little outside of my comfort zone. They’re genres I haven’t attempted. They’re concepts that may not be really great. Since you never truly know if something is going to work until you give it a go. And, just sometimes, it yields value.

See, the first Red Sabre story was a NaNo project. And you can see how well that turned out by checking out my second Red Sabre novel, out today! Get it on Amazon, Kobo, Kindle and whatnot!

But I’ve also written other things that will never see the light of day. Like my zombie/Japanese/anime story which shall remain unnamed and never fully explained. I’ve also written silly super hero tales, murder mysteries, subversive classic fantasy and much more. It doesn’t really matter. It’s practice and mashing up genres is a great way to fertilize the creative grounds of one’s imagination.

And that gets to my first step of preparation: figuring out what on earth I’m going to write.

This sounds a little grander than it actually is. I’m a “panster” type writer so I really don’t have much of a plan when I start. But I do have an idea. My first step is to find that one kernel from which everything is going to grow. Sometimes, it is after a conversation with Kait about story starters or ideas. Sometimes it’s a strange dream. Sometimes it’s because I’ve read something grossly disappointing and I’d like to take my own stab at it.

But what if you don’t have an initial starting idea? Whenever I get a flash of inspiration, I try to write that idea down and let it germinate in the back of my mind. Well, this year (like some prior years), I don’t really have anything germinating. I’ve got a couple of projects on the go but none of them are really NaNo material.

Besides, this can give me something to blog about. So, how do you create a story idea?

Focus on something that interests you. You are your first audience. If you, as the writer, have no motivation for the story then it’s going to be nigh impossible to finish. So, my first starting place would be asking myself one important question:

What kind of story do I want to tell?

There’s a plethora of genres out there. And just because you specialize in one doesn’t mean that you can’t explore others. Even if nothing else interests you, there’s a lot of subgenres that you can plumb. So, do I want to write a Sci-Fi story? Do I want to try something a little different? Honestly, the language of Red Sabre can get a bit ponderous and I do enjoy being able to throw myself fully into modern diction. So I would like to do something either modern or futuristic. I don’t want to do a horror story so I can cross that option right out.

Now I know Kait is on a bit of an urban fantasy kick, so that could be fun. I’ve never read an urban fantasy to completion. I’m not really interested in doing an emotionally heavy, character driven story. This is NaNo after all. So the other big modern genre is mystery. I have taken a stab at a mystery story. The result was… mediocre. So there’s certainly room to grow there. However, there’s also futuristic mystery. And considering the only thing I’ve enjoyed about the few super hero movies I’ve seen recently is the detective element, it is a consideration.

Alternatively, speculative fiction is all about commenting on modern issues by recontextualizing problems to examine them in a different light. It would be remiss to ignore the recent conversation about the glorification of police officers and the lack of scrutiny on their procedures to simply write yet another stock standard crime drama. On the other hand, writing a mystery that does not have the main character as a police officer could be interesting. It’s a fairly large trope in mystery and best highlighted by the Maltese Falcon.

Also, by setting the principle investigator as a non-civil servant can broaden the type of mystery I could explore. I’ve gone on some rants about how Lovecraftian fiction does not fit well outside of its time period. But what sort of otherworldly mystery could be done in a modern setting?

Yes, I think I may look at doing an urban fantasy mystery novel. Now that I’ve prepared my genre, it’s time to start considering general ideas and characters!