After Hanna and I drafted the plot of our story and completed a few character development exercises, we both began working on our characters’ journal. One of the biggest challenges for me when writing this was making sure I didn’t bring many aspects of my own life and personality into the piece. With lots of fiction writing, it is ideal for it to be identifiable as the author’s work through the language, tone, etc. However, this is a case in which I really want to avoid bringing myself into the writing unless it needs to be there. My character is not me, in fact in many ways my character couldn’t be more different. Writing about the experience of being quarantined in California during a global pandemic is a time in the journal where I will definitely draw on my own life. My character’s music taste and a few other basic interests will also be based on me, but the rest will be crafted to fit my character.

Hanna and I have also had meetings to figure out what information about the plot would go where, and how it would be told since we don’t have a standard narration. We want to avoid unnatural writing that would be the result of trying to get information across where it doesn’t belong. This is going to be another challenge going forward, but we really have three outlets (my character’s journal, Hanna’s character’s journal, and the letters back-and-forth) for information in our story that will give us some options.