My essential question is about how can I learn more about the process of writing through experience and research. That means that I am studying what are the different types of story writing and what process works best for me. Since I want to be a story writer in the future I want to learn more about how to write a story. I understand that every author has a different way of writing, but I believe that all of them will have processes that are similar to one another. One thing I am unsure about in this project is how my characters are gonna evolve as the novel continues. Who they are now and what they will become is a little bit of a mystery to me. I have never truly worked on a writing piece of this scale so my knowledge of working with progression is very lacking. Each character kinda has a set personality and figuring out how I should demonstrate them growing throughout the story kinda scares me. I believe that development is one of the most important parts of a character and it needs to be done correctly. I am very nervous about this whole topic, but it is one I need to tackle if I am to continue with this project. Also, the reader doesn’t know much about the characters yet, so I need to give them more of a background in a natural matter. Still, I think I made the characters bounce off of each other well and they all have some sort of chemistry. I hope I can turn them into a dysfunctional family at the end. Hard to deal with but cares for one another. I am uncertain how the world in the story will unfold, but I am confident that I will have enough support to get there. There is so much I want to tell in this tale, but I have to be patient and make sure I don’t rush the story too much. This whole story writing is exciting and nervewracking at the same time. Still, I feel good about the project and I am glad I am doing it, but it is a lot more than what I am used to. It feels like I am in unknown territory, but I have the right tools and guides to help me traverse through it. Yet somehow I feel completely unprepared. I hope I am able to write something that I can be proud of.
This is really interesting, I like your take on pertinence especially in a project like this.
Oscar – I was really struck by this line: “One thing I am unsure about in this project is how my characters are gonna evolve as the novel continues. Who they are now and what they will become is a little bit of a mystery to me.” In some ways, one of the weird and exciting things about writing is how much you learn that you didn’t know before – about small details that you just fill in on the go but then become important to the story (e.g. in a novella I wrote in November, I had a character really love fuzzy blankets as a kind of throwaway detail to describe her house…but the blankets ended up being part of the climactic moment of the piece!).
On a more practical note re: character development: I typically ask myself, “What does my character WANT? How does that thing come into conflict with the world around them or other characters? What are they willing or not willing to do to GET what they want? How could the thing they want, or the things they’re willing to do to get it, change over the course of the story?”