Ok, I'll try to keep this one short, as I'm bagged and liable to ramble.
One of my secondary characters is turning out to be simply amazing. I have two that are already really strong, but the more I write about this one, the more I absolutely adore her. I worry about that. I think that it might be a bad sign, and I hope it's not.
You see, one of the things I always hear writers talking about is how they've all had to kill their "darlings". "Darlings" in this case usually refers to characters, or scenes, or purple prose that they're just so damned happy with, that their agent or editor tells them simply must go. I don't think that will be necessary in this case, but I always need something to dread.
I've written about 3,000 words today (2,998 if you listen to Scrivener), which isn't bad for the short timeframe that I had to write, this character helped with that, they just liven up the scenes they're in. Oh wouldn't that be great? If an agent or editor asked for MORE of this character? I could live with that. Not sure HOW I'd pull it off, story-wise, but I'd sure as hell try.
In short I'm enjoying writing her and having her in the book is making hitting word count goals easy.
There, see, I kept that pretty short.
- Grimm
This is one of the things I love about writing a series. If a minor character starts to take on a life of their own, even if they don't have a larger role in the current book, you can build the next story around their involvement. This has happened to me four times so far. One of those minor characters is now my leading man. Another will be a recurring character throughout the series, the third is going to have the entire next book dedicated to his problems, and the fourth will have the following book dedicated to hers.
ReplyDeleteEspecially with the third and fourth, they were ancillary people I made up to further the plot, but then refused to just go away when I didn't need them anymore. They're too interesting! :D Good luck!
The good news is that this book is built from the outline out to support being a series. I've got some twists planned for the end that set up the next book nicely.
ReplyDeleteI'm already brainstorming ways of getting this character to fit in a larger role for everything after.