I got to 25,000 word on my NaNo novel; that's the half way mark. Of course, I started out on the focused idea that I would finish my "worst first draft" by November 30. Of course, I had the plot fleshed out in my mind. Of course, I thought I knew my main characters well enough to write the 50,000. Right? Wrong.
So many articles I've read talk about answering basic questions of your characters, but this year I thought I knew the people in my novel well enough to just jump in.
PROBLEMS
1. The favored pet pooch in the first chapter somehow ceased to have any place in the novel.
2. I kept having to return to chapters to look up what I had said about different character - losing valuable time.
3. The characters, at least some of them, seem stagnant and boring.
SOLUTION
I went back to those articles and websites and created a character development sheet that will work for me. Tomorrow, I start to interview my characters, one by one, to really get to know them.
How do you develop your major characters?
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