Today a breakthrough. And by a breakthrough, I mean a discovery of where to go for inspiration, when the shear thought of starting to rewrite an acre of pages becomes an ocean of stinging jellyfish and all you have to protect yourself is a pair of speedos and a layer of thinly spread lard.

My lard helped in the form of focussing on the characters. I’ve read about it, but this is the first time I’ve tried it.

In my story, I have a lot of minor characters, and about 4 key ones. This means I can sit and think/ invent many different lifestyle situations….. and tho daunting initially…. is actually quite fun when you get on a roll. So far I’ve combined sprinkles of personality from just about everyone I know. I’ve been picking the evil bits of people for the naughty characters and the happy bits of people for the smashing ones.

To a novice like me, this character generation thingy, is a sweet idea….. because you get to flesh out lots of pointless bits of people and that naturally fleshes out hefty bits of conversation and situation to your story.

I’ll be spending the rest of the week on character stuff alone.

tbh, I didn’t know how to start the second draft until this point. I’d been ‘picking’ at the plot and dreading the thought of digging back through it again. Now, I’m happy.

Note to self: write like a bitch for a month, chill for a month…. then tackle the characters. check.