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I told myself I could when I wrote 2000 words in a day and I've done that a few days running. I should probably post these so my subconscious recognises that I get my rewards when I promise them to myself!
Writing Meme - Day 2. How many characters do you have?
Are we counting all the original stories I've ever conceived and started writing?
I was maybe...13-14 when I started out with Carston and Alica, who had two children who had two children who had three children who had six children who had...oh, I think it got to seventeen, then thirty-something then... At least one character per generation had a story; sometimes two of them did, once about four did. And the others had their crises liek whoa.
There were over 150 by the time I finished, complete with family tree of who they married and everything. Lots of twins. I have a thing about twins. Twin-envy? (Comes from having sisters who are twins.)
I went through a Mills&Boone period circa age 16. So I wrote romances. About a dozen of them. Mostly with emotional angst, because that was what I liked: AAAAANGST. In some cases, I liked the angst more than I liked the 'happily ever after'. I still have a story where the romantic protags are forever locked in a perpetual motion machine of angst and resolution and angst and resolution. (Sorry, N&D, you have a happy ending somewhere...I'm just too addicted to your angst.) Although the sex was interesting, too. Well, interesting to a 16 year-old girl from a conservative Christian upbringing. :)
I deleted the lot of them when I was 22. It felt wonderful.
One of the problems with the headcount comes when you realise that a lot of my characters started off as someone else. eg. a bodyguard, a fighter pilot, and a vampire queen all started off patterned on the same character, while the bodyguard took on the name of one of my romance novel heroines. So are they one character, three characters, or four characters?
Frankly, if I listed all the characters I'd come up with through the years, the cast probably would number at least a couple of hundred.
They're probably not particularly well-formed characters, but they're characters all the same!
Do you prefer male or females?
You really need to ask?
It's the female characters that I write and love and whose stories enchant me - mostly because I like writing women with agency. It's practically a kink. The guys get to do their thing, of course, but the biggie is a female character who grows, changes, and kicks ass - whether physically, technologically, or mentally.
However, I've noticed that most of my stories have a female-and-male component to them. The story is about the female character's journey, but the guy gets a b-plot, too.
Day 3 (forthcoming): How do you come up with names, for characters (and for places if you're writing about fictional places)?
Writing Meme - Day 2. How many characters do you have?
Are we counting all the original stories I've ever conceived and started writing?
I was maybe...13-14 when I started out with Carston and Alica, who had two children who had two children who had three children who had six children who had...oh, I think it got to seventeen, then thirty-something then... At least one character per generation had a story; sometimes two of them did, once about four did. And the others had their crises liek whoa.
There were over 150 by the time I finished, complete with family tree of who they married and everything. Lots of twins. I have a thing about twins. Twin-envy? (Comes from having sisters who are twins.)
I went through a Mills&Boone period circa age 16. So I wrote romances. About a dozen of them. Mostly with emotional angst, because that was what I liked: AAAAANGST. In some cases, I liked the angst more than I liked the 'happily ever after'. I still have a story where the romantic protags are forever locked in a perpetual motion machine of angst and resolution and angst and resolution. (Sorry, N&D, you have a happy ending somewhere...I'm just too addicted to your angst.) Although the sex was interesting, too. Well, interesting to a 16 year-old girl from a conservative Christian upbringing. :)
I deleted the lot of them when I was 22. It felt wonderful.
One of the problems with the headcount comes when you realise that a lot of my characters started off as someone else. eg. a bodyguard, a fighter pilot, and a vampire queen all started off patterned on the same character, while the bodyguard took on the name of one of my romance novel heroines. So are they one character, three characters, or four characters?
Frankly, if I listed all the characters I'd come up with through the years, the cast probably would number at least a couple of hundred.
They're probably not particularly well-formed characters, but they're characters all the same!
Do you prefer male or females?
You really need to ask?
It's the female characters that I write and love and whose stories enchant me - mostly because I like writing women with agency. It's practically a kink. The guys get to do their thing, of course, but the biggie is a female character who grows, changes, and kicks ass - whether physically, technologically, or mentally.
However, I've noticed that most of my stories have a female-and-male component to them. The story is about the female character's journey, but the guy gets a b-plot, too.
Day 3 (forthcoming): How do you come up with names, for characters (and for places if you're writing about fictional places)?
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