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This is the second installment in the “HOW I WRITE” series I’m participating in every Wednesday with several writers, where we all discuss how we approach writing a book. Every writer has a different process and this project gives us a chance to share and compare ours. Click on the “How I Write” image to find a list of the participating writers and links to their blogs.

Last week we talked about Idea Creation. This week’s topic is Character & Plot Development and World Building.

The way I see it, a character is a culmination of past experiences, present and future goals, personality, habits, interests and mannerisms. Sometimes I come up with my characters’ personalities, goals and motivations before I even begin to have a mental picture of what they look like. Other times, I’ll first see a picture of a model, a drawing, or a random person that inspires me to make a personality to go with their appearance and viola – a new character is born.

I make a “character sheet” for each of the main characters (at least) in my stories, which includes things like:

1. Character name, age and background
2. Drawing or picture that resembles the character
3. Goals, motivations, fears
4. Personality traits
5. Quirks, gestures and word usage (do they have a catch phrase, or favorite words, or a certain dialect as examples)
6. Timeline of key events in their life

I keep my characters’ sheets in Microsoft One Note, but I made a spreadsheet version of a character sheet to give you some idea of what I put into creating a character and shared it under Freebies.

My plots are conflicts that would pose interesting challenges to the characters I’ve created. If the idea for the characters came first, then I explore a plot and subplots that would contrast nicely with the goals and motivations of my characters. If I came up with the fascinating plot idea first, then I try to come up with the type of characters that would make the plot elements the most fun to play with. My favorite plots tend to include goals that somehow force the main characters to explore some extraordinary aspect of themselves that they must come to terms with.

A lot of world building goes into my fantasy, science fiction and paranormal writing. That includes coming up with a timeline of key “historical” events, politics and culture, settings and scenery, creatures and species, jobs and titles, and rules of magic if applicable. For me, world building can also include me creating maps of entire imaginary continents and mini-dictionaries of made-up languages.

Don’t forget to visit other participating blogs to see how other writers develop characters, plots and imaginary worlds. Next week’s topic: Research.

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For the next 10 or so weeks, I’m participating in a “HOW I WRITE” series every Wednesday with several writers, where we all discuss how we approach writing a book. Every writer has a different process and this project gives us a chance to share and compare ours. Click on the “How I Write” image to find a list of the participating writers and links to their blogs.

A note about me:

• I write sci-fi / futuristic, fantasy, paranormal and contemporary romance.
• I’ve written 2 novels, 4 novellas, several shorts and have a few more works in the beginning stages. I’ve also written a few YA novellas when I was teen, and may revisit that genre sometime in the future.
• My writing  ranges in length from as short as 750 words (3 pages) to as long as 115,000 words (over 450 pages)

This week’s topic is Idea Creation: Just how do I come up with ideas to write about?

One way I come up with ideas is by engaging in the things that interest me. I can become inspired with characters, settings or plots from even my most basic interests: books that I read, movies, tv shows, video games, fairy tales, being in love, raising a family, imagining the future, as examples. Do you really like to skate? Perhaps that could find its way into a plot. Are you friends with a vegetarian who’s attracted to a meat-lover? What an interesting idea for characters. (Oooh, I have to write both of those new ideas down!)

Another way I come up with ideas is by thinking of twists on ones that I already like. Ever wonder what would happen if Luke Skywalker was a wizard instead of a Jedi,  lived in a medieval era, wasn’t able to get a cybernetic or prosthetic arm to replace the one he lost, and if his powerfully evil father had of lived? Bam, new story idea!

Yet another way I come up with ideas is by thinking of things I don’t see as much of as I would like to.  I’d read lots of stories and even seen movies that were inspired by “Snow White” and “Little Red Riding Hood”, but few that tackled Rumpelstiltskin, so I wrote Say My Name to try to fill that void.

I made a spreadsheet which I call my Idea Database where I capture notes for a potential story on each row. I have columns for me to include the genre or genres the story would fall under, a general idea of how long the story idea would be (short story, novel or novella), a title if I have one in mind, and a sentence or two describing the idea. Whenever I have an idea for a story, no matter how vague, I capture it in my Idea Database. If my spreadsheet isn’t available when the lightning strikes, I jot it down with pen and paper until I can enter it into my spreadsheet later. There are currently 117 ideas in my Idea Database right now waiting to be further explored.

Coming up with things to write about is the easy part. It’s actually deciding which story to write next that’s my biggest challenge!

Don’t forget to visit other participating blogs to see how other writers generate ideas. See ya next week for Character, Plot & World Building!

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