(This post is going up well after Week Two of my project because I hadn't been able to polish this update due to TPA work and designing my unit, which started today. The next few posts in this vein will also not be done in real time.)
Mood: Stressed.
Word Count: 7222
This week, I changed focus away from advancing the main story and into building some background. With so many other things going on between designing my unit and working on other class assignments, I didn't have time to steal a several-hour chunk of time, which I have found is my preferred style for generating more of the core narrative. Instead, I have focused on building up my core cast of characters, using a survey provided by NaNoWriMo (accessible here) to attempt to ensure that my characters come across as realistic people who exist even when they aren't in the narrative.
(Click "Read More" to continue reading)
Mood: Stressed.
Word Count: 7222
This week, I changed focus away from advancing the main story and into building some background. With so many other things going on between designing my unit and working on other class assignments, I didn't have time to steal a several-hour chunk of time, which I have found is my preferred style for generating more of the core narrative. Instead, I have focused on building up my core cast of characters, using a survey provided by NaNoWriMo (accessible here) to attempt to ensure that my characters come across as realistic people who exist even when they aren't in the narrative.
(Click "Read More" to continue reading)
This survey is 46 questions, ranging from basic info (names, dates, etc) to more specific and detailed information about likes and dislikes and specific parts of the character's history. As I went through and ran my main characters through this questionnaire, I began to notice some interesting relationships between some of the characters. I'd had general ideas of what these characters were like, but having to explicitly lay out facets of their personalities led me to some interesting conclusions. Certain characters who I hadn't seen as being at all similar seemed to naturally have some similar interests.
Moving forward, I hope to use this information to flesh out the relationships between some of these characters. Characters who previously might have only interacted because of a mutual friend or similar situation now can find some common ground and perhaps some new narrative opportunities for those characters in the future. This also had some interesting implications for my practice as an educator; it made me think to look for more crossover between regions I had previously thought of as independent, which radically changed a lesson I planned on modern China, drawing a parallel to the emergence of the Soviet Union (with the Great Leap Forward) and the 2nd Red Scare (with the Cultural Revolution).
Moving forward, I aim to spend the next week working on building up the world my story is set in. I've had a chance to see some interesting overlaps in my characters, but I still feel like the setting of my story is kind of nebulous and vague. Hopefully, in the coming week (while procrastinating to avoid dealing with TPA 4) I will be able to build up the world my story is set in a bit more.
Moving forward, I hope to use this information to flesh out the relationships between some of these characters. Characters who previously might have only interacted because of a mutual friend or similar situation now can find some common ground and perhaps some new narrative opportunities for those characters in the future. This also had some interesting implications for my practice as an educator; it made me think to look for more crossover between regions I had previously thought of as independent, which radically changed a lesson I planned on modern China, drawing a parallel to the emergence of the Soviet Union (with the Great Leap Forward) and the 2nd Red Scare (with the Cultural Revolution).
Moving forward, I aim to spend the next week working on building up the world my story is set in. I've had a chance to see some interesting overlaps in my characters, but I still feel like the setting of my story is kind of nebulous and vague. Hopefully, in the coming week (while procrastinating to avoid dealing with TPA 4) I will be able to build up the world my story is set in a bit more.