Sunday, November 27, 2011

the artist and the installation of things that work



My focus is to get the most out of the time I put into writing everyday.
As much fun as checking in with twitter and reading other writers blogs are for me; I now need to officially label them as my bad habit number one.
I need better efficiency for every stage of my writing process. 
Typically when a character comes to me I let myself get drawn onto the web. I love inventing the rest of the characters world.
I get lost looking for the right photo to represent the character. Then I start gathering information to support who I think the character is, where it lives (and on and on).
I could lose an entire day or two “playing” like this. I could easily rack up three thousand words in research in a few hours.
This number would meet my daily word quota for writing, but does it really?
No. None of this output is the work in progress.
I want as much of the tale on paper as possible.  My time in the chair can be spent writing the story.
Since character development is my weak spot I came up with some questions so I have a place to begin. I find I can make quick notes when the ideas come to me and go back to the work I want to be doing.
How do you train yourself to work productively? What has increased you're amount of contributing-to-the-story-work time? 
These are my character study questions. I will add to it as other prompters come to me.

1. Where does your character live?

2. Where is your character from?




3. How old is your character?
4. What is your character called?




5. What does your character look like?
6. What does your character do for a living?
7. What kind of childhood did they have?
8. How does the character deal with conflict and change?
9. Who else is in the characters life?
10.What is the characters goal or motivation in this story, this chapter or scene?
11. What is the contrast for this character?
12. Favorites- food, people, places, things?
13.What is most important to this character?
14. the characters family?
15. deepest desire?
16. What is most important to this character?
17. Characters abilities?
18. This characters fears and dislikes-
19. How this character view by the world?
20. How does this character view himself?
21. Biggest regret?
22. Things on characters bucket list-
23. This characters contribution to others?
24. This characters flaws?
25. What this character does better than anyone else-
26. What past karma is owed to this character? good or bad
27. Would this character kill?
28. Who is this characters nemesis?

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