Falling in love with our creations.
The reason we fall in love with our characters is that we make up their story and raise them as our children. We can talk like them, act like them and love them for those reasons. In our case, Lucky is now much older now. Larry and Lucky are characters and we see that they both come from troubled backgrounds because we designed it that way. It is up to us to give them hope or continue trying to get better and stronger while throwing obstacles in their path.
If for example, Lucky is always late, she may miss her flight and, in the process, meet the man of her dreams that flew into town as a serial murderer. The two then begin a relationship. The plot twist here could be that Larry would pick up on the signs of a serial killer and begin to look at the new boyfriends’ actions, and reactions and see himself in him also as a serial killer.
I may or may not have done much explaining here but that’s the way my mind works. Nevertheless, most of the time I brew things in my head with great planning for the throughline. I always know the beginning middle and end. The same as a movie script. I know where I want to be at what point in my story. This sometimes hinders me because I want to rush to the end of my book. It would be so easy to say Lucky meets Tim, they fall in love, Lucky finds out that her boyfriend is a serial killer. Confides in her dad about the fact and later finds out that they are both killers out to save her.
This gives us the outline and in most cases, I do not write this down. What I tend to do is this.
1. Characters
2. Traits and quirks
3. Through line
4. Details (I make notes as they come up)
5. Pain points (Give them problems to solve)
6. The framework or skeleton of the story
7. Hang the meat on the skeleton
8. Solve problems.
9. Hurt everyone.
10. Kill people.
11. Love people.
12. Make them cry
13. Come up with solutions
14. Keep the end in mind.
These things may not be 100% in order. They are things I keep in mind and work with to keep the story strong. A love story needs to have a light at the end of the tunnel. Hope, despair, tears and all, give the reader hope and doubt.
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Zsolt Zsemba 