National Novel Writing Year 2005: Prewriting

It might be a good idea to do a bit of prewriting so that you know who the important people in your story are to start with.

What do I mean by prewriting? Well, this week (LOL) take the time to write down something about your protagonist. Even if you don't have a story in mind for him or her i's all right, prewriting is the planning stages for some novels. Anything you come up with is not cast in stone, ther is room for change.

First, what does your character look like? Skinny or chubby? Ugly, ordinary, or drop-dead gorgeous? (You do realize that if they're drop-dead gorgeous you'll have ot give them some nasty faults to compensate since pobody's nerfect LOL).

Any scars, habits, preferences of dress, food, music--mainly we want something we can see which holds them separate from other folks, something to distinguish them. The mtastes in music, literature and art go into the aesthetics, but we don't have to worry about too much of that otday, jsut what s/he looks like and enjoys and why s/he enjoys it.

What did they do before your book starts? We jsut need a general idea of their normal everyday lives so that we can start there and then make the comparisons as they come up. What is their ideology, what are they willing to fight for?

Next week, we'll do the samr thing for the antagonist. ;-)






Regards,
Elizabeth Anne Ensley
Library 1
Library 2.