character worksheet

This was posted to a writer's community (Writer's Discussion Group) on Google+, but I thought I would also post here for more permanent reference.

So, a friend of mine is having trouble with her work-in-progress, figuring out the characters, her world, the plot—everything. And she’s trying to figure this stuff out while writing­. She’s pantsing. And that’s fine. But there are some things that you need to plan before writing, whether you’re a pantser or a plotter.

When starting a new project, you need to figure out your characters before everything else. You need to know them through and through, because the best stories are character driven. Your characters’ choices, their mistakes, their past experiences and relationships, their dreams all affect the story.

Over the years, I’ve pulled together a character questionnaire for my work, tweaking others’ character worksheets and creating questions of my own. I wish I had the original sources for the ones I stole. Now, this isn’t an eye color, hair color, etc. kind of questionnaire. It asks questions that will best reveal conflict for your characters, hopefully in a way that will help you craft an engaging plot.

writing and books update

I just wanted to give you guys a quick rundown of what's going on as far as my books.

I finished the first draft of the Chroniker City novella Le Theatre Mecanique a little over a week ago. It's about 35,000 words. I'm now in the sit-and-wait stage, but I plan to start editing this coming Monday, at the latest. That will take about a week, and then I will send it to beta-readers. Once they've responded, I will implement any suggestions they make and do one final pass of the manuscript. Estimated release date: April 16th. And here's the cover:

Next. Once the novella is published, I will start the second edit of The Wizard's Heart, my Persian-inspired fantasy novel. It's sitting just over 100,000 words (I think; it's been a while since I opened the document). So, that should take me a month, maybe a month and half to edit, meaning it should be ready for beta-readers by the end of May. They'll have two months to respond, so I should have all the feedback for it by the end of July. Once I have that, I expect it will take me another month to implement changes, fix anything they might have pointed out, and do one last proofread. So, if everything goes to plan, I should have it ready for publication by mid-September. No date yet, but I'll let you know when I have a more accurate time. And hey look, another cover!

And lastly, while The Wizard's Heart is out for beta-readers, I will be working on the sequel to The Clockwork Giant, The Guild Conspiracy. I need to spend about a week hammering out the plot and seeing what I can keep from the original half-draft, and then I can start drafting the rest of the book. Because I already have 42,000 words to work with, I don't expect that it will take me too terribly long to finish the book. Hopefully—like, it would be an effing miracle—I'll finish the first draft in the two months that The Wizard's Heart is out for beta. It's a bit of a juggle, but I think I can do it. That means, once The Wizard's Heart is published, I can take a bit of a break from writing for a little while and let The Guild Conspiracy sit for another couple of weeks while I have a nice, relaxing break. That would put me starting edits sometime in October. Now, things will probably get in the way. The fall is always such a busy season for me, lots of traveling and such. So, unless I am a miracle worker, I probably won't have the book out by the end of the year. There is a chance that I can work some miracles, and I will do absolutely everything in my power to get this book out by the end of the year, but don't cross your fingers. You see how things worked out last time. >_<

In the meantime, I hope you're excited about the novella release coming up next week, and the fantasy novel release this fall. I know you're excited about those covers. 

Thanks for reading, and sorry for the silence. See you guys later.


Final note: no, the blog is not disappearing, obviously. I'm going to gear my posts more toward readers and fans instead of writers, and I'll update when I feel like I have a bit of information to share. Mostly, posts will be about major events in my writing—starting and finishing drafts, upcoming releases, etc. 

final post?

So, fact: I don't read my blog roll anymore. I don't care to. And I honestly never care to blog again.


With the advent of Google+, I have enough room to share my thoughts as long as they might be to people who actually engage with the content I share. In the days of Twitter, blogging made sense.

The blogiverse may be thriving elsewhere, but to me, it's pretty much dead. There's no interaction, no real reason for me to post here unless I feel like wasting some time.

So, this is a post to say that I'm probably never going to post here again. I say probably, because maybe sometime in the far future, I'll feel like posting here again.

All of my previous content will be here for your perusal, and you're welcome to comment on old posts (I do still check for new comments occasionally), but you won't be seeing any new content here, at least not for a long time. And to all of you who have been commenting here, I thank you.

If you want to keep up with me in the future, follow me on Google+ or Facebook.

Adios,

Brooke

Black Sheep - guest post by Kia Zi Shiru

Today I welcome Kia Zi Shiru to the blog to talk about her newly released Black Sheep novel.

Thank you for having me here, Brooke. Today I’ll be talking about Black Sheep: Letting go of the Past and how I came from writing the trilogy as a serial to publishing it in ebook.

Back in the days that I started out writing Black Sheep there wasn’t much market for gay fiction, not as far as I could see anyway. What I did encounter was a lot of writers writing serial stories for free online. Even though I wanted to get a traditional publishing deal I also didn’t feel like keeping Black Sheep to myself for all this time. And since I believed that most traditional publishers weren’t interested in gays, let alone gay teens at the time (back in 2008) I decided to join the horde and serial publish Black Sheep online.

not dead, still writing

Just thought I'd update you since it's been a while.

Still working on the novella. It's kicking my butt.

I think I worked out whatever problems I was having with it this last week, and hopefully, now I'll actually be able to move forward. Goal is 1000 words a day from here on (possibly tomorrow on, since I have to finish editing the last 8000 words of what I have), so if everything goes to plan, I should finish in three weeks. I know I planned to have this done already and out to beta-readers, but it seems that I never can stick to plans. So who knows when this thing will actually be finished.

I'm aiming for publication in January now. Because this has been so difficult to write (who knew?), it's pushed all of my other deadlines back. Still plan on editing The Wizard's Heart once this is done and published, and then I'll move on to The Guild Conspiracy. Everything has just been pushed back another month. Surprise, surprise.

Other news, a writer friend of mine is having a giveaway over on her blog. Win some books! (One of them is mine): http://radwrites.blogspot.com/2012/12/winter-giveaway.html

That's all for now.

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