Preptober week 3

This week you’ll be writing – short things that are part story, part summary, all background. This week is about setting the main character(s) in your mind. Turn them around and over and about in your hands to see them from all sides. You’re going to write a “now” story about the characters in November. This is a chance to discover what will be hidden under their words, their painful growth moments, their triumphs, their development that got them to the moment the story begins.

Write setting history

Towns don’t spring out of nothing. Areas are settled because people left somewhere else for a reason. Even in a classless society, streets and businesses get people’s names, organizations form and extend a person’s or a community’s priorities. These names continue. And thinking about that history, that start, allows you to see threads you might be able to pull into the main story you’re about to write. So… look at the settings you’re planning for the story.

How did your main character’s family come to this place? Why? How did the main character’s family come into possession of the family home? Start the family business?

Write character history

Write about a few key moments in the character’s PRE-story history. Instead of just listing where they went to school and what they studied, write about a day at university or in their apprenticeship, or an event in their employment, family, or community history that set them on the path with their attitudes at and about work.

Do the same with the character’s family – a childhood event or an interaction with a parent that shows how they feel about the idea of family or parenting. Write about their first meeting with a lifetime friend who will appear in the story you’re writing next month.

Write character “why”

An extension of the character history is the character “why”. Their why helps form their goal in the story you’re going to be writing. You brainstormed character goals for your character last week. Write about the thing that happened in their history that will make failure at these goals not an option now.

One more week of planning before you’ll dive in. I’ll have more advice if you come back next week. Subscribe to get the alert. See you then!

~ Lara