{"id":132,"date":"2018-05-01T20:47:02","date_gmt":"2018-05-02T03:47:02","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.nomadauthors.com\/blog\/?p=132"},"modified":"2018-05-01T20:47:02","modified_gmt":"2018-05-02T03:47:02","slug":"character-profiles-mfrwauthor","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.nomadauthors.com\/blog\/2018\/05\/01\/character-profiles-mfrwauthor\/","title":{"rendered":"Character Profiles #MFRWauthor"},"content":{"rendered":"

I confess that I used to be a complete pantser. I had an image of characters in my head and that was all I needed. But sometimes I found that I as I wrote, I added bits and pieces, traits and hobbies to the characters and then it was hard to keep things straight. I often forgot what color hair my heroine had or whether the hero’s eyes were green or blue. Once I renamed the hero halfway through the book and only caught it in editing (thank heaven). I knew I needed help.<\/p>\n

\"\"Creating a character is a little like chemistry: a little of this and a little of that, and you have a character that’s memorable (and keeps the same name all the way through the book!). I found a how-to guide that had character sheets in it, and I adopted it to fit what I wanted to know about my characters. Suddenly, I had a form to fill in for height, hair and eye color, hobbies, education, family members, etc. I added elements for conflict and goals, too. I assigned each major character three adjectives and then wrote three things the character might do that represented those adjectives. I found the character sheets helped keep me in line and on target.<\/p>\n

Lately, I took two courses with Laurie Schnebly Campbell<\/a> through Writer University<\/a> and learned a lot! Laurie’s help was aimed toward plotting through character motivation.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

I ended up with much of the same goals\/motivation information I had using the guide sheets, but it’s much easier to come up with. I think I will still use the guide sheets to track physical characteristics but use Laurie’s process to find motivation and apply it to plot. By the way, if you’ve never taken a course with Laurie, I found her to be a real pleasure\u2014fun and helpful.<\/p>\n

So, am I no longer a pantser? Well, I haven’t gotten to the point of detailed outlining, but I have found a couple of methods that help me hold my stories together better. I hope\u2026<\/p>\n

Read the next blog in the blog hop by going here<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Dee<\/a>
\nNaval Maneuvers<\/a> When a woman requires an earth-shattering crush of pleasure to carry her away, she can’t do better than to call on the US Navy. Sorry, Marines!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I confess that I used to be a complete pantser. I had an image of characters in my head and that was all I needed. But sometimes I found that I as I wrote, I added bits and pieces, traits and hobbies to the characters and then it was hard to keep things straight. I … Continue reading “Character Profiles #MFRWauthor”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[3,1],"tags":[33,34,32,35,31],"class_list":["post-132","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general","category-uncategorized","tag-character-development","tag-laurie-schnebly-campbell","tag-motivation","tag-plotting","tag-writeru"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p9wA33-28","jetpack-related-posts":[],"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nomadauthors.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/132","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nomadauthors.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nomadauthors.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nomadauthors.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nomadauthors.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=132"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.nomadauthors.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/132\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":142,"href":"https:\/\/www.nomadauthors.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/132\/revisions\/142"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nomadauthors.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=132"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nomadauthors.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=132"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nomadauthors.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=132"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}