Character Interviews

All right, if this showed up yesterday, and you've read it, I'm sorry. I thought I'd get a little ahead of myself and save myself some morning time before the day job and put it in DRAFT -- I thought. But when it published, it was in yesterdays...sigh. That will only work when I don't do something different (like the website note) later....So you may have seen this yesterday -- I'm tired this morning and didn't sleep well, my eyes are gritty, and I really don't want to go on to my next topic off the cuff (Maps). So if this was posted yesterday you got a double dose then and not much today -- except the fact that I write in the evenings during a good time for me. So know what you and your body likes and write during the time that's best for you -- early mornings (NO! Not for me) or late at night...or evenings.

Love to all,
Robin



Character Interviews
I don’t often do character interviews or fill out character sheets.. I’ll do the minimum for a proposal, then start writing and learn my characters that way. I think I have at least three, and maybe five, different character interview sheets, the work going into that could be massive.

A couple of times when I’ve been really, really stuck, I’ve intereviewed my characters. Once during Heart Duel when my critique group pointed out that I had a lot of scenes in Lark’s apartment, and couldn’t I move the scene somewhere else? What did Lark do for fun. Sail, I said off the top of my head. They said, put her on a boat. I grumbled all the way home. I live in Colorado. I don’t know squat about sailing. Besides Celta has two moons and I DO know that would cause incredible tides, waves, etc. But I interviewed Lark anyway and she liked SOLAR SAILING – sort of like hang-gliding. That I could deal with. Lark had lived a very restricted life as a child and loved the freedom of the sport…

I put a link to T’Ash’s interview up yesterday
http://robindowens.com/worlds/interviewtash.htm I started this interview during the book and finished it later to put up on my Worlds page, after the book was in print. And I actually learned new things about his background.

Here's another of Ailim D'SilverFir, SupremeJudge of Celta and heroine of Heart Thief (since Ruis Elder - hero - is an outlaw, I thought this would be a good outer conflict and it is one of the major Inner Conflicts of Ailim -- can she turn him in or not, what does she do about his illegal banishment?, though I denied this to Ailim in her interview...) SPOILER ALERT, THIS WAS WRITTEN AFTER HEART THIEF AND GIVES AWAY MUCH OF THE PLOT http://robindowens.com/worlds/ailim_interview.htm

When you write a series, you learn more about the people who are secondary characters (slowly moving up to become heroes/heroines). This is good and bad. Challenging because you can’t change names, hair or eye color, or what happened in the past – and you must have notes or remember what happened to them in previous books.

But it’s also very helpful because you know the character better when it comes to write of them, they’re familiar.

Love to all,
Robin