Thank you all again for your well wishes and support. I saw my mom last night and she as awake and in better spirits. Still annoyed that she was in the hospital in the first place for what was supposed to be a same-day procedure at the surgical center, but feeling better. She even wanted ice cream so my sister and I went out for that and we all had ice cream together J
I’m hoping that she will be released tonight or tomorrow morning but I havent heard from anyone today, and no one is answering their phones (not unusual in my family) so I don’t know what the deal is as yet.
…
Some of you know that I drive to work, which can be a real pain. Unlike my public transportation-bound co-workers, I have no time to read or sleep on the way to or from work so I do a lot of thinking and making stories up in my head while Im driving (I mean, I could pay attention more but I live in NJ, work in PA – no one actually pays attention when driving) and I had a *great* idea yesterday on the drive home (great as in maybe not so great but I like it for now). While writing and revising Small Town Ghosts I obviously discarded a lot of material about minor characters. I really want to work on a series of stories related to the novel’s setting called The Wychwood Ghosts series. I have no idea whether any of them will sell individually or if I should compile them and then try self-pubbing them just for fun but I think it would be a really cool idea to explore, especially as I may get stuck from time to time on Novel #2.
Does anyone have any experience with a similar project?
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creative
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blood_of_winter- Krista Magrowski
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The thing that I like about it is it forces you to fill in more of the world/universe/whatever you've created. My comic Sound Waves was only originally going to be about five issues. But each time I added something new to the mermaid mythos, more stories opened up. There's a project I am sitting on until later on when I'm a more established writer, and each time I add a new character, more stories pop up, and ones I've already plotted will change.
It can be annoying. It can also be quite exciting.
i once tried to write a short story set 500 years before my not-yet-written fantasy novel for which i have bits and pieces done, but nothing came of it...however, with a finished novel under my belt (still cant believe i can say that!), i have a better idea of the world...i guess we'll see!
I've noticed a lot of writers don't create characters. Instead, they create plot devices that help move the story along. If you remove that character from things, everything comes to a screeching halt (the movie JFK with its "Deep Throat" character is a good example. Without him, the movie would have been another two hours or more). This is why you see so many cliche characters and Mary Sues out there.
The biggest challenge to me as a writer is creating an actual world. I want the setting to exist independently of the characters, for it to still turn without them (X-Men 2 is a personal favorite example of this). The characters are not the world. As a result, if you have written your characters right, how they react to the world around them is different for each of them. To use Hannah Singer as an example, if you gave the same case to Holman, Hannah, Smack, and Michael, each of them would handle it differently.
Long story short -- this is a sign that you have made actual characters and not just plot devices. So it's a very good thing to wonder about stories with your other characters. If you can't make them work, then you can't. But at least you've done enough right that you can consider it.