writing notes to myself:
1. all you need to work out about your characters before starting to write the first draft is their heart’s desire - you can come up with their quirks, relationships and speech patterns along the way
2. if they don’t have a heart’s desire, give them one, and don’t let them get at it
3. how they deal with that will give you all the characterisation you could ever need, you don’t need to know what their fucking spirit animal is before writing.
3a. you’re not making a comic, you don’t need to do character designs in advance. the first draft is your character designs.
4. have them make mistakes and overreact
5. don’t rely on accidents, misunderstandings and acts of god for conflict (see also #4)
6. action is boring. argument and suspense are exciting.
7. don’t be frightened to write protagonists who are dicks sometimes! Dicks are more interesting.
8. nobody needs to know that much about the fucking scenery
9. when you get bored, leave it and write another scene until you get interested again
I wrote this out at the beginning of NaNo for my own reference, since these are my major pitfalls, but I thought it might be helpful for others at some point.BRINGING THIS BACK BECAUSE MAN DO I NEED IT
