Or, How to plan your novel.
Some writers exist, perhaps, who can hold all elements of character and plot in their heads, cross-checking mentally while they write 85,000 words of scintillating prose. These writers are not my intended audience.
My intended audience is those of us who have a hard time retaining a thought without writing it down, who can’t remember where we put our spectacles ten minutes ago, much less that awesome plot twist that smote us yesterday while we were -procrastinating- gardening or something.
Yeah, I didn’t think it was just me.
What to do? How to deepen your characters, make each scene meaningful, and more
Characters tend to come to me as an image, or a scenario, or half of a jacket blurb: An unformed idea, in other words, not a fully developed character.
“Crooked Will Scarvando is an amnesiac immortal who forgets everything every thirty years on June 18th.”