Tuesday, March 1, 2011

When In Doubt, Write the Sequel

(or at least plan it)

I was having trouble fleshing out a character in my WIP. He was irritating and mean but two-dimensional. I added and subtracted dialog for a while, but it didn’t help. Then I started outlining the sequel. (I doubt I’ll ever write it, but I typed up some ideas.) Suddenly my flat character had a past and a future. His actions had motivations. I snuck a few bits into my WIP and so far, it’s working well.

3 comments:

Lori Van Hoesen said...

What a fantastic idea. :-)

Natalie Aguirre said...

That's a unique way to solve the problem. I'll have to keep it in mind.

Ann Finkelstein said...

Lori and Natalie: Actually, I was goofing around. I didn't plan the sequel to fix the character.