30 Days Weeks of Writing Questions –Week 2

Several years ago I participated in something called 30 days of Writing Questions – a question a day for 30 days. Since I don’t have anything better to do on Fridays I thought I’d resurrect it, only I’m going to do once question a week. What the heck, if nothing else it’ll be fun, right? And just to make it even more exciting…I was able to locate my original answers, so I’m including them as well. It should be interesting to see if, or how much, my answers have changed.

Question Two:

How many characters do you have? Do you prefer males or females?

Old Answer:

In Driving Into Forever, my book set in the Myste, I start out with, uh, about 7 core characters and that many minor characters who almost immediately start “disappearing.”

The core characters are all essential to the story. The only one I could even think about cutting is the brother, but he’s the central figure in one of the sequels so he pretty much has to be included in this one. The same goes for the body-guard. What happens to him in this story is the basis of the next story.

I really don’t have a preference when it comes to characters – I like writing about both sexes. Because I write romance, I pretty much have to be able to write about them both.

That being said, in DIF I think I preferred Kelvin (the male MC) to Hannah (the female MC). He was pretty straight-forward to write about, but she gave me no end of trouble – her career changed a few times, and she underwent a real personality make-over. I was starting to get the feeling she didn’t want to be in this story! :-)

New Answer:

Okay. Back when I answered this question originally, Driving Into Forever was pretty much my only book-length WIP. Now I have several so the question is kind of confusing. How many per WIP? Per published book? Altogether? Do I count characters in short stories? You see my dilemma.

One WIP I have only has two main characters and a handful of secondary ones. The other has one main character, several significant secondary characters, and a whole lot of extras. I don’t know if that answers the question or not. Truth is, the number of characters varies from story to story.

I still don’t have a preference when it comes to writing about them. I usually like to make it balanced – equal numbers of men and women. The trick is to treat them like individuals and make each one unique.

You can find the previous week's question HERE.