Writing Meme - Day Thirty

The problem is, anyone I know who's a writer already did (or is in the process of doing) this meme, so I don't really have anyone to tag.  But if you want to do this meme, feel free.  And if you post a link in the comments, I'll be sure to check it out.
And thus ends the 30 days.  It was fun, even if I didn't always have very good answers to the questions.

Writing Meme - Day Twenty Nine

I really don't have a good answer for that.  I tend to think about my current story/characters when I'm at work, but obviously I can't be thinking about it all the time I'm working, either, otherwise my job would suffer.  But when things are slow, nothing keeps the time moving like hashing out a plot point or figuring what hobbies a character would have, what kind of food they like, etc.

And I'm kind of coming up a blank on a good story for the second part of this question.  I mean, a lot of my stories use elements taken from my life (especially music choices and the like), so there are plenty of things IRL that make me think of my stories.  But I guess this sort of counts: I once bought a plush owl because it kind of looked like a character from my 2007 NaNoWriMo (even though the character wasn't an owl).

Writing Meme - Day Twenty Eight

The only one I can think of was a character in a wheelchair, but that was so long ago that I can't remember her name (though she was an OC in a Pokemon fanfic that I never finished, so that tells you how long ago this was).
I don't think I would ever write a character with any kind of disabilities without doing a boatload of research first, and as I tend to be lazy when it comes to researching, that explains why I don't have any.

Writing Meme - Day Twenty Seven

For most of my stories, appearance really isn't that important, unless the character isn't human, then obviously it has to play some part.  When I'm first coming up with a character, they tend to have a nebulous form in my head, so I like to use a dollmaker to give them a more concrete image.  I can't always get the exact look I envision, but it's usually better than what I come up with when I try to draw (as seen in yesterday's post).  Plus, it sometimes reminds me of things that I might have overlooked, like eyebrows.

Writing Meme - Day Twenty Six

I'm not a great artist, and thus usually leave my characters in the lurch drawing-wise, but there was a time when I was prone to doodling out my characters in the margins of my notebooks.  Most of these were characters from an RPG I was in at the time on YahooGroups, playing a moth-based alien.  Here's the only real drawing I did of her (i.e. not on notebook paper):

The pose is due to her trying to process the RPG's backstory, as told to her by the other characters.
The only time I've had anyone draw my characters was when I was younger and my older sister would draw Enrico and Ocirne from time to time (as well as my younger sister's characters), and once when someone drew the above character, Ariana, for a meme.

Writing Meme - Day Twenty Five

One character from my 2008 NaNoWriMo novel had a minature raccoon named Little Bandit.  He was only in one scene, though, so there isn't too much to say about him.  I never thought about it before, but I'm not so big on pets, I guess, as that's the only one I can think of from my stories.

Writing Meme - Day Twenty Four

Death does not really come up that often in my stories, but if the plot demands it, I suppose I would kill off my characters.  There's a bit of a saying (or something like that) that if you're NaNoWriMo novel is running out of steam, it's time to kill off a character.  I've only had this happen once, though, when I killed off Claudia in my 2007 novel, though it wasn't because I was stuck, but to build up the shadowy conspiracy that was lurking in the background.  Why would they kill off Claudia?  Was it simply because she was connected to the protagonist or was there another reason?  I never actually came to a conclusion on that point.  Nor was it a very interesting kill, since it happened offscreen.  In fact, I haven't had any onscreen deaths at all, so there you go.

Writing Meme - Day Twenty Three

I honestly have no real answer for this.  I have never timed it, and thinking about it, I can't really even figure it out.  The closest is thinking about my NaNoWriMo novels, but since those have a set time to begin and end writing (granted, writing can continue after November, but the 50k words have to be done at least), they aren't really a good indicator.

Writing Meme - Day Twenty Two

A lot of my stuff really falls into this category, so I'm going to share the original plan for my 2009 NaNoWriMo novel, as it really turned out quite different.
I originally got the idea about a year ago, as two Gaia-related events set it in motion.  First, the evolving item Nartian Rock had its third (I think) evolution, and I fell in love with the character, Kink, for the first time, and instantly equipped his strutting pose to my avatar.  Second, it was Easter, and Gaia's event that year involved finding 500 eggs.  Since the eggs only showed up about once a minute, I was on the site quite a bit, and eventually, seeing my avatar so much and hunting for eggs gave me the idea for a story.

The protagonist, Bunny Watson (named after a character from Desk Set, which I had just watched at the time) is chosen by an alien, Em, to be his partner while he collects "eggs" (I never quite settled on what they were) that have to be stored inside her.  The "eggs" were usually found at events in her community, so she'd have to try and get Em there and keep him secret while still giving him the freedom to find the "egg."  In the course of things, she ended up getting a boyfriend, who thought that she was the alien, but didn't want her to know he knew.
I never really fleshed out why the "eggs" were so important, but they had some kind of powers, as Bunny could tap into them to reach a sort of dimension where, if she wanted, she could make herself 50-feet tall.  At one point, Em tried to tap into the power of the eggs and ended up comatose, which brought on the appearance of a few other aliens, Elle, En, and Cue, in order to snap him out of it.
In the end, the story I wrote for NaNoWriMo last year had only the most basic elements from the story I originally came up with (a girl has to harbor an alien), and a lot more emphasis was put on Bunny's roommate, who in the original story actually interacted with Em quite a bit more (in the sense that she basically hated him and he had to work hard to get in her good graces), but wasn't in the story as much.

Writing Meme - Day Twenty One

My characters only have children in the sense that I usually create parents for the characters I've already written (along with siblings and the occasional uncle, aunt, or cousin).  But no, none of my characters have children as in "people under the age of 18."  I do not write child characters very often because I don't remember my own childhood very well (the way I felt and behaved, I mean), and so when I do, they're usually very heavily based on the actual children I do know.

Writing Meme - Day Twenty

My favorite character interactions to write are the type where one character thinks one thing while another character thinks another, with neither of them realizing this.  I'm also pretty fond of when one character does something that seems out of character for them, and the other characters all are "What the-?" at them.  Not to mention the occasional random bursting into song (with optional choreography).

Writing Meme - Day Nineteen

Probably Claudia from my 2007 NaNoWriMo novel.  While she didn't necessarily shove her way into the spotlight for the entire novel, she definitely dominated any scene she was in.  She was a very flamboyant character, which made her fun to think up dialogue for, and had this kind of air where you didn't know what she was thinking (quite purposefully on her part).  Considering that she was merely supposed to be a boss for the main character, she really came into her own.

Writing Meme - Day Eighteen

I really don't have a lot of antagonists in my works, I have suddenly realized, as the closest thing I have in my recent stories is a shadowy organization that I never got around to fleshing out (in my 2007 NaNoWriMo novel).  So the position of favorite antagonist goes to Ocirne almost by default, though I would probably have chosen him anyway, for the reasons I posted in Day Four.  To recap (and add some new stuff), in case you don't want to go back, he was a fun character to work with, was unabashedly evil, had a Sdrawkcab Name, and had a lair in Bermuda.  Seriously, if I was evil, I would totally have a lair there.

Writing Meme - Day Seventeen

I tend to like most of my protagonists, but if I had to choose an absolute favorite, I'd say Ramona from my 2009 NaNoWriMo (and not just because that's the most recent one).  She's a little more down-to-earth than most of my characters, I guess, and she was just a lot of fun to write, although looking back on her on now, it's pretty obvious that she's got more of my characteristics than most.  That's probably because this was the first NaNo that I managed to set in present day-ish (which is why her portions of the novel are littered with pop culture references, which are good for wordcount).

Writing Meme - Day Sixteen

I do write romantic relationships in my stories, though I don't think I do that great a job of them, since I'm not very romantic myself.  But I do a lot of shipping in the media I enjoy (as you may have noticed around here), so it naturally follows that I'd want to hook up my characters.  As for how "far" I'm willing to go, I've never had any characters go beyond first base, now that I think about it, though second and third are occasionally implied.

Writing Meme - Day Fifteen

I honestly cannot think of anyone I want to write about. I don't tend to go finding out much about authors, and I really very rarely wind up reading more than one book by any given author. So instead, I'll write a little bit about John Green, since I got to see him this past Saturday. I've actually only read one of his books (one and half, sort of, but I'll get to that), An Abundance of Katherines, which was one of the 35 or so books that I had to read for a class on Young Adult materials.  I thought the book was pretty good, but I didn't go seeking out any more of his stuff, mostly because at the time I had plenty of other books to read (to clarify, there weren't any assigned books, but we had to read three books each in specific categories, like romance, historical fiction, etc.)
Skip ahead a little bit, and somewhere after that, my younger sister discovered John Green through his video blog and became a big fan of his, so much so that she got his new book (Paper Towns) when it came out, and then when she found out that he was coming near us for a book signing for his latest, co-written, book (Will Grayson, Will Grayson), she had to go.  And she wanted me to come along with her.  And since I'd liked the one book of his I'd read, I agreed.  My husband also came along, though he hadn't even heard of John Green and was just there for me.  The signing was fun, since he and the his co-author, David Levithan, answered questions and did readings from the book, and they're just fun guys in general (or so I take it from this one appearance).  Strangely enough, it turned out that I had also read one of David Levithan's books during that same YA class, Boy Meets Boy.  So I thought it was kind of neat that here I was, pretty much by chance, getting a book signed by two authors whose books I had read so close to each other back in 2007.  Life can be pretty weird sometimes.

Writing Meme - Day Fourteen

I have never mapped anything out for my stories, actually.

Writing Meme - Day Thirteen

I usually just write my own culture. I don't think I'd be comfortable writing about another. Another reason why I usually fail at worldbuilding.

Writing Meme - Day Twelve

I always fail at worldbuilding, but I guess I did a little better at it in my 2008 NaNoWriMo novel, since I had to deal with a number of different worlds. Nothing really staggering, though.

Writing Meme - Day Eleven

I don't really have a favorite, and if I have a least favorite, I certainly don't remember.

Sorry some of these aren't very interesting....