Despite being a day “off” today it certainly was mixed with more interruptions and less writing time though I have done double time and I think I’ve made up for that.

I have brought my present-day main characters back to the nursing home for a second meeting with the man who was six years old in 1947 and he’s sharp and he’s got a sharp tongue and, after all these years, is just looking for some action anywhere he can get it.  I have really loved writing his dialogue being kind and being snappy and having no issue snapping his fingers and bossing around an orderly to bring water for his guests and himself.

When I create characters at the start of a new project I simply create a person with a name that I usually struggle to come up with.  When working in the past I need to be wary of the names that would have been in then as opposed to now.  My character from the present is Haven but my character from the past is Lizzie short for Elizabeth.  I have had to choose names like Leroy and Hannah and Peter from the past and so I have used names like Haven and Ethan to really differentiate between the time periods.

I digress… I simply give them a name and hair colour, eye colour and height and they take on the rest as the story goes on.  My dialogue usually starts off very choppy until the characters come into their own and then it takes off.  Editing is so important because it allows me to then alter dialogue in those beginning choppy stages to flow better with how the character evolved.

They develop their own personality and I’m often late in providing details.  I realize that characters have backstory and they have a reason they are the way they are but I have held that off until I’m at this point in the story.

It’s so much fun having watched these static “idea on paper” characters evolve.  I am now at 43, 651 words and I will likely take that to 44,000 words this evening before I quit.  I have another surprise for them to discover and it’s going to be the lead-in to the end of my story.

I’m excited to be getting to this point… that many words over 185 pages.  I have a legal-size outline of the changes I have to make in order for my 1947 character to get his wish and not take a fatal shot.  Those notes won’t really matter so much until the editing phase and I’ve implemented what I had to into recent pages.

It’s been quite a ride and I hope this continues. I’m scrambling to get this done because I need to come up with another episode for the newspaper now that it has gone to print and I need to make my mind available for that.  I think I’m struggling because I’m so deep into this story right now that I can’t surpass it… it has taken over and my mind needs to get it to the end!