NaNoWriMo-Character Interviews

Hello Writers and Readers! Happy Monday!

I hope you’re all having a good week, viagra 100mg immersed in the world of reading and writing, for sale and enjoying the fun of being a part of a nerd world.

I’m working hard on my novel, pounding out as many words as I can. I’m a little over 30K right now, which leaves me at about 15K-ish for the month. It also has a title now too! It is called The Reawakened, and I’m so excited about my awesome title, that I’m just dying to wake up every day and write!

In today’s NaNoWriMo, we are going to learn a little more about my characters, Katy and Ash. You can read about the basic 411 of them, and the other characters in my novel, in this post here.

For now, let’s dive into the character interviews. I had never done this before, until my good friend, Hayley, from Geek and Book Nerd, asked me to do one to help her in her school assignment. I realized how much help it was, to sort of break down my character. I surprised myself in interviewing Katy then and now I’m hoping to learn about her and Ash in these interviews.

I hope you enjoy!

Katy Valentine Interview 

Tell us about yourself. 

My name is Katy Valentine. I’m 18 years, living in Manhattan, NY, and attending St. Joseph’s Prep as a high school senior. I live with my dad, who is a New York City cop, and spend two holidays a year with my mother in a small town called Constance in Nebraska.

What makes you happy? 

Reading. Escaping into a world that is so unlike our own, even the world that now exists, with the reawakened running over the world. I used to spend a lot of days immersed in science fiction and fantasy books and movies and TV shows. I also love to dance.

What makes you afraid?

Before the virus and the reawakened, I would have said, I fear losing myself, of trusting someone as much as my dad trusted my mom. Now I fear for my life, and I fear for the lives of those who I’m trying to survive with.

What are you hopes and dreams? 

I hope to survive. I hope that there will be a time when I can pick up a book and read it and enjoy it again. I want to be able to go dancing again, and I want to be able to go to a baseball game. I want to get married and have kids and go back to school. My dream would be that things would go back to normal. I wish the reawakened would go away.

What is the plan? With the reawakened? 

To survive? I don’t know. It seems like everyone has  plan, and a different plan at that. Some people say the plan is to just survive. Some people say there’s a place to escape to, where you’re supposed to safe. I don’t know. My immediate plan is to NOT shoot Ash in the face.

Who is Ash? 

Ash is my next door neighbor. Well, he was my next door neighbor. He’s kind of the bane of my existence. He drives me insane, which is kind of hard to deal with because he’s also kind of ridiculously good looking and its intimidating. He is pretty much impossible to take seriously because he’s always making jokes.

Do you like Ash? 

Nate is a complicated person. The guy is ridiculously good looking, and he makes me laugh. My best friend Madison would say that I’m in love with him, but the guy is infuriating. Cocky, can’t take anything seriously, and has been driving me insane since we were five years old.

I’m sending some denial. Are you sure you don’t like Ash Matthews?

Okay, let’s be clear on something: everyone likes Ash Matthews. How can you not like Ash Matthews? The guy is smoking hot. Do you know how many dark haired guys there are with blue eyes that pale? Or ones that have flat stomachs, and impressive arms? Yeah, I didn’t think so. But he’s Ash! He can’t take anything seriously, everything is a joke to him. He eats all the rations, and he’s always touching me.

I’m really thinking that there is a lot of denial with you. 

Can we maybe talk about something else?

What do you think your strengths and weaknesses are?

I’m stubborn and determined, which really could go either way, as a strength or a weakness. I know how to fight, due to years of my dad paying for kickboxing and karate and self-defense classes. I’m fast, I think I can run really fast. But I’m terrible with a gun, despite hundreds of dollars for lessons.

What are some things you miss about the world before? 

New York pizza. My dog Bandit. Going to a Mets game.

Ash Matthews Interview

Ash’s interview is shorter, because the story is all in Katy’s point of view and anything Ash says will be too revealing to the story.

Tell us about yourself. 

I’m Ash Matthews. I’m eighteen years old, and I am a senior at St. Joseph’s Prep. I’ve lived in Manhattan since I was nine years old, and before that, I lived in Boston, with my parents, who are lawyers. I play both football and baseball at the school, captain for both. I’m a quarterback and a pitcher.

What makes you happy? 

Playing sports, watching sports. Making a play that makes people cheer because it makes me feel good. And I like seeing Katy. I like hanging out with my friends. I love making people laugh.

What makes you afraid? 

Not being important. I don’t like the idea of being insignificant. Sometimes I don’t know what the point of being here is if you aren’t doing something important. That’s hard to deal with right now because all I’m trying to do is survive. My life is important and I’m glad I’m surviving but I wish there was more to it.

What are your hopes and dreams? 

I wanted to make something of my athletic ability. It probably sounds stupid but I had hoped I could get a scholarship for football or baseball and continue playing sports. Sports seem so insignificant now but it was what I was good at. Now I just want to get to a place where I feel safe, and where the people that I love feel safe.

What do you think of Katy? 

Katy is an amazing person, and I don’t think she sees that sometimes. She’s strong, and stubborn as hell, but she’s resilient. If there is any person in this world that I’d have to have by my side, its definitely her.

What do you miss about the world before the reawakened? 

I miss my friends, and I miss the laughter and the humor that used to exist. Every time any one laughs now, its like…it feels wrong. It doesn’t feel right with the way the world has been. I miss being happy and making people laugh.

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I hope you all enjoyed reading and learning more about Katy and Ash! They are becoming so important to me, and I can’t wait til you can learn more about the both of them in the actual novel.

Check back later this week for more posts on NaNoWriMo, including advice on tackling writer’s block and maybe, if you’re lucky, I’ll post a very small excerpt to The Reawakened!

Happy Writing everyone!

What A Nerd Girl Says Celebrates NaNoWriMo with a Twist!

So I’ve learned fairly recently that November is National Novel Writing Month, physician also known as NaNoWriMo.

And I thought, discount wow, symptoms that’s REALLY cool. A whole month dedicated to the writing of a novel.

There’s a whole website for it too, which you can check out here.

However, the more I checked it out, the more that I realized…its just not for me. I don’t really agree with it.

See, the idea of it is to write any entire 50,000 page novel in the span of one month. And I just really understand that. For one thing, I’m a busy girl. It will never take me only a couple months to write a novel. Ever. It just won’t. I have this blog to run, I have friends and my boyfriend. I love going to various events like book signings and movie premieres, and I like watching my television shows. Plus, I’m a full time student and November is a big month, with finals just right around the corner. I can’t risk that kind of crazy haha.

But I also just think the idea of writing a novel in one month is silly. Now maybe you don’t agree with me, and you’re taking part in the official NaNoWriMo and that’s okay! More power to you. But its just not me. I don’t agree with the idea of rushing a novel, and a short one at that.

And okay, I can see you all getting snippy at me. I know that the sort of novel you’re writing can determine the word count that you typically would write. If you’re writing a middle grade, 50,000 probably tends to be on the higher end. If you’re writing a YA, it *could* be okay, but its on the low end, definitely. If its an adult novel, its definitely too short.

Plus…like I said, it just feels WAY too rushed to me. There doesn’t seem to be any emphasis on actually writing a GOOD novel, more just writing to reach the finish line of 50K words. You get a nice little certificate and all of that. But you could literally just write the same paragraph, hell, even the same word, over and over again and that could be counted. There’s no judging. There’s no learning or growing or anything. Its more…who can writing 50K words that show some resemblance to an actual story in a month long period. It just doesn’t seem to be…productive or efficient or really helpful in any way.

Now I’m not insulting it, so I hope the people of NaNoWriMo don’t come after me, but I just don’t really like the idea of it. Its not me, and its not a lot of writers.

But I decided that as an aspiring novelist, as a writer, I couldn’t just ignore the idea. Even though its an internet based thing, I think its a great idea. Even though writers should write, write, write, all the time, any day and any month of the year, a month to refocus and regroup on a novel, and set those goals and meet some goals is a great idea.

So I’ve kind of created my own NaNoWriMo. My goal for November as a novel writing month is to focus on my novel, to set a goal of a certain amount of words that I want to reach and then focus on different parts of writing a novel. I want to test my characters, I want to develop strategies for writing and overcoming writer’s block. I want you guys to get to know my story, and in turn, I’ll become more confident in my own story.

So basically I’m going to spend this month, honing in on my focus on my novel, and getting better at it, and hopefully helping you guys to get better too!

My goal is to be at 20K words by the end of the month, and to have developed most of the story, in my head, or in a plot outline, so that I’ll have direction for the rest of it. I’m aiming on about 80K words, so I definitely think I can do this, and I already have about 5,000 written so let’s see if we can do this.

Throughout the month, I’ll be posting updates on my own novel writing, here and on Facebook and Twitter (so follow me on both!) and I’ll be exploring different strategies, advices and ideas to help get over some of the bumps in the road in writing a novel.

I hope you can join me on this journey! Feel free to write along with me, as I spend the month of November working on my novel and becoming a better writer :)

My Posts for NaNoWriMo

November 1st: Where I Write

November 4th: Meeting the Main Characters of my Novel: Katy, Ash, Madison, Frank, Jennifer, and Razi

November 6th: Best Writing Advice I’ve Been Given

November 8th: Having a Book Bible

November 11th: Character Interviews

November 13th: How to Deal with Writer’s Block

November 15th: Its the Halfway Point! Update, Struggles/Successes!

November 18th: Writing Inspirations

November 20th: Character Playlists

November 22nd: Free Write: My Characters Celebrate Thanksgiving

November 25th: Meeting my Characters in Artwork

November 27th: Setting up and Meeting Goals

November 29th: My Experience with NaNoWriMo

November 30th: Excerpt from my Novel…So Far

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Happy Writing Everyone!

Interviewing My Main Character

Hey ya’ll. How’s it going? I hope you’re all good on this midweek, viagra Wednesday afternoon :) Its raining here in California (I know!) so I’m enjoying a day inside.

I wanted to share a little something with you today. My dear friend, Hayley, who runs her own blog, Geek and Book Nerd, had to do these assignments for her creative writing class, and one of the ways she said we could get to know our characters better was to interview them.

Now I had heard that before, but I had never really taken it seriously. But as I scoured the internet for examples, and for ideas, I saw that it was a practice that a lot of people used, and I really was intrigued by it. Even better, Hayley asked if I could interview one of my characters for her site, and I gladly agreed.

I’m working on two books right now. Both of them are fairly short, maybe a couple chapters each. I’m waiting for one to say “PICK ME!” and grab me, so I can focus a lot of my energy on it, and then we’ll see what goes from there. But one of those novels is my untitled zombie novel.

I know what you’re thinking: seriously, another zombie novel?

And I’m not going to sit here and tell you, oh but mine is different because…well, it IS different. Its going to have the same feel as any other zombie novel but there’s much more to the zombies that we think. My novel follows Katy Valentine, an eighteen year old senior in high school living in Brooklyn with her dad, who is the police chief. One day, an outbreak happens, and suddenly everyone is getting sick, violently sick, and the death count is getting too high to even begin to deal with the bodies. Then the bodies start to animate, they start to move, and they’re fast, and they have a hunger for human flesh. It doesn’t take long for Katy, her dad and her insufferable next door neighbor, Nate, to escape the city, to her mother’s house in the middle of nowhere Nebraska. But its not as easy as it seems. They think they’re prepared because they’ve seen zombie movies, they should know how to deal with this, but these zombies are different: they’re faster, they’re intelligent and can communicate and they work together for their one goal: human flesh.

That’s basically what I’ve got right now. I’m still narrowing down the details of the build up, the escape, all of that sort of thing, but it takes a lot of work to do that. But this exercise that Hayley had me participating in was SO helpful, and I’m glad I did it. I also found a few other tools for help in characterization, so if you’re interested, let me know!

Here’s a sneak peek at the interview between me and my main character, Katy:

Sara: Tell us a little bit about yourself

Katy: Well, my name is Katy Valentine. I’m eighteen years old, and I’m from Brooklyn, New York. I would be a senior in high school, until they blew up my high school.

Sara: Why did they blow up your high school?

Katy: Uh, have you looked out a window lately? There’s kind of been a lot of zombies wandering around.

Sara: How do you feel about the zombies?

Katy: Well, at least all those gun lessons my dad made me take to ward off, I don’t know, potential rapists and murderers  is finally paying off. I mean, I still can’t quite shoot them in the head, but I guess I’m getting closer.

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To read the rest of the interview, head on over to Hayley’s blog to check it out. You can also check out her own interviews with her characters, and also Megan from Luxen Army’s interviews as well.

Happy Writing Everyone!

Don’t forget to head to the forums to join in on the October Writing Challenge, and to discuss your own writing. I’d love to see some interviews between you and YOUR characters!