Writer ask game: 9, 15, 19
9. Which OC is an absolute pain to write?Most villains are a pain to write, because I have to work to make them unlikable. That’s not a super fun chore for me. This is a tough question for me because if I dislike writing a named OC, I cut them or make them more interesting. Landen is one I’m struggling with right now. He’s too flat for me, and I haven’t been feeling any motivation to develop his character. A boring answer, because he’s a boring character.
15. How do you name settings/characters?For characters, I have a couple of ways. I usually use name websites and either look it up by meaning (”Hmmm, gonna see what good ironic names for a vampire are… Bian means life, that’s hilarious”) or I choose a letter that I like for that character and look up all those names for ideas. For fantasy names I do the fantasy name generators for inspiration, and I use those also for places most of the time. One loose rule I have is that I don’t like characters with overly long, weird names, so if I can help it they’re either common names or short odd names (Fen, Ke, Tierr, Xi, Tala… all relatively short names).
19. What does your editing/revising process look like?Currently, what happens is I write all the fun and necessary bits, and then stitch it together. Then I don’t look at it for a couple of days to try and shake off some of the familiarity. If it’s a chapter thing, I read all of the chapters up to that point to check for flow/information. Then I read it once a day for about a week (or until I get sick of it). At that point, I’m checking for typos and grammar, but also for continuity, common sense, and adding foreshadowing/taking out fluff. (I’ve been on that part for my latest chapter about 2 weeks now, ugh.)