TECH: On the ocean? Nanonotes #17

[mbarker.livejournal.com]

Original posting 17 November 2010

Once upon a time, there was a character. Who had, oddly enough, a personality! And in that personality, there was some desire for new experience, for change. Some urges towards planning. Some feelings about reaching out to other people. A dash of agreeableness. And, like everyone else, there might have been a strain of neuroticism, a tendency to take things a bit too far or hard, in some areas. Put together, the character had an ocean of personality -- some openness, some conscientiousness, some extraversion, some agreeableness, and some neuroticism. High-5 for the big five!

http://community.livejournal.com/writercises/145287.html

Now the tricky part, during nanowrimo, was that this character went through some changes as the words rolled through the nanowrimo wordmill. Yes, the experiences, dilemmas, problems, and other stuff that happened along the way also caused some changes in the OCEAN. You might say there were waves on the ocean. And that character arc, as the character shifted from desiring changes to looking for more stability, or perhaps went from trying to plan everything to tackling some things as opportunities for improvisation, or decided that talking to strangers really was a good idea, or quite telling everyone yes and stood up for her own ways, or even changed from a little neurotic about spiders to being ready to squash them on sight? whatever the changes are, they're really exciting! So work the OCEAN into your story, and the waves as your character changes.

Go on, put some psychology into your story plan. And?

Write!