Hello writer creature of the darkness…can you believe it’s MAY ALREADY?!???
Now is a stunningly good time to panic and realise the year is nearly half over and we must write ALL THE WORDS. Or cry over all the words!! Either way!!! WORDS.
Also apologies for the unexpected Beautiful People hiatus last month. But we’re baaaaack. This time with a parent-themed edition in honour of Mother’s Day. Although, if your character doesn’t have parents, feel free to use the questions for a parental-like figure, caretaker, or guardian. OR! You can also snoop our archives and use one of the old sets of questions. Go wild, fiends.
Beautiful People is a writing blog meme which I co-host with the marvellous Sky @ Further Up and Further. We post questions at the beginning of each month (generally around the 5th) that you can answer on your own blogs! It’s designed (A) to help you get to know your characters better, and (B) share with us about your writing projects!
OH! And the linkup is open all month. And check out our FAQ page for more details and to see the archives.
DON’T FORGET TO TAKE THE BUTTON!
Or link to this page so anyone can join in!
- Overall, how good is their relationship with their parents?
- Do they know both their biological parents? If not, how do they cope with this loss/absence and how has it affected their life?
- How did their parents meet?
- How would they feel if they were told “you’re turning out like your parent(s)”?
- What were your character’s parents doing when they were your character’s age?
- Is there something they adamantly disagree on?
- What did the parent(s) find hardest about raising your character?
- What’s their most vivid memory with their parental figure(s)?
- What was your character like as a baby/toddler?
- Why and how did the parents choose your character’s name?
I’ve decided to do this twitter WIP challenge all may, and so far it has convinced me to work on a little of my story every day, though I’m not sure that I’m ready to tell it. (so many characters are currently called ______. Anyway, hopefully I can give Lighter Places some love this month. Apart from that, I’ve been idly writing a play, but I need to figure it out a lot more, and also doing some poetry and short stories. But I’m defintiely going to do Beautiful People this month. I’ve been trying to avoid plot bunnies, but I may end up chasing some of them in Lighter Places (involving driving a scooter in traffic and younger siblings, among other things) I usually have parents involved in some way, because whether we like it or not, parents matter.
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Oh yes that twitter WIPJoy is really cool!! And I 1000% relate to characters named ___ because that is my life too. (Seriously though, why are characters so hard to name!?? Why can’t they come prepackaged with a name and a helpful personality. Sheesh.)
Parents do matter! I’m pretty guilty of ending up with stories without parental figures but I’M TRYING TO BREAK THAT STEREOTYPE NOW! I think it’s really important to have more stories with good parents in them. *nods*
I usually slam out manuscripts but this year has been soooo sluggish for me! BUT I am making some progress lately with my WIP so I’m trying to keep positive, haha. Ooh, I LOVE this theme (and I totally forgot Mother’s Days is so close!!!) I don’t think I’ll have time to link up with you this month, but do you mind if I use this to flesh out some of my character’s backstories? 🙂
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OF COURSE! The questions are for anyone to use, anytime!! GO WILD, MY FRIEND. And also *passes you coffee cake for delicious caffeinated motivation* Honestly last year was a sluggish one for me, but I’ve been rather motived this year. Up until this last month haha.😂 But good luck with this current WIP of yours!!
hmmmmm………. my character is an orphan, so it would be a mix of her actual parents and her parental figure. hmmmmmm…
Most crazily, ~Olive
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That’s cool! The questions are always open for interpretation!
Oooh! As someone who puts a lot of emphasis on families in her stories, I quite like this theme! Now, I just have to decide who to do it for . . .
My protagonist’s parents are dead. Although, a huge chunk of the plot only happens BECAUSE of her mother’s death, so I suppose the relationship they shared is pretty important, and she does have an older sister who takes over as a sort-of parental figure, so I might be able to give these a go. 🙂
Camp NaNo was a complete bust. Mainly because I forgot that final essays are released around that time, so I didn’t have all the time to write that I thought I would. We will never speak of it again.
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Yay! I’m glad! I honestly have a bad habit of writing stories without active parent figures. 🙈🙊 But I’m working on it!! The book I’m working on right now has a really nice dad and ahhh I’m happy.🙈🙊
I’M SORRY FOR YOU ABOUT NANO. But hey! There’s always other times! And eeep, I hope the essays went well though.
I think I’ve only ever written one story where the character didn’t have any parents. It was my first full-length novel, and of course the MC was a special-snowflake orphan raised by her grandfather. LOL… Tropey.
No Camp NaNo for me. I’ve yet to finish regular NaNoWriMo. Bleh. Too much pressure! (It’s not like I can’t write 50K in a month. I’ve done it before… just not with a deadline!)
Ahh, we all write tropey books on occasion. 😂 My first book was SO tropey haha, but we start somewhere! And I totally get that…pressure and deadlines don’t work for everyone. 😜
Haha, I don’t do these but I feel like I should do this one for some reason. I’m probably finally going insane… Alas.
Ugh, campnano. It killed me and I failed it. Lose-lose situation.
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Ooh! I think I’m going to have my two protagonists from my camp novel do this one. They both have completely different relationships with their parents, one of them having none with rather high opinions of them, and another with parents but who couldn’t care any less about them (even though they’re pretty great parents). Hope that made sense…
I usually have my characters have parents, though I have a really bad tendency to make them distant, but I’m getting better at that.
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Oh that will be super interesting to see them contrasted!! LOVE IT.
And I totally understand. 😂 I actually generally don’t write good parents into my books, but I’m trying to fix that!! Good parents are excellent in books!
My current WIP is currently filled with orphans… But there are guardian-type beans, so I SHALL CONQUER, MWAHAHAHAHA!
I did do Camp NaNoWriMo!! I won with a goal of 60 hours, and a vow never to track by hours again… And I’ve currently got a wonderful plot bunny bouncing around in my head, and it’s completely distracting me from my current WIP, which is NOT GOOD… #help…
These questions look like so much fun!!! I can’t wait to answer them. XD
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YAY FOR GUARDIANS AT LEAST!! We must give our little orphan characters some kindness at some point. (I say to myself since I’m always killing off my parents as well haha.) 😂
CONGRATS ON DOING CAMP!! And omg I love tracking hours! I just started this year and I find it intensely interesting to know how long a book takes me.😂 And also the pressure is awful and I die…buuuut, minor details. :’)
I had every intention of doing Camp NaNo and… it just didn’t happen, haha. Oh well.
As of now, my writing projects just suddenly popped out of me because I really have been wanting to write fluff stories (because who doesn’t like those) so I spent a few hours yesterday outlining two stories of fluff and it has me all kinds of excited! One between two nerdy best friends who cosplay together and have been in love with each other for years, but neither has admitted it; and then the other between two boys in their school’s choir, one who’s in a band and not out except with his mom and bandmates, and the other who also isn’t out at all. But omg what I wrote has me so giddy excited to write these stories!
I actually am going to incorporate their parents into each story, and they’re going to be great parents. I mean, of course there’s always going to be problems because teens don’t always get along with parents, but still.
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There’s always Camp in July!😂 Or just writing…anytime right?!
YAS for happy fluff stories though and the premise sounds so cute and I hope it’s super fun to write. 😍
Such a good list of questions! — and so relevant to the characters in the story I am (now desperately) trying to tell. That is a screenplay, F.Y.I. about four fellas, all who meet in a well-known an disparaged U.S. war effort (guess which one) and who all have parental “issues” as they say. Makes me think-but have already pretty much clarified relationships with their past, particularly as relates to parents, one parent surrogate (a grandmother), etc. Now to get this into the dialogue…! Their character sketches are already pretty long-scenes all over the place, and don’t want to be a (poor cousin to) Fitzgerald who wrote and wrote, but never actually produced a decent screenplay…any suggestions y’all?!?