CHERRY 'N WINE, RYW related

How I prepare for writing a book (CB)

Your character always comes before your plot!

(If you want your readers to stay interested in what's happening they have to care about who it's happening to.)

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Now, I know sometimes making a book is exciting! Trust me, but there's no point on making a book when the characters are boring.

You can have the best plot known to man, super exciting but if you want your readers to continue reading; you need to character build.

Let's start with Rowan Clementine for example

Before I get deep in my book I make a profile for her.

What are rowan dislike?

She dislikes the dark, we know that.

Or at least I know that, you need to know these things because it brings your character to life.

What is rowan bad at?

She's terrible at cooking and not the best at crocheting at least for right now.

What does rowan like?

The color green, childish things, baking, crocheting, romance movies and books. Especially Twilight.

Now the core of character building had to be what does your character need to grow by the end of the book?

Rowan, in the beginning of the book tends to take shit from people. Claudia says she has a hard time ending a conversation, because she's a people pleaser. She's never selfish and she's too trusting.

This begins to backfire for her as people are walking over here, and she will need to start to get selfish in order to protect her and Abigail.

Your character is not perfect, what makes your character unlikable and does your character grow from that?

Rowan is too protective of Abigail, she thinks that shes the know all be all; or whatever it's called. Even when her love interest, Finn, is trying to Co-Parent with her, Rowan gives him a hard time.

(It's easy not to find Rowan unlikable for this because Finn can be an asshole sometimes, but it will start to get frustrating as the book comes to an end.)

Find out your characters love language and personality type.

Do a test and pretend to BE your main character, or love interest as well. And answer the questions as your character would.

Rowan's love language is quality time, gift giving, and words of affirmation.

Finn is acts of service, physical touch and quality time.

Rowan: ESFJ-T

Finn: ISFJ-T

Character profiles!

I only do character profiles to side characters like Alice, because they aren't getting the extra attention that I do with only my true main characters. (Finn and Rowan)

So I'll open a doc and write down some things, and write some sentences they will way, have said, or likely to say. So I will leave it up as they are in a scene so it's not like there's one character talking to themselves

You can tell who's who just by how they interact with other characters.

Not sure if I missed anything, but this is just a brief overview of how I build my characters.

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