In my last blog I talked about planning or not planning each chapter. The most important thing is that you know how your story is going to end. Little Red Riding Hood is going to be rescued by the forester and Grandmama will be caught along with her accomplice the Big Bad Wolf.
Your readers will only be interested in this story if they have some kind of feeling for your heroine. If she is a cardboard figure, without any interesting traits, then they are going to close your book after a couple of chapters. "I couldn't get into this" is a common remark on reviews although the reasons why are not always explained.
First of all, though, you have to have your characters lined up in your head and each one will be different from the other, will speak and think differently. So you have quite a bit of work to do. The best way to get it all straight is to use index cards, loose sheets of paper, or a tidy notebook and start writing down names and ideas for the people in your story. The following are obviously just suggestions to get you started.
Red Riding Hood is 18 years old, goes to college, is bright and friendly and very kind (this last is demonstrated by her bringing food to her grandmother). She is of medium height, blonde hair, blue eyes (obviously she can be anything you like: dark-skinned, black hair, brown eyes, or red-haired with freckles and green eyes or tall and skinny or small and plump - it is your call).
She is headstrong, likes to have her own way. Is unhappy when her father re-marries.
She likes to sing aloud as she walks through the woods. You will need some time to think up other stuff so just leave the description for now and go on to the next important character.
The Forester works in the woods looking after the trees and wild animals. He is tall and muscular. He has been in love with Little Red Riding Hood for months now, loves to hear her sing. But he's a rough diamond so feels he can't approach this girl. Again, leave this and go back to it later on.
Next comes Grandmama and then The Big Bad Wolf. These last two are the villains in the piece and give the central plot of the whole novel so you need to spend time on 1) motive for what they plan on doing and 2) their characters and why they got to be like this. In my last post we decided that Grandmama is the step mother pretending to be ill, she wants to get rid of Little Red Riding Hood in case she inherits her father's fortune. Every baddie has to have a redeeming feature to make them realistic. (Remember the James Bond villain with the cat on his lap?) Grandmama maybe feeds orphaned squirrels or looks after a sick stray cat.
The Big Bad Wolf is an ex-con who Grandmama has hired to kill Red Riding Hood. He is going to be a violent person but you can give him some redeeming feature. He is being paid for his work but just supposing he falls for Grandmama and hopes to persuade her to run away with him. Let your imagination work here. You'll end up understanding what makes your characters tick and you'll even develop a bit of sympathy for the baddies.
Choosing names can be a headache. Half way through, you might suddenly decide that calling the forester Hugo is not one of your best ideas. Remember, you can change all the names in the middle of the story. With a click on the Word Find/Replace feature it has never been easier. - just be sure to change them in your notes so you don't get confused.
When you have named all your story people return to the notes you made on their characters and add or subtract what feels right.
The next step is starting to write the novel. One more thing: you can change all the rules as you go along. Whatever works for you is the right way of doing things.
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