#madelondevreugd

[vreugd-madelon]

NaNoWriMo Update #3

As you may know, I started my first NaNoWriMo Challenge and week three has come to an end.

With the posts every Monday I will give you all an update of how my progress has been going and how far I'm off to my goal. The post of my NaNoWriMo plan can be found in this post

I have written 25.188/37.000 words (The 37k might even be too much). Chapters 12, 13 & 14 have been finished this week. I'm currently working on the last chapter, number 15. This week has been pretty good to me. I've deleted a chapter that didn't really fit into my story, so that means that I only have 1 chapter to write before the end of the month. I know that NaNoWriMo is officially 50.000 words, but I'd rather finish the first draft of my book than reach their word count. Luckily I'm well on my way to accomplish my goal.

To get a visual view of my progress I'll keep up with a tracker, so here it is.

The big round are on the days I'd finish a chapter. All credits for the tracker go to Kara Benz @bohoberry

If you have any questions send me an ask! If you want a daily update, please follow me on twitter

[vreugd-madelon]

How to Reveal a Character trait!

In an earlier post I told you about how to hide major character traits for your reader. In this post I'm planning to tell you about how to reveal that trait to your readers.

Again this is post is not meant for the reveal of a plot twist at the end, because those will take more effort to write. Perhaps in the future there will be a post covering the art of plottwists.

I will use one of the examples of the previous post, a vampire. This is because of om my extensive research on that particular subject.

So here will follow a few tips and trick you can apply to your very own story: #1: Have a symptome of the trait stand out within a chapter. ex: vampire is invited to a thanksgiving party, where there is a multiple course meal and they are expected to eat. This will add social pressure, but most stories have some kind of rule against showing who they really are. In this way you can also show how resourcefull that particular character is.

#2: reveal it in an argument. This is what I have done within my own story. Two characters had a fight about the character trait the MC had always hidden form others, when the emotions ran wild within the argument, she just blurted out that it wasn't her fault for being different. In this way is will also come as a shock for the reader, because your hope is that within the argument the readers emotion will also increase. ex: "I love him for the way he is!" MC yells. "But you can never be with a human!" Other yells back. "It wasn't me who asked to be changed into a goddamn vampire!" MC yells.

#3: Let them receive/see something that will aid/constrict their trait. This might be difficult to apply, but there are certainly ways. The difficulty may even depend on the particular genre that you are writing in, so it may not work for every one. ex: MC sees a local news station that reports on a vicious monster near town. Then it cuts to a segment of him/her feeding on a corpse.

I hope that this may have been useful, but as always: If you have any questions send me an ask!