Character-Building

   My biggest writing problem is not knowing what to write. So my brother-in-law told me I should start out by making up a new character, because once I know my character, the plot and all the rest should fall in place a lot more easily. At first I thought about just going back and learning more about some of my old characters like Wynna at dragon riding school and Helen from The Umbrella, but I didn't really feel like picking up old stories and plus, that's the easy way.

   So I decided to go with inventing new ones. From Monday to today I've gotten two "gesture sketches" or basic outlines.

   My first new character is a young centaur, maybe my age or younger. I'm thinking about setting him on a journey to learn about who he is. (That's the influence of my human behavior class.) I've always wanted to write a good centaur story, so that's exciting. The only problem with him is that I'm not always in the fantasy mood.
  For my second character, a customer (a nice grandpa getting ice cream for his grandchild) inspired me to branch out and try writing about someone way over my usual age range of 15-35. So an old adventurer is beginning to take shape in my imagination.

   As I'm deciding more about my characters I'm using an app called Lists for Writers, by Thinkamingo. One of the lists includes different character traits like cleverness, laziness, handsomeness, gentleness, etc. Picking out the ones I want is so fun! It's almost like shopping...