My Experience Writing Cora

 I’ve hinted at the fact that writing the novel “Cora” was a unique experience for me, and I thought I would go into more detail about what I mean by that. 

    The biggest difference in writing this novel compared to the other ones that I’ve written is that I wasn’t the only one giving ideas for it. One of my friends at the time was telling me about how they had all of these ideas for a story, but lacked the ability to write it themselves. So, like the good person I am, I offered to write a story for them with their ideas. Originally, it was going to be a short story, but then I liked the idea of writing in both of the main characters' perspectives, so it was going to be a novella, and then it spiralled into a full length novel. 

    Now, I actually didn’t pick out Cora’s name. At the time of the plotting of this novel, I had a list of names that I liked, and if I’m remembering correctly, it was Cora, Catherine, Valerie, and Selena, all of which I would later use. However, I got my friend to pick from this list, and they picked Cora. My friend chose Jack, I got Selena from that list, and I think I picked Tai. He had a different name in the beginning, but it was too similar to Jack, so we changed it. I'm adding this the day I'm posting this, because trying to remember what that character's name was has been bothering me for weeks. It was Joey! But it got too confusing, hence the switch to Tai.

    So, after the character names were chosen, I dove into plotting, and this project actually changed the way that I plot my novels, because I went deeper into the characters than I had in the past. I was coming up with lists of questions to ask my friend, and taking those answers to try to plot the novel, most of which was done the same way I had been doing my outlines. 

    Something that really changed with my novel was the introduction of two new outlines: the Scene Outline and the Chapter Outline. I talked about these in a post detailing my writing process, but basically, the Scene Outline which is where I take every scene from the outline, give it a name, and then briefly describe it for myself. The Chapter Outline is where I take those scenes, put them into chapters, and title them, so there’s less thinking when I go to write. I actually can’t remember why I started doing this, but it stuck. 

    Now, something you should know about me. During the fall of 2021, I got really into my writing, and it started with NaNoWriMo (there’s a post talking about this from the early days of my blog, and there will be another one in November when I attempt it again). I mean that I was writing thousands of words a day, and I loved it. During that November, I was writing “Cora” and a project from NaNo that I’ll never release, and all I wanted to do was write “Cora”, and I think that’s why the other novel just wasn’t where I needed it to be, because I was so passionate about writing a different novel. 

And then 2022 rolled around, and I was still brutally obsessed with my writing. However, my relationship with the person consulting on it had gone downhill at this point, so I finished the novel by myself and did the editing, and then finally released it. However, I have no self control, and ended up really diving into the sequel. Here we are, nearly three years after I started “Cora”, and there’s two sequels to that novel and one prequel. 

    Now, as for having someone consulting on a novel…I don’t think I would do it again, except for with a few select people. If I ever do it again, I am absolutely not making them the main character and writing about their perfect partner, because that got all kinds of weird for me. I did love seeing how another person would describe characters and events, but I’m very neurotic when it comes to plotting my novels, so I wanted to do them in a certain way, and it was a lot to expect of a person that was unfamiliar with that. I don’t regret it, because that was a really special experience for me, but I wouldn’t do it again, especially with the love interest stuff. 

    So, not only was “Cora” a new experience in terms of me not writing it alone, but it also permanently altered the way I write novels. I love that novel with all of my heart, and I hope that it shows. 

That's all for now, folks!

-C

The Importance of Side Characters

In a post talking about real people influencing your characters, I talked about how I preferred basing side characters off of real people more than I like writing them as main characters, and it got me thinking about how important good side characters are to a story. So, that’s what we’re talking about today. 

In a writing class I took in the spring, the instructor talked about how side characters have to serve a purpose to be in the story, meaning that they have to affect the main character in some way. I really liked this definition of a side character, because it helps frame why they're important while also giving me a way to decide if the side characters in my stories are actually relevant. 

Now obviously, there’s different kinds of side characters, like comedic relief, an antagonist character, or the supportive best friend. I’m not a huge fan of comedic relief characters, but sometimes they’re needed. If you’re looking for an example of this, Mushu from “Mulan” is a great one. I write a lot of best friend characters, and even though I have a sister, I don’t write siblings very often, because it’s another whole character I have to not only create, but keep track of in the story. 

Quick sneak peek side note! I’m currently plotting a novel that has a big friend group in it, meaning there’s eight characters that I’m using regularly, plus parents on top of that, and I recently decided to give the female main character a sister inspired by mine, who is a wonderful human being and I’m incredibly lucky to have her in my life. 

Now, it’s no surprise that I’ve worked on a lot of projects, so I thought I would tell you about my favorite side characters that I’ve written. First and foremost, my favourite side character is Selena from The Cora Anthology. I love her so much to the point that she got her own spinoff novel. She was a past love interest turned antagonist in the first book of the main trilogy, and for some reason, I just loved digging into her psyche and figuring out why she did what she did. Another side character I liked writing in that series was Cora’s brother, because he just had a really interesting arc to me (I know I created it, but ignore that), and his changes throughout the series were really fun to write. Another side character I liked writing is actually in one of my unreleased novels, but at the time that you’re reading this, I’ll be editing it, so mild spoiler. However, this character is in Healing x3 Part Two, and she’s based on my cousin that passed away. She’s named after her and everything. Nora just needed a friend in the story, and my cousin was the most outgoing, friendly person I’ve ever met, second only to my sister. The final side character that I’m going to talk about is in the novel I’m currently writing. The main character, Catalina, suffers from endometriosis, just like me, and her boyfriend’s best friend is those negative thoughts and comments that people have said to me about my endometriosis. Bo accuses her of faking her pain for her boyfriend’s attention, just pretending to be sick, etc., and it was actually at the recommendation of my therapist to write a character like this as I was struggling with comments people had made to me in my past about my chronic pain. 

So, not only are side characters important to a story, but a lot of my side characters have meaning to me as well. I could talk endlessly about--and to--my fictional characters, and you’re going to be getting some more posts on that soon. 

 That's all for now, folks!

-C

My Writing Binder

 Not gonna lie, this is a really nerdy post, but it’s a huge part of my writing process so I thought I should share that with all of you. This isn’t a fancy name for something else; this is quite literally a three inch binder that I cart around with me that has everything I need for multiple of my projects. 

So, how did I get the idea to start carting around this binder? First of all, let’s back up a second. I used to have a notebook that I would write down all of my writing ideas down in, and then I could transfer them to their respective notebooks when I got home. This started when I was in high school, and it worked okay, but I would’ve much rather just had that project’s notebook with me. Second, I was finding that I had some downtime at work, and it was getting difficult to keep track of everything that I was writing down, and then I would want to look back at my notebooks to reference something, and I just wouldn’t have them with me. Thus, the writing binder was made.

When I first made my writing binder, I took all of the various notes I had, plus the notebook for each of my projects, and put them in a binder with dividers for each project. I also put in some sticky notes and little pieces of paper in case I had general notes to write down, and I began hauling that thing around. 

Now, one thing that is essential to each of my projects is a specific notebook dedicated to each of my projects where the bulk of my notes about a project goes, but there’s also various pieces of paper behind those notebooks, each holding a variety of information. Side note about the notebooks, I always pick a specific colour theme for my projects, so that means a pen colour, a folder cover in my Google Drive, and as close to a notebook colour as I can get. Some may think of this as neurotic, I like to think of it as organized. 

However, one thing I am nitpicky on about my binder is when a project gets added to it. I’ve talked in previous posts about my Whimsy Pages, which is where all of my ideas get added to for a project before anything starts getting plotted. Not only does that need to be done for a project to get added, but I also like knowing that there are still ideas that I want to keep working on. For example, I did a Whimsy Page for two project ideas I had at once: one was a coming of age healing novel, and one was a fantasy project. However, I couldn’t get the first project out of my head, and soon a notebook was started before I brought it into the binder. With the fantasy project, I did the Whimsy Page, got really excited about it…and nothing has come of it yet. Granted, I am working on six projects right now, so there isn’t really space for that kind of commitment at the moment, but still. 

Honestly, my writing binder just serves as a way for me to have all of my notes in one spot that’s easy to take with me. I’ve recently upgraded to a bigger binder as there were too many projects in my old one, but other than that, not much has changed with the binder. 

The nice thing about the binder is that I’m able to add or remove things from it very easily. When a project is done and removed from the binder (which hasn’t happened), I keep the papers, either by putting it into a different binder, or storing it in my filing cabinet. Don’t worry, I’m pretty good about getting all of my notes into my computer (right now, I’m seriously slacking on that, but again, I’m working on six projects), so I don’t really need to hold onto the paper copies of all of my notes, but I think it’s really cool to see how my brain was working when I was writing a project, even if it’s a total mess. 

So, yeah. That’s my writing binder. I use that thing every single day, and actually, one of my new projects had to get its own binder because I wanted to plot a bunch of lore in the background, which I’m sure you’ll hear more about later. 

That's all for now, folks!

-C

How I Create My Writing Playlists

I mentioned a while back that I love having playlist pages in my novels. The reason that I started wanting this in all of my books is because of the novel “Everything, Everything” by Nicola Yoon, since she has a list of songs at the end of the book that make her think of her novel, and I wanted to do that, too. So, I thought I would share with you how I pick the songs for my playlists. 

First of all, for some playlists, I make them after I’m done writing. The novel that comes to mind for me is “I Hate My Roommate”, since when I was writing it, I wasn’t really big on having writing playlists yet, so I made one afterwards. The songs still fit for the novel, but it was made afterwards. 

I first started making writing playlists for the novel “Cora”, because I was forcing one of my friends to make me a playlist in exchange for me writing a novel with their ideas (no, this was not a fair payment, and yes, there is a post coming about this in the near future). I started with an original character playlist creator, which you can checkout in the backs of almost all of my novels. This was fine, but I found that it was really repetitive when I was picking songs, and I wanted to do something different. 

So, when I was coming up with ideas for “Healing x3 Part One”, I decided that I wanted to include five to ten songs that represented how Nora felt about each of the male characters. I found that this allowed me to include more songs that represented the characters and the vibe of the story, rather than just a random song the character would listen to at a party, which is one of the songs that the OC playlist creator had me do. 

As for my cowboy novel, I made the playlist based on vibes. There’s a lot of country love songs on that playlist, which is not really my vibe, but I do like the playlist. It feels more fitting for the project than the OC creator I was using, so I like that a lot more. 

For the new projects I’m plotting, I think I’m going off the rails with it. One of the novels I’m working on, the male main character has a motorcycle and is into 80s music (I’m a simple woman, don’t question my motives), so on top of making a playlist for the project itself, I’m also going to be releasing a playlist for what he would listen to on his bike rides, which also includes bangers from the 2010s. But, something interesting I’m doing with this particular playlist is dividing it into two sections: songs that remind her of Archer (the male MC) and songs that remind him of Valerie (the female MC). I’m having a lot of fun finding songs for each of them. Music is also a big thing for Valerie, so there will be a playlist of all the songs she's listening to throughout the novel.

The other novel I’m plotting I’m making like a movie soundtrack for it, so if you listen to the playlist from start to finish in the order that it’s in the playlist, then you’ll get the emotional vibe of the novel. Yes, it’s a lot of work, but there’s already so many songs that I want to use, and I think it will be a unique way of showing the vibe to my readers. 

Making writing playlists is actually really fun, once you figure out what theme you’re going for, and for me, it changes novel to novel.

That's all for now, folks!

-C