Exploring Character and Setting at the Same Time
Sometimes, either before you begin a novel or between edits of a novel, you realize you need to learn more about your characters or your world before you can dive into the main story. Although it might be tempting to rush into the story, it pays to do this work so that creating the next draft is less painful. In order to maximize efficiency, I've found a way to explore character and setting at the same time. This doesn't include research. While learning about your setting always informs what your characters are like and how they react to things based on where they're from, research rarely leads directly to new realizations about characters. What does lead to new realizations about characters is free writing. But how do you use free…