Days 12-15

"Pick your characters first, as they are harder to pick than a story.
When writing, the plot may or may not change, but the characters will develop and have a life of their own. As your characters develop, they’ll take on distinct personalities, and as with good friends, you’ll know in certain situations what they will or will not do.
Mystery writer Oakley Hall says that a writer must “listen to the demands of his characters, who, as they begin to come to life, may insist upon a different fate than the givens seem to require.”

"Get a bunch of 5 by 7 cards and put each character’s name at the top. Next, think about the role each plays in your story, and what kind of person each is: age, education, place of birth, hot-headed, funny, fat, ugly. What are their quirks? Do they wash their hands 500 times a day? Do they hear voices? Are they kind to kids but love to torture cats? Put it down, put down so much that you finally come to know these characters intimately. Alfred Hitchcock would write down his scenes on index cards, one scene to a card. That way, as he said, by the time he was ready to shoot the film, he was already done.
Some characters will be major ones, around whom the story will pivot; others will play bit parts, but these will be critical too, as every player must have a reason for being in the story. If they don’t have a reason for being in your novel, they’ll slow down the story, and slowness bores readers."

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Most novels are written to a formula, especially big best sellers. For example, John Baldwin, co-author of The Eleventh Plague: A Novel of Medical Terror, developed a simple formula that he used to structure his novel. His ten-step formula is:
	1.		The hero is an expert.
	2.		The villain is an expert.
	3.		You must watch all of the villainy over the shoulder of the villain.
	4.		The hero has a team of experts in various fields behind him.
	5.		Two or more on the team must fall in love.
	6.		Two or more on the team must die.
	7.		The villain must turn his attention from his initial goal to the team.
	8.		The villain and the hero must live to do battle again in the sequel.
	9.		All deaths must proceed from the individual to the group: i.e., never say that the bomb exploded and 15,000 people were killed. Start with “Jamie and Suzy were walking in the park with their grandmother when the earth opened up.”
	10.		If you get bogged down, just kill somebody.
More about formula. When Ernest Hemminway started as a young reporter for the Kansas City Star, he was given a style sheet with four basic rules:
	•		Use short sentences.
	•		Use short first paragraphs.
	•		Use vigorous English.
	•		Be positive, never negative
Asked about these rules years later, he said, “Those were the best rules I ever learned in the business of writing. I’ve never forgotten them. No one with any talent, who feels and writes truly about the things he is trying to say, can fail to write well if he abides by them.”

"Develop your characters and your plot together. You can’t do one well without the other. Your characters are not wooden people who just dropped magically out of the sky. They are critical elements of the drama you are creating. They must do something logical or illogical (which is what plot is all about) that adds to your story, and moves it to its ultimate climax. Never, never separate characters from plot."

(reference: How to write a novel is 100 days or less - google)