Man, it’s a process. Open a door, head down the dark passage, hit a wall, backtrack, open another door, repeat. Eventually, you find the one direction that has light and doesn’t dead-end, and voila! Your story is on its merry way again.

In my last post, I talked about being stuck on this one scene. I knew it would be a tough one because it was a new setting and I’d have to do a tiny bit of world-building. I’d tried several different approaches, but it just didn’t want to go anywhere. And it HAD to. This setting and this scene is important, so getting rid of one or the other weren’t options. 

And then I realized … I was also introducing a new character. She’s been referenced before, and the reader knows she exists, but this is the first time in the book that she’s onstage, and well … I hadn’t taken the time to get to know her very well before I started trying to bring her to life. 

Sorry, Nyx. My bad.

Yes, we’re talking about the primordial goddess of darkness, so I can quite understand why she wouldn’t cooperate until I had done my due diligence. After an evening of Googling and two handwritten pages of notes, she took a seat—swirling misty shadows and all—and began to show me how this scene was going to go down. It is, after all, her only appearance (in this book at least), so it was important that she leave a worthy impression. Here’s hoping I do it right.

So … forging ahead. Still creeping down the dark passage, but I’ve got a flashlight now.

How do you get to know your characters? I’d love to hear about it!

Happy writing.

😁📝🔦