After a full day of playing with a random number generator to pick characteristics from my favorite NaNoWriMo book Building Believable Characters by Marc McCutcheon
I have now build Kate into a character that is nearly breathing. I put the characteristics into Google and this is who they thought matched.
Babs or Cher, much younger. Kate is 25. And a bit chunkier though nowhere near fat. It is fun to play the random number game when trying to make a person. I am trying to do a character a day. Liz, April, and Kate are the main three from the first section of the book.
Violet popped up in the second section and I love her spirit but have no idea what she looks like. I need to work or her next. I’m thinking she is about 16 years old. Just discovering who she is and she is about to get huge!
Word count blossomed without any fuss today. 9,381 Today’s goal was to be 8335, so… I’m jazzed. Nothing like playing in another world while the one you live in is so full of angst!
Darswords 
Keep it up you are rocking it 💜
Thanks! 💜
💜
Loving the fun you are having, and would love to know more about the process!
For many novels I’ve started with the book I just shared. Originally, NaNo was about just sitting down and word-barf 1,667 words a day. I’ve managed the ones I’ve started like that, no idea who or what. Luckily, I’d start the second Halloween leaves so many novels started with Trick or treating. But that only gets you so far. My friends and I from Reno learned about this Character book. We all found that randomly selecting traits and even names, we would soon have a whole person. Sometimes the oddities assigned to the person would start the story in our heads. Back then our fearless leader would take turns asking us individually, “Pick a number between 1 and [whatever number of traits were on that page].” We’d pick then she’d count to our choice. Let’s say it lands on cross-eye, among the long list of eye features. We were to go with what was chosen.
Randomly creating two people usually had us up and running. The next important thing is writing. Even with no ideas flowing. Whining words are words! But keep two words going at one time: what if…
What I have found is if I can have characters and a light outline of what I want to put them through can give me the boost in imagination. If your characters refuse your outline give them free reign. You may find something better than your plan. Maybe not but this is the draft of your book. Thousands of words won’t count to the finished product. But enjoy the process. 1,667 seems a lot for the day. Break it up to even 100 at a time. Sprint till you reach it. NaNo is so open nowadays that you can set your own goals. Think about your life and choose. CampNaNo started with the pandemic. I set the goal of 30K. I met it. Then I edited lightly between March and end of October so I would have a starting place to add another 50K. That gives me a jumping off place. The characters I chose in the spring weren’t developed as the story took over. The pictures of my characters’ lookalikes are a result of what I should have done last Spring. By now I’ve lived with these characters long enough to have a narrower need to pick up traits. I already knew hair, skin, hobbies, education, and goals. I just needed to beef them up.
Did I answer your question or were you aiming another way. Feel free to ask. I’ll do my best. My grandmother used to call me Chatty Cathy. I got in trouble regularly for talking in class. So words are my friends.
That is one fascinating process… I bet it works well too!
I enjoy it!
Congrats, you got this girl!
Thanks!🤗