Vacationing With Your Characters

Recently I went on a beach trip with my best friends. I had a lot of fun, and it was a great time to relax and catch up on my reading (which means that I have some more book reviews coming your way soon). I hadn’t planned on necessarily bringing my characters along with me, after all a vacation is supposed to be for R&R. However, this vacation provided me with a unique opportunity to gain some new knowledge on the main character in my WIP novel, Iridescent.

Iridescent takes place in a small rural town. It’s a setting that is very familiar to me, as it’s where I’ve lived my entire life. I’ve experienced poor Wi-Fi, crappy cell service, and having very limited options of entertainment when hanging out with friends, but I’ve also experienced the beauty of the mountains and nature around me (deer are a regular occurrence, and during the past few weeks adorable fawns have made an appearance). So I know how the majority of my characters live and things that they can do in their free time. There is one notable exception to this, my main character Aly.

Aly did not grow up in a rural town, she’s moved to it. For her entire life, she’s lived close to the ocean at a popular tourist destination. This move would be a huge change for her, and there’s bound to be plenty of things that she would miss. While I was on vacation, I was able to see some of the differences between a location similar to where Aly grew up and one where the rest of my characters live.

For example, Aly would have access to more things to do with her friends after school and on the weekends than the characters who grew up in the rural setting.

These differences help me understand what Aly would be missing in her new town, but also see what she would be gaining at the same time.

There were several things that I saw on my trip that I would find myself wishing that I had back at home, and that thought would be immediately followed by Aly. This was something that I don’t have, but she probably did before she moved.

I had never thought about using vacation time as research time before now. But vacations are such a great opportunity to see things that I don’t get to experience on a daily basis. Not to mention it gave me time to plan out future chapters for this story and its sequel.

I usually follow a certain routine when I write. I have my writing spot, my beverage of choice for the day (tea or coffee), and then I’ll get to work on hitting my word count goal. However, floating around in a lazy river with my eyes closed produced better results when it came to plotting and getting in sync with my characters (after all this is their story, I’m just writing it down). So I’ve decided that I should shake up my writing schedule and try working in new places. You never know what will work until you try it after all.

So if you’re ever having trouble getting the right perspective on a character, try taking a little road trip. It doesn’t have to be far, even going a few towns over or to a nearby city can give you a chance to scope out a new setting and meet some new characters. You also might find that idea that you didn’t know you were looking for just by relaxing and having a good time.