aging characters.

[debbie downer]

have you ever come up with a new character and daydreamed about them so much that it starts to seem like they're the new main character even though they're not and you don't want them to be so you try to keep yourself from daydreaming about that character because you're afraid that they'll become the new main character which you don't want to happen?

^ wow, run-on sentence xD

but that's been happening to me lately... -_-

it's happened to me before, and when that happened i just made that character move away and he kind of has his own little part of my daydream now. like, it's about his life after i made him move away and the other characters kind of lose contact with him. but i still wouldn't call him a main character, it's just something i daydream about occasionally, like maybe once a week for like 30 minutes or something.

also,

like i said before in my previous blog post, my daydream takes place over a long period of time. it starts out when the main characters are teenagers in the late 80s/early 90s (because i'm a teenager, and i love the 80s/90s :P) and then it goes to when the main characters' children are teenagers in 2011, and their children kind of become the new main characters. i've seen a lot of people on here that say that their characters don't age, but mine do. also, when i daydream, i don't daydream about them in the present, because i'm a teenager so obviously i wasn't alive in the 80s. i kind of skip around. i do that with the new main characters too. like for example, today i've been daydreaming a lot about the new characters, and i daydreamed about them when it was 2009 (in the daydream, not in real life xD), and then when it was 2011 except it was in like... february, and then in 2010. it's kind of confusing but yeah.

questions for anyone that read this-

• do you ever create a new character that you daydream about a lot and then worry that they'll become the main character so you try and stop yourself?
• do your characters age?
• if your characters age, when you daydream about them, do you "skip around" with the time? i don't mean replaying scenarios like i know most of us do, but actually daydreaming and coming up with new scenarios for what they were doing at that time.

[J Noland]

When I was a teenager my dds would change a lot. Different boys or music that was new to me would alter my main characters dramatically. I have always been the main character basically. So I would be different depending on what I though was "cool" at the time :) and I really did grow up in the 80's! Lots of Duran Duran and spiral perms. Looking back I remember dds that were so important to me as a teenager are just like memories now. But those dds really helped me cope and feel happy when I was a depressed teenager. I would go forwards and backwards in time depending on the emotion and scenes I was dding about. I still do this now but the dds are more steady and the plots have stuck around for several years. Maybe by having your characters move away it allows you to stay in touch with them but lets you move your focus to other areas that are emerging in your life. You never know which character or scenario is going to become the next "big deal" so I think it's good to allow some new blood in.

[roxanne]

My characters will age & come back to starting point.  Meet, get married, maybe have kids, then back to meeting again.  Sometimes I imagine that I know all this about them, as I have been through this many times before, but they think we are meeting for the first time.  For instance, I already know all their favorite foods, music, etc. but they are amazed at how intuitive I am.  I'm not, I've just known them many times & many years.  When I start over wit some one new, I don't have that advantage, which is both good & bad.  I don't know if that made ay sense at all.

[Jasmin]

I have different timelines and worlds. If it is a scenario that plays here in my own world (or version of it) people  will age with me. But I have other worlds, where, very conveniently, characters can live very long, several hundred or even thousands of years. Usually my own character starts out as my normal self, but then gets a "health upgrade" and she doesn´t really know how long she will be living, but certainly a lot longer than a normal lifetime here.

And sometimes the worlds will run in different timezones too each other. Maybe 80 years pass on the main world I dream about, but here on Earth only 4 years have passed. So again, my character can return home with a lifetime of new experiences but still find friends and family situations she is familiar with. 

I replay scenarious many times, especially when she returns after being a lifetime away. How does she interact with people, does she return to her old life, does she start a new life. 

Because characters can live very long I can move them into a different subplot, if they are no longer my main focus. You always reactivate them later. I don´t have too many central characters, 5 seems about right. The strange thing - most of them have no names, although I have been working with them for years. I know what they look like, I know what they eat, what their interests are. But no names. Only 3 characters have a stable name. Not even my current love interest has a name. 

Maybe because it is so personal that I don´t need to label them?

This really does sound, like I have an ongoing TV soap opera in my head, doesn´t it? But while reading here I looked at all scenarious again. There is a lot of material, maybe I should try to write something down, even if it sounds crude or cheesy. 

[Patty]

I do that too Laila.   The 70s or 80s.  I actually daydreamed about a family back in the 1860s and I wrote them into two novels.   Its hard to do though.  I used to write and read more but I seem to be stuck in more of a MD world in the last few of years than ever before, so I'm spending more time on that and less on my hobbies.  Which isn't a good thing but alas, I seem to be stuck.

[Laila]

Run-on sentences FTW! :D

 

Like Sarah, my new characters always remain as secondary characters, or they just disappear when they're not useful to the plot anymore. However, I don't create them very often. I seem to be content with just reusing five characters. xD

 

I have daydreamed one of my main characters as a young boy, teenager, and young adult. But that's where he stops aging. I just can't imagine what he'd look like after the age of 25... Maybe that's normal, considering I'm not that old yet? Nevertheless, I do skip years into the future, but my characters look unchanged in their adult years. Besides, I like them young and sexy. =P

 

Despite my characters having a child, I don't find him interesting enough to be my new main DD character. I merely use the poor child as a plot device for drama, lol! That or he doesn't exist in my other stories.

 

Btw, I also like to imagine my characters living in older time periods. I have some weird fascination with the 70s, despite I wasn't born yet. o_O I go back even further to the 1800s in different countries. Woo! So much fun!

[Patty]

I create new characters quite often but I am always the central person, so they are always secondary.   And while I might bring a new character to a closer spot to me in the day dreams, they will fade away and the person or people Im closest to will wind up close to me again.    I dont worry, because I am in control of the plots, so I can bump people around.  I have had daydreams where somebody who I was close to in the daydream and trusted suddenly was a bad guy, then I switched him back and forth over the last few months. Kind of fun, but weird lol.

-Yes, my character has aged in different plot lines.  However, I tend to keep her young, so while I might have her grow older in some plot lines, I will always come back to my original daydream and start over.  Daydreaming can be quite enjoyable!  Im never bored! People get stuck in traffic jams or get stuck somewhere for hours and they are bored out of their head.  Not me - ever.

-I replay scenerios a lot!  I have some favorites that I go back to when the plot is going wacky : )  But I do like trying out new scenerios also.