I was chatting last night about my Sven wips and someone asked me how I keep all the characters straight, as I often jump between wips.

I realised that the characters are just ‘there’ in my head. They seem to hang off their name. I can see what they look like and ‘feel’ their character. Don’t ask me what that means, I’m not too sure myself. I know what they would and wouldn’t say, how they feel about the other characters and what mess I’ve made of their lives, lol I know that Patrick from Fracture is a completely different entity from Cam, the hero of Pure Bond. It’s there as I think/type there name.

It also made me very aware of the fact that I am crappy at analysing my own stories, breaking them down and working out exactly what’s going on. I’m seriously envious of people who rattle off a systematic breakdown of what’s going on in every scene, how they point out how a certain section pushes the story this why or that.

I just can’t get my head around it. And believe me, I’ve tried! The plot and characters are an amorphous blob living in my head that I give shape to with words. Ask me anything more about it and I’ll just look at you like a slack-jawed yokel *sigh*