Character Development and Scene Suggestions

There I was, thinking about the main quality that identifies the main protagonist of my next novel and its exact opposite (following the suggestions in Donald Maass's book Writing The Breakout Novel), when I got the idea of looking up both words in my thesaurus. I looked up tenacious and weak.

A plethora of words, 28 just for tenacious, sprang from the pages of the book in my lap (I know we're in the internet era, but I still love to flip through a book I can touch with my own two hands, not to mention that the book is a cerished gift). It made me wonder if I could take things a step further and use these words to discover even more about my character and perhaps give my new novel a kicking start.

With this thought in mind, I created a table with three coloumns, titled Quality, Definition and Scene Suggestion. Even in two words that appear similar in the English language, there are often subtle differences to be found. While looking up the words in both the Oxford and Webster dictionary, some of the sentences shook my muse awake and began to suggest new scene ideas. This after a long drought in composition, the annoyance of which, perhaps, only a fellow writer can really grasp.

For example,

for tenacious I found:
Keeping a firm hold of property, principles, life, etc; not readily relinquishing, persistent; suggests strength in seizing, retaining, clinging to, or holding together,

but for its synonym pertinacious, I found:
stubbornly unyielding

Ah...so being tenacious has it's down side...being stubborn...this got me thinking...how far can the heorine take her stubbornness before it gets her into trouble...perhaps in relation to something she really cares about? That's when I had a lightbulb moment. I already knew what that was! The process got the ball rolling. A scene began to take form in my mind's eye. I can see as far as the headlights show me in the surrounding darkness.

Anything to beat writer's block.

:-)

Hidden Meanings

I saw a rainbow today.

My first reaction was surprise...enraptured surprise at the sight of such shimmering beauty. A beauty that stirs the heart. My thoughts flew to childhood readings about the pot of fabled gold at the end of the rainbow...Our car raced towards one end, but the closer we got, the dimmer the rainbow became until it disappeared altogether. Perhaps that's the way it's meant to be. For us to chase rainbows, until we find what we're looking for. The beauty of the journey, lies in the chase.

Who knows what it means? Is it a good omen? A promise of good things to come? There's one thing I'm sure of: I feel privileged to have been one of the few who witnessed nature's show for today. One of a chosen few who weren't too busy doing something else to notice.

A symbol of hope for dreamy ol' me.