Three strangers walk into a bar…

Okay, two of them know one another, but they’re all strangers to me.

And it’s not really a bar (I think).

And they’re outside of it.

Celebration cake with candle.This week I made my annual “birthday” cake for my fictional friends, and it’s got me reminiscing. Some of these folks have been in my head for 19 years now. We have a fair bit of history.

Today, though, I’m thinking of my newest imaginary friends, hence the three strangers outside the local watering hole.

It’s a rough-ish, small building that sells some manner of food and drink. I think it’s wooden. It’s on a backwater-type planet somewhere.

I don’t know their names yet, nor their genders. I think two are female. For now, my notes read:

  • T = travelling character
  • D = disappointed character
  • W= wonder character

T is a stranger to this planet and needs to get to another one. S/he needs D and W to provide transportation. D refuses, and for W to return to that planet could mean death.

It’s possible that D is actually my old friend Sera, in which case I know she’s a former assassin, a crack shot, and the sort of person you want guarding your back. W is an older character and some manner of mentor to D/Sera. I have a special fondness for W and a few inklings into his/her past. W hasn’t had an easy life.

T, main character, isn’t talking to me yet.

I am so looking forward to this! Discovery is the best part.

Updates will be slow and sporadic, because I’m concentrating on fine-tuning the story of Carol, Paul, Joey and Patrick, another crew of my imaginary friends.

March is birthday month here at Tenacity. If you haven’t entered the draw yet for a copy of A Second Cup of Hot Apple Cider, follow the link to the blog birthday page. [Edited: draw is closed now.]

6 thoughts on “Three strangers walk into a bar…

  1. Mary Waind

    It’s so fun getting to know these people. Love the surprise things they do and come up with. Enjoy.

    Reply
  2. Violet Nesdoly

    Interesting process! I’m enjoying your enthusiasm, and hoping I can learn from it. Just this morning I was mulling over my fiction idea, thinking how long I’m dragging out even the most initial explore of it and realizing for me it’s a long process because that’s my style. My thought was “I need time to fall in love with this story” and by extension, its characters.

    Reply
    1. Janet Sketchley

      That’s a good way of putting it, Violet. And maybe that’s why writers who plunge in do so — they’re instantly captured by the story. For me, this one is my first world-building, and it’ll take quite a while to feel comfortable in it. In the mean time I’m revising another story that needs work.

      Reply

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