Saturday, 24 June 2017

Character A-Z

I really enjoyed writing the 'Musical A-Z' I did a while ago: I enjoyed having some structure, and loved finding and rediscovering (sometimes slightly embarassing) songs to share. They were also low-energy posts, something I could work on when my mental energy reserves were lowered - and having that alphabet format helped by taking some of the effort away from thinking about what I was going to write. I didn't realise how much benefit the alphabet format helped until I tried using 'inspirational people' as a topic for low-energy posts, but it really didn't work.

There's two characters in particular who inspire me to the point I keep mentally drafting posts to explain my relationship with them: Maddy Magellan, Jonathon Creek's sidekick in the first 3 series, and Magrat Garlick, witch of Lancre in the Discworld. I was thinking about doing an A-Z of fictional characters I love and realised they're both M's (figuring I'll count the initial of the name the character is most often known by), so now I have a dilemma: I was going to have a post dedicated to a single character for each letter, and have the pool of characters to be drawn from TV, film, books, games and everywhere else fictional characters gather. Do I stick to that, or do I do a separate A-Z for each genre (thinking screen, paper and misc, allowing up to 3 characters for each letter), or do I do multiple posts for letters where I have multiple options? I'm leaning to that last, but then do I roll through the alphabet and start again, or do I stay with a letter til I've covered everyone? The first option would make it easier to cover someone I've missed, but the second means I don't have to decide between Maddy and Magrat the first time through... It also helps hide the fact there are some letters I can think of far more characters for than others. 

I'm not sure. Everytime I decide to do it one way, I change my mind. What do you guys think?

I'm looking forward to having a structured topic again, which will hopefully get me back in the habit of writing more. I don't want to go back to a boring job, which was how I was so much more prolific when I first started!