Today, I finished describing my best friend character’s personality and mannerisms and started his interview, but the first question in my interview series (Where do you live) set me off on a slight diversion.
I am planning to address geography and scenes after I get through the character profiles, but in the meantime, I do need to get some place names down as well as a general sense of the lay of the land. Things like establishing where the capitol and king’s castle are relative to the Duchy ruled by my antagonist and relative to where my characters will travel during the course of the story. I also want to keep place names relatively consistent with each other as well as being not too distant from reader expectations. So, my kingdom, royal duchy, and castle all have the same linguistic root. I hope that doesn’t become too overbearing or hard for readers, though.
Getting back to my best friend character, though. I feel like his interview right now is a little ingenuous. Because of his personality, he would not respond well to the questions I’m asking or even give direct answers – some of them play directly at his emotional wound. But I need to know these things, so for now, at least in his situation, I’m acting like he’s talking to a psychiatrist years down the line, rather then himself answering as he would now. Maybe I should write both versions. . .