Have any of your characters walked over from another WIP?

Not with people. But I do mention the same pubs, clubs, restaurants, that sort of thing. It's something I've done unconsciously since I wrote my trunk novel way back when. Then when I realised what I was doing, I figured it would give regular readers a sense of place in my novels.

When they're eventually published that is.

I usually get some things--like ideas--that I base people or characters in my books off of, but I don't copy. I try to come up with my own ideas, but other books or movies do help me to develop my books sometimes.

Quite a few, in fact, but they change as they develop. A 17-year-old boy (an MC from my other WIP with the same setting) whom I put into this one for a cameo appearance, ended up being a 40-something gentleman. They just don't seem to fit a different story without suffering some personality changes.

All my WIPs are about the same set of characters, so yes.

What's different this time is that the creepy character who usually shows up in all my stories won't be making an appearance in this one. Also, this story is set about fifteen years after my first WIP and my MCs have just returned to the village which was the setting of the first story. It's been fun trying to figure out which villagers would still be around after fifteen years and how they would have changed.

There's a bad-ass Japanese girl who has tried to muscle her way into several projects of mine -- and so far, she's having no luck! Basically, I am going to have to come up with an idea centered around her; she's nobody's supporting character, no matter how hard I try to force it.

The characters are all new in my NaNo, but the "world" is the same as 2 of my novels. Since I did so much research for them I just jumped back into that world for this third look.

The MC in my previous WIP - last year's NaNo - and the one in the present one are both blonde men who eat a lot of marzipan. I would even have James Bond eat marzipan.

Fresie said:

They just don't seem to fit a different story without suffering some personality changes.

Click to expand...

Yep, this.

More specifically...last year, Owin Moran was a dapper, overly-educated rebel. This year he's a crazy hermit who thinks everyone outside his own little area is dangerous and warns/frightens travelers off the main road. Just a bit of a change there!

(Yeah, I know it's not quite the same thing, but it amused me.)

So far that hasn't happened. Yet.

However, as a few other people have stated and much like Stephen King and Terry Brooks (a few examples that come easily to mind) much of my writing is all interconnected. Unlike them, however, my worlds are connected at the genre level.

What I'm writing now for Nano is a new genre for me (and something that has made some of my darling constant readers happy because they love this genre and I've hated it for so long!) so it doesn't connect at all with any of the other works that I've done. In fact I've even got a new psuedonym for this project.

However, aside from what I'm writing now, I do have a massive epic metafiction project that I work on occassionally that has but ONE new character in it. So far EVERY other major character in that project has come out of my other works (all of them) and has been twisted around a bit and then mashed together. Heck, one character even goes back to her ORIGINAL concept which was changed when she got written into another series. This project is sort of like my 'Dark Tower'.

The problem with this is that I'm sure the one original character for this project has his own project/worlds out there somewhere I just don't know what that is yet.

So in a sense...yes. And no.

Rabe...

I have had bit characters from other novels play bit parts in novels in similar settings. I like thinking that all my books are really in that one world, and so paths sometimes cross.

And yeah, pubs and settings also crop up again and again.

You know, I thought they might and it's not too late. My MC from last year's NaNo is the shiz-nite, so I hope he comes along.

Maybe this isn't what you mean, but three of my four Nanos are part of an urban fantasy series, so characters and places cross. Two women who were major parts of the last two are barely walk-ons in this current one. One guy who played a small part in Book 2 is a major player this year. And one supporting actor in the last two books actually has a bigger part this year than the leading man.