1. What’s your genre? Satire/humor with a bit of realistic fiction and mystery
2. Characters! Who’s your protagonist? Your love interest, antagonist, pet, comic relief?
Protag = Chrissy Li
There’s no love interest because I’m WAY too tired of all adult books having too many stupid romance plots, yall, although a snooty preppy pretentious Lusitanian (Lusitania = fake Rome, except very redneck) journalist named Aulus Crispin becomes her grudging partner-in-crime. September Kim is Chrissy’s friend and is a photographer for the paper the two of them work for, so she’s like Chrissy’s willing partner-in-crime. Chrissy herself is a comic relief in a character, lmao, and the antagonist well…my plot is a convoluted mess, and at one point there were two antags, but I’m trying to figure it out. I swear. And there are a SHIT ton of side characters, fml
3. Theme song. Is there a song that inspires you this year, or captures the mood you’re going for? What does that song make you see? (You can do this for your whole project, as well as individual characters, of you like.)
General theme song=Party in the USA by Miley Cyrus (this song is PEAK 2000s pop music thank u very much)
I made a playlist tho, u can listen here: https://open.spotify.com/playlist/633rvW7QMEQGaSX6yg9Do0
4. Setting. Where’s your story taking place? The capital city of Aciras, which is uhhhhh basically the US. Geographically, Lynston is where Washington, D.C. is, but it’s probably bigger area-wise and has more people than actual DC does.
5. Storyboards. Who’s your main character’s family? What’s their job, their hobbies, aspiration in life? The only really relevant family member Chrissy has is her great aunt, Jess. She’s like 80, retired, half-blind and half-deaf, and always burns the lasagna. Collects jade figurines instead of cats. She and Chrissy share a pretty ratchet apartment, and they have a fat lazy golden retriever named Slippers.
6. Style & Wardrobe. What would your protagonist wear, say, to school, on a mission, for lounging on a sea shore, summoning some demons, or dismantling the patriarchy? Chrissy doesn’t give a fuck where or when it is, she’ll always be out there with her sparkly pink wardrobe. I like to think of her style as sparkly biker chick glam-think hot pink crop tops, spiky stilettos, fishnets, black denim cutoffs, glittery eyeshadow, combat boots.
7. Worldbuilding. Literally the only thing different about novel universe and RL is that there’s royalty??? Of course, I probably should try to delve deeper into how freaking Aciras is fake America if fake UK never colonized North America, but. It’s not that relevant to the story, and I’m lazy. Sue me?
8. My novel is X meets Y.
My novel is over-dramatic reality TV meets Game of Thrones
9. Social Media.
I plan on making social media profiles for more of the characters, but MC one is below. Click on pic to see captions as well
Here are the IG’s for two of the side characters
Spoiler
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10. More settings. Is there a fairy coffee shop, a bedroom, a flooded skyscraper, an enchanted garden, etc, that’s important in your story? How would it look? I guess the Lynston Daily office? It’s a pretty standard run of the mill office building. Boring AF. The Aciran palace is v stereotypical, v picturesque. Lea (Aciran princess) has a cute lil wildlife refuge and animal sanctuary out back
11. Share any character playlists you made and/ or tell us more about what your character sounds like. lmao oh boy. My MC has no playlist yet, but for side characters: 1 2 3 4. Chrissy would sound like…OH you know what. She is totally super flippant, super sparkly k-pop. Her theme song is “Birthday” by Somi. At a close second is “DDU-DU DDU-DU” by Blackpink. Fucking fight me !!
12. Defining Quotes. A phrase or motto that inspires you or your characters, a lyric, poem, or slogan they pretentiously quote, or a line from a book they’d put on their inspiration board. Boy oh boy. That A+ quote from Gail Carriger: “I never gossip. I observe. And then I relate those observations to practically everyone”, for one. Blackpink’s lyric in “Boombayah” where it’s like, “middle finger up, F you pay me” is Big Chrissy Energy TM. Some other good ones: “5’2 but my attitude 6’1”, “I don’t dress up for boys. I dress up to stare at my reflection as I walk by store windows-obviously”, “OOPS! You’re not invited” is a good one from her theme song, “If you’re sad, add more lipstick and attack”, “I was not made to be subtle”, “Cute. But psycho. But cute”, et cetera, et cetera. Of course, we can’t forget the iconic “I don’t fuck with you”, by song-writing master Big Sean (a line that must be immediately followed with “You little stupid ass bitch I ain’t fucking with you…I got a million trillion things I would rather do”)
13. Coffeshop AU. What would your story look and feel like as_? BOY OH BOY. We have a HS + Superpowers AU, where Chrissy would probably be the same character, but instead of stalking royalty she’d be a regular ol’ celeb stalker who just happens to run into all the side characters who are HS students with powers??? Also, we have a high fantasy AU, but not sure where Chrissy would fit into that. Last AU is like, urban fantasy mafia. Chrissy is the nosy reporter who gets her dumbass mixed up with all these superpowered mafia people. Big RIP.
14. The Big Bad. Knowing the end of your story can help you get there. What do you think your story is heading towards? LMAO dear god. Fucking shit. My story definitely needs a sequel, fuck my LIFE. It would probably end in a cliffhanger of sorts-find out who killed the missing fiancé, except info never really goes public, and more shit goes down. It ends happily ever after for Chrissy, but not so much for some of the other characters. Yikes.
shoutout to @vampirkaninchen for her lit AF questionnaire!
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