Beautiful Books Linkup #1

In preparation for NaNoWriMo, Cait and Sky change their monthly Beautiful People linkup to Beautiful Books. It's still for writers and you don't have to be doing NaNo to linkup:) Just pick one of your WIPs and answer the questions using it. It's a three month series, fifteen questions each month, focused on the plotting in October, writing in November, and editing in December. I'm participating in NaNo, so I'll be using my NaNo novel, the one I've been doing character intros on. So, without further ado:



1. What came first: characters or plot idea? Are you a plotter or a pantser? Characters. I knew about Gwen and Sammy before I started even thinking about a plot and it took me several weeks to come up with a suitable plot for them, seeing as their so stubborn and demanding about what the participate in;P Usually I'm a pantser, but this year I decided to plot. I split the story into three parts and summarized the parts and then summarized each chapter. It's a pretty detailed thing.
2. Do you have a title and/or a "back-cover-blurb"? The title is "Blurred Lines". I thought of the name basically because in the story the lines between what is right and what is wrong get blurred. This is my blurb:
Gwendolyn Scott is a private investigator. She's not your traditional PI, though. When she gets a lead about a big government cover up she goes deep undercover to find out the truth.
Samuel Richardson is and FBI Agent. Strike that: ex-FBI agent. When he caught wind that the government might be considerably less than the straightest arrow he got out before he got in trouble.
Christopher Quinn is an innocent bystander--or, he had been last week. Now he's on the run with vital information that he accidentally intercepted at work.
These three completely different people crossed paths and became the unlikeliest of comrades with one mission: discover what they're up against and, if necessary, take it out before it destroys the country. Or the world.
It's not great, but it's not to shabby, either, if I do say so myself;P
3. What word count are you aiming for when your novel is finished? Preferably 50K. Not sure if it'll make it that far, though. It'll either be way more or way less.
4. Sum up your novel in three sentences. Oh gosh. Really? Um...let's see: It's about three people, barely more than teenagers, who can't hardly get along for five minutes when they first meet. There's a seriously screwed up government trying to accomplish world domination with a villain so annoyingly diabolical that you can't help but love him at least a little. It's those three up against all of that and a bunch of other crap happens that makes you seriously pity them. How was that?
5. Sum up your characters in one word each. Again? You're killing me here! It took me ten minutes to answer that last oneXD Gwen: Broken Sammy: Encouraging Chris: Sassy Agent Silverton: Evil (I would say pure evil, but you said one word)
6. Which character are you most excited to write? Tell us about them! That's a hard question! What us you with you guys and asking me to do hard stuff?XD Probably Gwen. She's a nineteen year old private investigator. She doesn't really get any good cases, but she knows what she's doing. She's wanted in a couple other countries for stuff she never did. She's basically a total kick-butt kind of girl. And she's been through a lot of rough stuff. Her parents died when she was ten, her eighteen year old brother practically raised her until he died when she was eighteen. She turns twenty somewhere during the book and she's already been through all that. She became a freelance PI when she was 16 and went to other countries and stuff happened. Then she came home when she was eighteen (just before her brother died) and more stuff happened and her name is slightly well-known in some parts of the country. She's in a really dark place when the story starts.
7. What about your villain? Who is he, what is his goal? Agent Silverton. His first name is Agent;P Not really. He just doesn't have one. He is a lot worse than Loki, but I'm aiming for the type of bad guy that, no matter how many times he does bad stuff to the protagonist, you can't help but love them just a little. I'm looking at a Crowley kind of guy. Actually, before I even saw Mark Sheppard, I kind of always saw Silverton as Mark Sheppard. I didn't know it though. I saw Sheppard and was like, "THAT'S SILVERTON!" His goal is to whisper ideas to Mr. President and convince him to take over the world and make Silverton next in line for the "throne". Then once all of the heavy lifting is done, he'll stage a little "accident" for the President and rule the world.
8. What is your protagonist's goal? And what stands in the way? Her goal is to basically save hundreds of lives. Silverton. He's pretty much the only thing in her way.
9. What inciting incident begins your protagonist's journey? When several state reps die, including a close family friend of hers.
10. Where is your novel set? 2017 United States and 2017 South America (not sure where exactly in SA yet)
11. What are three big scenes in your novel that change the game completely? When Silverton introduces himself to the trio for the first time, when the trio finds out exactly what's going on, and when Chris gets arrested.
12. What is the most dynamic relationship your character has? Who else do they come in contact with or become close to during the story? The most dynamic relationship is probably the one Gwen has with Sammy. They go from barely tolerating one another (mainly on Gwen's end. Sammy kind of liked her from the start), to being friends, then close friends, then a couple. And he kind of pulls her out of her darkness. But, she's also grows close to Chris. And she's close to a woman named Georgina (she only plays a little part) who is a close family friend that she thinks of as an aunt.
13. How does your protagonist change by the end of the story? She goes from a hard, somewhat cold-hearted girl who's in a really dark place to being halfway happy. And she starts caring about her life again.
14. Do you have an ending in mind, or do you plan to see what happens? I've got in mind for it to end with Gwen, Sammy, Chris, and a few others releasing information that basically collapses the government (only because everyone in the government was in on the world domination plot), but we'll see what happens.
15. What are your hopes and dreams for your book? What impressions are you hoping this novel will leave on your readers and yourself? All I really want is that at least one person that I don't know and will probably never meet gets enjoyment out of my novel. As for myself? I just want it to prove to me that I can do this.
There you have it! This was really fun! But hard...thanks for that;P