[Dianne] Weeks 9-10: Writing Back Story

For this set of exercises, Anah and I split up the characters just like last week. I'm writing Nico's backstory and she'll take care of James. We also decided to split the exercises over two weeks. This week, we're putting up the bare chronology, the list of dates (or, in my case, ages) and pivotal events. Next week, it'll be the little stories to go with some of those dates.

Nico's life revolves around his job and his family, and his dedication to his family is directly related to his choice of profession—both of them. This is reflected in his chronology. Very few important events in his life don't in some way involve either his job or his family.

You can see from my chronology that I changed my mind several times about whether he's an EMT or a paramedic. This back-and-forth was related to cost of education and time commitment to be ready to work. It's not shown in the chronology (because I didn't want to erase and rewrite), but Nico completed his EMT training and started work while going back to school to train to be a paramedic. All in all, the training would have taken a couple years, which is why he'd have started work before completing both sets of training.

Anah will be by later with James's chronology, and next week I'll have a bit more detail for you.

The Story So Far: I need to make a final decision about career choices before I try to write the chronology.