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As something between a dare and a resolution, my friend Nate and I have agreed to each write a chapter of a new story a week. A new story of our own, not trading a narrative back and forth, because we're both hyper-possessive of our story beats. So this weekend I wrote 677 words, the first new narrative words I've written in... I don't know, a year? It felt good! Which is a relief, since I know the words weren't good.
I'm writing without too much planning. I have a general concept, which is that of the standard Hero's Journey being the villain, I have a fanciful idea of swapping between first-person (Abby) and third-person (Wyatt) with a climactic moment involving Wyatt shifting to first-person, and I have two characters without last names or appearances, the aforementioned Abby and Wyatt. I think Abby has black hair? I don't know why I think that, I just think she does. But those 677 words have already taught me something about my characters and reminded me of something involving my creative process.
The best character I've ever created is Mist Walker, a dancer from Luxuocidad who became a GM-controlled player character in Final Fantasy Omega. Created as an afterthought in the leadup to a tournament years ago and given the name of the creator of Final Fantasy's new studio (Mistwalker Productions), Mist was an occasional mood-lightener and a character attached to another GMPC, Aidan Denun. Then I had a bonkers idea to write interactive fiction and create a spy story, and Mist was selected from a pool of two to become the lead character in that narrative. I wrote in first-person, crafted six guys around her to be part of that spy group she infiltrated, and fell completely in love.
I think what worked for me there was having just a concept of a character. I didn't know where that story was going to go, because I didn't have full control over it. I knew who Mist was, basically -- a dancer, a summoner of low skill, a cheerful smile, someone who always wore something the color green, and a relentless optimist. I wrote Mist like I wrote a gaming session, which was to present a problem, then think about it, and figure out how I was going to respond. Sometimes other people made those decisions for me. Sometimes I didn't do a great job. Sometimes I did. And that was independent of Mist's own successes and failures.
I had a conversation between Mist and one of her friends' fathers to write, and in that he asked her what she wanted to do with her life. I didn't know. So I paused that scene for a weekend, I created Mist and everyone else in The Sims 3, and then I played about two in-game weeks. In assigning jobs, I dropped Mist into journalism on a lark. Playing that, I then saw a future form for her, one where she looked at how blind she'd been to the stuff going on around her, the politics happening in her hometown and to her governor boyfriend, and how she wanted to use her own visibility and growing celebrity status (it was a weird game, y'all) to write about it and make a difference. So I finished that scene the next week with her having made up her mind about being a journalist, and it felt right.
The best characters are ones that seem to write themselves. I don't know if Abby and Wyatt are going to get there, but in writing this near-700 word bit, Abby veered her character out of being too much like Mist, at least as a ten-year-old in the prologue, to be a bit brattier, a bit more insistent, a bit more controlling. And I think that's really valuable in a book versus a game, where character progression is measured more in traits than in stats (but again, it was a weird game). Wyatt's a bit more blank in my mind, but I'm looking forward to what Abby thinks of him and how I can subvert and break that down.
I have another book in the planning status that got the Sims 4 treatment recently, and it confirmed that my original outline lead character needed to change, because Adam Harper was The Most Boring Man Who Ever Lived as soon as I separated him from the plot. I think if a character can't survive without a plot behind them, then they're not worth writing about. I don't necessarily need to know what Abby does in her off-time -- okay, I as a writer definitely need to know what Abby does in her off-time, but you as a reader do not -- but if she doesn't have anything in that off-time, and I couldn't put together a day in her life and make it even a little compelling, then she's not strong enough to be in a book.
I'm writing without too much planning. I have a general concept, which is that of the standard Hero's Journey being the villain, I have a fanciful idea of swapping between first-person (Abby) and third-person (Wyatt) with a climactic moment involving Wyatt shifting to first-person, and I have two characters without last names or appearances, the aforementioned Abby and Wyatt. I think Abby has black hair? I don't know why I think that, I just think she does. But those 677 words have already taught me something about my characters and reminded me of something involving my creative process.
The best character I've ever created is Mist Walker, a dancer from Luxuocidad who became a GM-controlled player character in Final Fantasy Omega. Created as an afterthought in the leadup to a tournament years ago and given the name of the creator of Final Fantasy's new studio (Mistwalker Productions), Mist was an occasional mood-lightener and a character attached to another GMPC, Aidan Denun. Then I had a bonkers idea to write interactive fiction and create a spy story, and Mist was selected from a pool of two to become the lead character in that narrative. I wrote in first-person, crafted six guys around her to be part of that spy group she infiltrated, and fell completely in love.
I think what worked for me there was having just a concept of a character. I didn't know where that story was going to go, because I didn't have full control over it. I knew who Mist was, basically -- a dancer, a summoner of low skill, a cheerful smile, someone who always wore something the color green, and a relentless optimist. I wrote Mist like I wrote a gaming session, which was to present a problem, then think about it, and figure out how I was going to respond. Sometimes other people made those decisions for me. Sometimes I didn't do a great job. Sometimes I did. And that was independent of Mist's own successes and failures.
I had a conversation between Mist and one of her friends' fathers to write, and in that he asked her what she wanted to do with her life. I didn't know. So I paused that scene for a weekend, I created Mist and everyone else in The Sims 3, and then I played about two in-game weeks. In assigning jobs, I dropped Mist into journalism on a lark. Playing that, I then saw a future form for her, one where she looked at how blind she'd been to the stuff going on around her, the politics happening in her hometown and to her governor boyfriend, and how she wanted to use her own visibility and growing celebrity status (it was a weird game, y'all) to write about it and make a difference. So I finished that scene the next week with her having made up her mind about being a journalist, and it felt right.
The best characters are ones that seem to write themselves. I don't know if Abby and Wyatt are going to get there, but in writing this near-700 word bit, Abby veered her character out of being too much like Mist, at least as a ten-year-old in the prologue, to be a bit brattier, a bit more insistent, a bit more controlling. And I think that's really valuable in a book versus a game, where character progression is measured more in traits than in stats (but again, it was a weird game). Wyatt's a bit more blank in my mind, but I'm looking forward to what Abby thinks of him and how I can subvert and break that down.
I have another book in the planning status that got the Sims 4 treatment recently, and it confirmed that my original outline lead character needed to change, because Adam Harper was The Most Boring Man Who Ever Lived as soon as I separated him from the plot. I think if a character can't survive without a plot behind them, then they're not worth writing about. I don't necessarily need to know what Abby does in her off-time -- okay, I as a writer definitely need to know what Abby does in her off-time, but you as a reader do not -- but if she doesn't have anything in that off-time, and I couldn't put together a day in her life and make it even a little compelling, then she's not strong enough to be in a book.
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