Wednesday, May 26, 2010

Tag redux

The tag strikes back from a new opponent, Stella Telleria .This time I am charged with sharing the seven most fascinating characters I've come up with.

Oh, so many to choose from.

1. Leoric of Swan Queen - The timid son of an ambitious duke who goes from being known as the Mouse to the Hawk in the mind of the princess on the run. Why he's fascinating: Leoric was meant to be a throw away character, an experiment with writing someone dimwitted for a purpose within the story, however, he grew on me, became a major character, bringing about one of the most emotional scenes I've ever written.

2. Samarah of Samarah’s Sunset – Alone and far from home, Samarah prays to the goddess for help, only to learn that even the gods charge for their services… and they don’t take coin. Why she's fascinating: I set out with the intent to write something quite different from Trust: a female MC in a fantasy world. Samarah’s situation opened the door to adding an element of romance into the mix with both men and women.

3. Joshua of A Broken Race – A simple-minded man born into a life of hard labor who brings about the healing of what is left of humanity when he stops being a cog and becomes his own wheel. Why he's fascinating: After good things happened with Leoric, I thought I’d see where the simple-minded character would lead me in a dystopian setting. Playing with both sides of the sweet, well-intentioned, yet unwittingly violent young man proved to be an interesting challenge.

4. Watcher of To Exist – A robotic being learns religion from humanity and prays the knowledge will save its priceless research. Why it's fascinating: Writing an it that felt no emotion and had no expression wasn’t easy!

5. Dragon of Not Another Bard’s Tale – All he wanted was his jewel back but the knight who made the deal to find it was taking his sweet time and the townsfolk looked awfully tasty. Why he's fascinating: Dragon is the only central character in the story to not have a pov scene, yet he is the glue that holds the entire story together. Plus, writing a ticked off, hungry dragon was just fun.

6. Kenric of Swan Queen – Is he an evil duke as many say, or a proactive man moving to secure the countries borders and expand his people’s wealth with new resources and land? Why he’s fascinating: Kenric has been a good lesson in writing the bad guy who thinks he’s a good guy in his own mind, and sometimes it’s just liberating to be in the bad guy’s head for a while. Is that scary to admit? Probably a little.

7. Yanis of Samarah’s Sunset - Captain Yanis serves as gruff protector to Samarah, the lone woman in a band of starving, desperate men until he meets his end during a skirmish as they make their way home through enemy infested borders. Why he’s fascinating: Yanis was an angry man, bad-tempered and stern, yet his death turned out to be quite touching and a major turning point for Samarah.

What, no Trust characters? Many of you know them by heart by now so I thought I’d pull out some that are lesser known. Of course, Vayen, Delyn and the gang are fascinating in their own right.

Now, since I’ve already tagged others on my first time around, I’ll call my duty done and sign off. Thank you, Stella, for giving me a reason to revisit some of my attention-starved WIPs.

5 comments:

  1. Oh, this is so cool! These characters sound quite fascinating, Jean. :)

    I may have to tag myself and do my own version of this list. :)

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  2. Thanks, Zella. :) I hereby unoffically tag you. Go for it!

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  3. I find bad guys are always more fun to write than the good guys, so don't call yourself crazy. It's kind of liberating to be able to make a character act out against common decency. Weeeeeeeee! ;)

    Nice list!!

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  4. That's a wonderful variety of characters, Jean. And even better I love your story titles.

    Hmmm...I just realised that pretty much all my characters seem to have bad sides to them. What does that say about me?

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  5. If it makes you feel better, Leoric is the only character I've ever written that was truly 'good'. Everyone else seems to have quite a prominent dark side. Joshua was meant to be good, but then he started accidentally killing people left and right. oops!

    Kenric though, he kills his son's puppy right in front of him. That's just plain evil.

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