A is for Alice

It’s April, and that means it’s time for the A to Z challenge. I really must be a glutton for punishment; April is my last month of college, and I’m still an amateur blogger, but I must say, I’m looking forward to the challenge. I’m going to be writing short little blurbs about some retired characters from my DISTANT past up until recently; all of them are failed concepts. Part of me is hoping that writing about these characters will inspire me…perhaps to write more during the summer when school is out.

First up is Alice Titania, a character written probably three or four years ago after I saw the movie Pitch Perfect. I know what you’re thinking. “You just had to create a musical character after seeing that instant classic?” (Don’t knock it until you try it. I wanted to see Taken 2, but my friends dragged me to see Pitch Perfect instead, and I wasn’t disappointed.) Well no. It wasn’t the movie that inspired me so much as the song “Titanium” by David Guetta. I liked the song so much, I looked up the music video and listened to it 1000 times. (I’ll just leave a link to it HERE if you’d like to go ahead and listen while you read the rest of this.)

At the age of 12, Alice is quite possibly one of the youngest characters I’ve written . She’s traveling with her 16 year old super religious vagabond boyfriend (a bit of an oxymoron there) all while trying to hide from the authorities. See, she was born with psychic abilities that are highly unpredictable, so she may or may not have killed a few dozen people. Somehow she still remains naive and plucky and fairly shy.

When I opened up her file, I was expecting worse. (Some of you are probably rolling your eyes and begging for mercy at this point. Or maybe you’re on the same page with me.) The idea of a runaway child with a dark past is pretty cliche, but I’d be interested in working with a mutant child character again. Alice is the result of a brief spurt of inspiration that died after the song started to bore me. I tend to abandon my children, and anyone who is a more experienced writer than myself might die a little on the inside upon hearing that.

First things first though…I should fix her not-so-subtle last name. Is it a literary allusion that makes no sense in this context? Is it pure laziness smart enough to avoid plagiarism? Did I truly think that was a creative last name? The world may never know.