S is for Sveta

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.

Today I get to talk about a villain, who’s a villain in more than one way, but at the same time, I like to think that she’s at least seemingly sympathetic. Do you like your typical super scary villain? Do you you your everyday domestic villain? Well, Sveta is both, but she’s also the victim of circumstance, so I suppose you could feel bad for her as well.

She’s one of my younger villains at the age of 19. Her father sold her into marriage with a man much older than her when she was 15 which is customary for her people. She was the youngest of her siblings, including another sister, but she was the only one the guy wanted. Over night, she became mother to a little boy named Samir (the man’s son from a previous marriage). She wasn’t happy, so when her husband fell ill, she ran, leaving everything behind. After her husband died, her step-son was alone, and he ended up in a very, very bad situation… Most people who read her story hate Sveta because of what happens to Samir, but I won’t go into detail about that.

Some people might call her selfish. Some people might think she had every right to run away. But that isn’t what necessarily makes her a villain. After all, we can’t possibly know what kind of consequences our actions will have.

She retreated to the woods and studied the dark arts which included how to summon monsters. With her siblings, she worked under a man named Malcolm Youngblood kidnapping people for his experiments. Sveta struggles with doing what’s right and doing stuff for herself which I think is a very relatable idea, especially for us modern folks. She does horrible things to give herself a comfortable life without ever thinking about others. However, her siblings are all much, much worse than her. Much. Much worse.

Where did I go wrong? Not gonna’ lie. I think she’s a pretty well-rounded character. I had simply forgotten about her! I suppose that’s a neat thing about this challenge, eh?

R is for Rhys

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.

Behold! It’s time for more twins. As I mentioned earlier in this challenge, I’m obsessed with twins, particularly fraternal twins. We’re going to go on a little trip down memory lane. When I was in junior high, I wanted a twin brother so badly that I made one up. A long lost twin. His name was Rhys, and he went to a boarding school in Boston, living a hopelessly extravagant life I would never grasp because he was the “smart” one. I actually don’t remember a lot of details about him, but apparently, he was so vivid a character that my friend developed a crush on him. …and then I killed him in a train accident. I was a terrible person.

But naturally, I had so much fun with this that I had to create a tragic twin brother for a character you’ll see later in this challenge. Rhys Hawk is the long-lost son of Lance Hawk. (Remember him from earlier?) You see, he had twins, but one of them was kidnapped by some enemies. Rhys grew up in another mercenary camp. Honestly, nothing bad happened to him. He was just separated from his family. Trouble doesn’t start until his twin sister gets kidnapped by the same group, and they meet for the first time.

Rhys himself is a voice of reason. He’s calm and gentle, not really much of a fighter, but he is also incredibly passive, so if his adoptive father tells him to do something, he’ll do it. This becomes a source of conflict for him.

But really…a long lost twin brother? I think soap operas have done that before. Rhys ended up becoming a major problem for me. He just made my plots way too complicated. I tried time and time again to fix the trouble he had caused, but I could never really find a way to revive my childish interest in my own imaginary twin brother.

Q is for Querida

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.

Allow me to preface this post with this statement: I don’t remember how I discovered the movie this character is based on. The internet is a dangerous place; sometimes I get lost on it. I think everyone has experienced this at least once in his or her life. But it’s quite possibly the most graphic suburban tale I’ve ever heard of. It’s also based on a true story which makes it even worse. (Guys, I watch Criminal Minds and still consider this stuff graphic. I suppose this is your warning!)

Someone found out about a girl that was tortured by a family member and an entire community to the point where they killed her or she committed suicide (I forget which one), and no one tried to stop it. So of course someone decided to make a movie about it after the fact. (It’s called The Girl Next Door (2007) if anyone’s interested. I’ve never watched it myself, and I don’t have any desire to watch it, but I’ve read plot summaries.) I don’t know what it is about horrible things that entertain us or intrigue is, but it happens without fail. I guess that’s why we like things like The Hunger Games.  I heard about this poor girl and decided I wanted to give her some justice, more justice than the movie gave her at least.

Querida is quite possibly one of the darkest characters I’ve ever written. She goes through intense torture at the hands of people who are supposed to protect her, but she takes it all so she can protect her little sister. Throughout the course of the story, she goes from being a stubborn, strong-willed, vibrant girl to deteriorating to almost nothing, and her best friend watches all of this happen. Thankfully, he’s bright enough to question it and NOT join in with the torture. A combination of her own will and her best friend keeps her going and eventually helps her break free.

And you know how I screwed this up? I never gave her any resolution whatsoever. She got her justice and then decided, “I’m going to run away from everything, and that will fix me.” And I ended it there. Do you know how angry that made me? I’M THE AUTHOR, AND I UPSET MYSELF. I’m getting angry just thinking about it. Now I’m not sure if that’s a choice she made or a choice I made. If I had to do things differently, I would handle her healing process much better.

P is for Peter

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.

When I finally started interacting with others online, I created four characters that I used almost exclusively. Peter was among those four, so he has a rather special place in my heart. I don’t consider him a failed character, but I do consider him a complicated one. That’s why I decided to add him to my challenge. But first…some background information.

Peter grew up in a village called Dies Irae (wow…my subtle naming abilities yet again). His parents were inn keepers, and he ended up falling in love with the crippled granddaughter of the village elder. He was never very good at socializing, but neither was Anna (the girl he fell in love with). It was a fairly standard “girl next door” scenario. But that all changed when the Fire Nation attacked.

Okay. Maybe not the Fire Nation, but the village got destroyed. In most plots I’ve used them in, they’re separated during the raid. Peter gets tossed around in slavery, and Anna gets rescued by a group of mercenaries. Peter becomes bitter and hateful, and Anna gets some time to heal. Their love story is meant to be one that heals both of them in the end. But there’s so much more to it than that. Peter struggles a lot with trusting humanity in general. He’s sort of an anti-hero in a way; he’s definitely his own worst enemy.

How could I improve upon him? I’d say I should tone down the angst, but I think it’s the right amount for the situation he’s in. I don’t think I focus too much on romance because his main story revolves around escaping from slavery and avenging his family. He just so happens to meet Anna later on. His biggest flaw I think was the fact that I got a little too literal with my symbolism–he was mute. (No freedom. No voice. Whoaaa! Mind blown.) There wasn’t really a reason for it. He wasn’t born that way. It just happened. Writers. We’re strange folks, eh?

Now, enjoy some OLD art.

Anna and Peter (2010)

O is for Oliver

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.

He’s a rip-off. He’s a complete rip-off from the Oliver Vocaloid. I was fascinated with him, and I wanted “elaborate upon him.” I suppose there isn’t much to rip off to begin with, just the design and the music, but I still feel incredibly guilty. I can’t help it. Sometimes things intrigue me, and I think, “That’s a great idea! Should use that!” And I do. I’m a terrible person.

In my version, Oliver’s an orphan. (Look how original!) He’s forced to sell papers on a street corner with the other boys at the orphanage in hopes of getting adopted. He ends up running away because he realizes he has a special power and wants to do some good with his life. He ends up losing his voice which is the source of his power (and his ability to sing) for several years. At the end of his arc, he gets adopted by Nathaniel. (Remember him?)

I’d have to do a lot of work on him to start using him again. First, change the name because there are too many orphans named Oliver in the world. (I apologize for the generalization if you happen to be an orphan named Oliver.) Second, I’d need to change his design since I basically stole his appearance. (Can I get sued for that?) Finally…I need to consolidate. I’ve got way too much going on with him. Orphan story arc? Magic powers? Conspiracy plots?

As a note to all of my readers old and new, I wanted to take some time out of my post to thank you. Some of my posts recently have been fairly low quality as if they were hastily written, and they were. I did my best to prep for this month ahead of time (AND I DID. I’m very proud of myself.), but keeping up with this blog has been very rough on me. I’m entering the last few weeks of school, and I’m barely hanging on. So thanks to everyone who reads, comments, likes…anything. I definitely appreciate all of them support. And if I haven’t responded to your comment, it’s probably because I’m waiting until I have some more free time. You guys rock!

N is for Nathaniel

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.

Here is another character created for a family member. He shares the same name as my little brother, but he’s really a caricature of my actual brother. I took one of my baby bro’s most endearing personality traits and blew it up to epic proportions: he likes to lie tell stories.

Nathaniel Renoir has seven different personalities ranging from an elderly man to a crotchety knight (Don Quixote anyone?)  to one of the most suave noblemen you’ll ever meet; he has one for every day of the week, and he switches personalities and lives every single day without fail. He does it because he loves to perform for people, and it’s also to keep his own identity a secret. He’s trying to make himself a name as a noble so he can marry the love of his life. Later on, it’s a means of masking his own pain.

Nathaniel suffers from weak motivation like so many of my character concepts. Love is pretty powerful, but I want him to have more depth. While it can be motivating, I want there to be more to him. Humans are simply motivated by lov alone. We have other desires and needs in life. (At least I hope we do.) I need to explore his past more and see what I can really do with him.

What kind of motivations do you guys feel are most powerful?

M is for Martha

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.

The Ingrams. Faulkner has the Snopes family, and I have the Ingrams. Every single one of the Ingrams are lowdown and dirty scumbags except Martha. She’s sort of the black sheep of a family of thieves and traitors. But I never really worked with her. (This seems to be a common theme with most of my characters. The question remains, do I actually work with any of them? What characters do I use? Do I actually write? Please forgive me, dear reader. It’s currently 1:00 AM. I still haven’t finished my homework, and I’m slowly consuming my weight in cookie dough ice cream. I may not be coherent.)

Martha Ingram is the eldest daughter of Lord Sebastian Ulysses Ingram III. I intended for her to be the sweet, all-about-justice kid. Unlike her younger brother, she tries to be honest, and people think it’s a good thing she’s going to inherit the estate. But recently, I’ve started thinking about making her the most dangerous Ingram. You know, it’s the quiet ones you have to look out for. She’s still all about doing things the right way, but she’s also not afraid to stab someone in the back, especially if it’s a well deserved stabbing.

What went wrong with a not-so-femme-fatale? I threw a boy into the mixture. Why? I’m kind of obsessed with romance, and I think it’s possible to have a good romance in a non-romance plot, but…it muddies the main plot if you focus on it too much. Subtle isn’t my middle name. I really should work on that.

L is for Lance

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.

I had a lot of L options, but I decided to work with Lance because he was a special character for me once upon a time; unfortunately, that love for a character is incredibly dangerous. He started off as a medieval fantasy version of my dad when I decided to write about the legendary mercenary-turned-priest, R.L. Hawk.

R.L. Hawk was a man of the world and the leader of a ruthless band of men known only as Lux. One day, he captured a young female knight, but he was so taken by her beauty that he thought twice about torturing and/or executing her. He ended up letting her go, and the two met in secret several times after that, and the rest is history! But not really. Despite how cliche the love story is, I somehow managed to weave in a plot involving cultists and betrayal. Lance and his sweetheart started a family, but they had to disband the group to escape all of the trouble that was brewing.

This was actually one of my favorite plots to play with for a time. But as I got older, it got more and more difficult to write for Lance.

You see, I recognized a fundamental flaw in creating characters based off of people I know. I’m not sure if other writers have this issue, but it has actually become a huge issue for me. I recently got to listen to author, Danny Woodrell speak about his experiences with drawing inspiration directly from real life. Real people are great, but they also complicate things. Thankfully, Woodrell has mastered the art of disguising his characters even though he lives in a tiny Ozark town.  (I don’t think any riots have broken out because his novels reveal a little too much about his next door neighbors. Thank goodness.)

As for Lance, the association with my father is super obvious, and no matter how much I’ve tried to mold him into something else, it never works. He somehow morphs back into my father no matter how hard I try. I realized that I have a tendency to demonize people when I shift into one of my foul moods. (It was even worse when I was a petty teenager.)Lance will probably be one of those characters I retire permanently simply because he’s part of my father’s story, and I think that it’s his story to tell. Not mine.

But then again, who knows? Does anyone have advice for creating characters like this?

K is for Kitrin

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.

We’re going back. Way back. Forever back. To the beginning. A dark beginning. Thankfully it’s further back than my angsty early teenage years. (For now.)

I don’t remember how old I was when I started writing. If I had to hazard a guess…I’d say I was about 7 or 8. But I do remember what that first burst of inspiration was like. Believe it or not, I was at an Applebee’s with my family. Suddenly, I was struck with an arrow of brilliance, and BOOM. I jotted down the first few paragraphs of my first novel (that I would never finish) onto a napkin. Yes. Today, we’re going to talk about my very first original character, and I’m going to approach the topic a little bit differently.

Kitrin Silverspelle. I’m not going to lie. She was basically a self-insert. I wasn’t even creative enough to give her a name too different from my own, but we all have to have our starting places, right? (Katheryn…Kitrin. Clearly I was trying to use my special brand of subtleties.) But I’ll cut myself some slack. I was a little girl, a pudgy little girl with boring, pin straight hair, thick glasses, and a clumsy, unathletic nature. I made good grades, but what did that matter to a small child? Kitrin was beautiful and powerful and everything I wanted to be and couldn’t be. Looking back, writing was a way to escape reality in my own little world where I could be an elven messenger cavorting with princes and knights.

I actually don’t remember much about Kitrin’s character. If I was a more motivated person, I’d read through the manuscript I have (but I just read 90 pages of All the Pretty Horses, so perhaps you’ll forgive me for being lazy). But I remember immersing myself in Kitrin’s world. She became my life. I was obsessed with every detail, and I don’t think I’ve ever been so thorough with my writing before. It’s ironic. I’ve grown up and managed to complicate things.

Is Kitrin a perfect character? No. She’s mostly a vague concept, but it might do me some good to return to her. My writing has been lacking the same passion that little Kat had when she was building worlds, writing languages, scribbling notes on the back of Applebee’s napkins…

Originally, I had another post drafted, but I found all of my old manuscripts and decided I couldn’t pass up the opportunity to display my brilliant concept art.

 

 

J is for Jane

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.

Today is another subject from a NaNoWriMo, but this time, it’s a story I never finished. I sure did get pretty far however. My biggest problem was, when I started it, the ideas sounded completely unique. I thought I was the bee’s knees, and this novel became my baby. I paused the project for a few years and returned to it in high school. Shortly, after that, I read The Hunger Games and realized that my idea was too similar to compete. So it’s back to the drawing board for that story.

Fun fact: I was digging through old computer files and found the text. I started rereading it and realized that I stopped writing on a cliffhanger. I absolutely hate myself, because I can’t remember what I wanted to happen!

Jane was the daughter of a rich businessman who got kidnapped shortly after she turned fifteen. She spent several years of her life trapped in an underground fighting ring called the Arena. Children were kidnapped and made to fight for others (mostly rich spectators) to watch. Jane escaped death because well…she was pretty. Not beautiful. Not particularly talented. Just pretty enough to fulfill the needs of the man that took her.

I actually never got to write her arc, so  I suppose I can’t say much about who she is as a person because I never thought about it. With the direction she was taking, she was either going to be your typical damsel in distress or your “strong independent woman who don’t need no man.” I’m not particularly fond of either archetype. I’m hoping to find a way to combine the two.