Thursday, August 20, 2009

"Orphans make great characters."

I forget now which professor first uttered those words, but I have since heard them repeated over and over again. Imagine a world with Annie, Madeline, Oliver, Pip and even Bruce Wayne as stable, mundane indivduals with no motivation for self-growth or adventure. I would venture to guess that we'd lose over half of our most beloved stories if the characters in them had grown up in stable homes. Orphaned children are forced into life without tools, without understanding. As readers thrust into a new world we cling to these characters for guidance and explanation.

It's easy to pity an orphan. Afterall, they have been robbed of that simplest and most underappreciated gift - childhood. Whether their parents were murdered or simply too poor to feed them, children who grow up without emotional nourishment will seek it elsewhere. The greatest part of this character dynamic is that you, as a writer, can take it anywhere. You can make a villain who people pity [Vader] or a hero who who slays him [Skywalker]. Though the source of tragedy is often similiar, deciding how a character will react to their tragedy is deciding their fate.

As for my antagonist, I murdered her parents. And like Dick Grayson and his ilk, I have decided to give her the middle-road approach to life. One that produces fits of anger and remorse but seeks to do well for those they care about. As a child who is taken in and guided by a surrogate parent I have given her a set of moral guidlines imposed by a desire to please and seek reward. Whether she will embrace or rebel against these ideals has yet to be decided.

Protaganist Procrastination

Well I couldn't just start writing this story without setting some sort of anchor for the readership to follow. I knew that Superman or super villain, the majority of readers should be on his "side" and see a large part of the world filtered through his lense. But I wasn't writing a book with clearly drawn moral lines. There is no "light" or "dark" in my world. So, trying to mold a likable character to root for became something set off to the side and forgotten.

It wasn't until rereading Gaiman's Lucifer collection that I discovered my protagonist. Within the complicated moral structure of angels, demons and mortals the readers of Lucifer are introduced, breifly, to Meleos. He is a book collector of the rare and occult variety. And it is he who gives birth to the self-aware tarot deck known as the Basanos in Gaiman's universe. I was drawn to his reclusive life and his love for hoarding rare works of writing. However, I did not have need for a supernatural angel with godlike powers to breathe life into inanimate objects. Therefore, after a few hours of flipping through my bookshelf and DVDs I stumbled upon the missing element of my unnamed protagonist.

In a short watched anime called Read or Die exists a secret agent/librarian named Yomiko Readman. She is an introverted bibliophile who, while fighting for her life, is often more concerned for the safety of her books than herself. This was the humorous and more down-to-earth element missing from Meleos' personality. Where he is drawn to the occult and dark powers within books, she actually loves and respects her collection.

For my protagonist, I want him to be a fanatic collector. One who seeks rarity and historical importance from the books he hoardes. But I also want him to love and respect each page not out of greed or selfishness, but out of respect for the art itself. Respect for the creation. A fanaticism comparable with an animal rights activist sans the violence. This is my protagonist.

Now he just needs a name.

Wednesday, August 19, 2009

Setting: Universal or Universe Appeal?

Let me just say upfront that I have nothing "against" the Science Fiction genre. Some of my favorite stories (though most of them dystopian) are set in the not-so-distant future. I do not, however, enjoy Star Trek nor Wars to the extent of most of my friends. I think it has something to do with made up languages and aliens feeling too forced and generic but I'm sure there is more to my distaste for space settings.

When I first decided to write this story, I had considered many different locations and time periods. Space travel, as readers know it, can be ancient (a lost secret from ancient civilzations), modern (a heroic tale of man taming machine and nature) or futuristic (aliens and universal councils). None of these settings fit the story I want to tell. So space was out. Not erased, but not considered. My story has it roots on one planet and in one race, humanity. Whether or not its moral structure could be rewritten in a otherworldly setting is something I'll leave up to the screenwriters of the third installment. W&P III: Books In Space.

The main reason I decided to keep the story in a vague time setting is that it centers around a book. A timeless thing. That being said, books are not often found in futuristic tales where one has touch screens and direct-to-brain downloads. Kindle Gone Wild. No, I wanted a real book. A heavy, ancient, hand-written piece of text. That's why I don't have spaceships and aliens. But it's also why I tried to stay more science and less fiction. I wanted each story to taste familiar with just a hint of something exotic.

Friday, August 14, 2009

Narration: The Great POV Concern

Once I knew what I wanted to say, I had to decide how to say it. At the time I was on my third readthrough of James Morrow's The Last Witchfinder and had fallen in lust for his ability to weave the Principia's narrative with the main story. I thought, perhaps, I could do something similar. But my "book" became a problematic perspective.

The fundamental difference between Morrow's narrative choice and what I had planned was that my book, the Untitled Work or U.W., was torn to pieces and could not provide a stable, singular viewpoint. This difference, however, is what inspired my next idea. Recalling a writing topic from my Overview of Literature class, I thought about morphing the book's perception of self as different people interpret it. Much as the yellow tome carted around in Dorian Gray is not inherently evil but becomes a symbolic presence of evil once deemed so by the observer, U.W.'s percieved personality would morph to fit the interpretations imposed upon it by the readers.

Now that this had been decided, I needed to create readers for the U.W.. Since I also wanted to weave a third party perspective to the overall story, I would have to create a world for the U.W. to exist in and to people it with a myriad of personalities. That's where next week's posts come in.

Thursday, August 13, 2009

What If...

When I was about 10 years old, I went to a GoodWill store with my father. I found a book there called How to Write Screenplays That Sell and bought it for a quarter. It has since been highlighted, dogeared and tabbed so many times that I dare not even open the book for fear of destroying it. One of the very first chapters, as I recall it, advised that to come up with a good story you needed to start with a 'what if' statement. All good plots could be summarized by this what if idea and the author proceeded to show this with many prominent film examples such as Romancing the Stone and The Karate Kid.

Now, almost two decades later I found myself stumbling upon a novel concept in the very same way; inadvertantly following the advice I had read as a child.

It happened while I was taking a shower. I get my best ideas when I'm in there though I'll never understand why. My mind started to wander from the debate I had had that morning regarding Scientology and Dark Age Christianity and I found myself wondering "what if..."

"What if every religion in the world-- cult and mainstream, philosophy and morality-- is all inspired by one common story? One book. And the only reason they are so dissimilar in parts is because each is based on a mere fraction of the complete tale."

And there it was, the birth of an idea. I have always wanted to write a novel. When I first purchased that book so many years ago, I wanted to be the next King or Lovecraft. But as my tastes matured and my interests migrated from fictitious religions to those real faiths which shadow our world's histories, I decided to write something more scientific and less fiction. Something that could speak to anyone and everyone. Grandiose dreams aside, I just wanted to get these ideas and dreams out of my head and onto paper.