Unnamed Blog Entry

Yes, the title is because I can't think of a name for this entry.  Because sometimes it's hard to come up with a name.  And sometimes that name makes all the difference.

For my current plot-in-progress, I started off with two characters I've written before as the main protagonists.  This was both to make sure I started off with people I knew and to give me a kind of character shorthand, a way to determine these characters' thoughts and actions with ease and without worrying about it too much.  Yes, it's lazy plotting at its finest, I know.  It got me started, which is what I needed, considering how long I'd been trying to find the story for this world.  But I knew I couldn't keep using those characters.

So I came up with new names, applied them, and everything changed.  One character grew about six inches and was suddenly from the eastern US, grew up on a farm, and had a love for knee-length sweaters.  (She kept her hair like she's Merida from "Brave"'s stunt double, though.  Cleaning blood out of it is going to be a pain.)  The other character gained a background in the film industry as well as uncles he'd hunted with in his youth, and went from being white to half-black, half-Scottish.  (Why half-Scottish?  Partly as a shout-out to a game I love, and partly because kilts.)

I swear, even knowing this is all happening in my head, it's weird as hell to see characters spontaneously change like that.

With the name changes, these people went from characters I'd written before to new people to explore and discover.  Working on their backgrounds has been fun, but seeing what they do now as I work on the plot is really interesting.  I no longer automatically know how they'll react to all the weird crap I'm going to put them through, and watching that come about as I plot is both fascinating and occasionally worrisome as they develop in unexpected ways.  Yet at the same time, I can see how they interact much better than I could before, because they now only exist for this story, not in several others.  And even though most of the story's events will still happen the same way, I really feel like these new characters could throw me a bizarre curveball.

And then there's the one who is a bizarre curveball, the one who currently has no name.

Seriously, this is one of the most frustrating aspects of character creation.  I know who this character is, where she comes from, her lengthy past and how she got to where she is when the others find her.  I know why she does what she does, and why she considers the others' mission so vital that she's not only willing but enthusiastic about joining up with them.  I know how she looks at life, how her view is significantly different from her companions', and why that will prove vital over the course of the story.  I know she 'hunts' by singing to forest animals until they get close enough, then snaps their necks.  She's a raging berserker elven Disney princess avatar of a war goddess, and I have no idea what her name is.

Next entry: IWSG and all the stories I once wanted to tell.