Building character/s

 A friend asked me the other day whether I ever base any of the characters in my stories on people I know.  The short answer is NO.  At least not a single person. As a general rule, in part because I mostly write in the speculative fiction space, it doesn't make any sense to do so. 

There are some subtleties to this position.  I have used the names of people whose paths have crossed with mine if I think they have cool names.  Oddly, coming up with character names can be quite hard.  It was easier in my Panopticon series of books because they were based on gods mythology so was able to use existing names from various pantheons from around the world.  In contrast, the Peitho series took more effort but I ended up basing most of the characters on well known names from the cultural heritages prevalent in the story (i.e. Welsh and French). 

I have attached the physical attributes of friends and acquaintances to some of my main characters because it is easier to describe someone I know than to imagine it. Plus I seem to befriend people with distinctive features (I am a sucker for a good "French nose").

As for personality traits and mannerisms, this is where no one I know (who are or have been a part of my life) features as a whole in any character I write. This aspect is much more mix and match and make up characteristics.  Unless I am writing a biography, then it is analogous to baking a cake - I need to use certain ingredients in combination to produce the end product that will present my narrative effectively.  A souffle will only rise in an oven with the right combination. 

One more exception is that story every writer needs to write early in their career to get pieces of themselves out of their system.  For me, that story was Transition Girl.  To be clear, the main character was NOT me but some version of me IF I had made alternative life choices.  The character in that story was in a much darker place than I will ever be. The walking dead versus the eternal optimist.  But things could have been very different - it was an interesting thought experiment writing that book.

There have been characters that have been constructs I've used to help me process unresolved emotional matters in my life.  For example, the character Gabriel in the Panopticon series bore a striking physical resemblance to a former love in my life (who broke my heart) and there were times during the drafting of that series when that character's interaction with another character, Nemesis, often had me crying as I was writing their scenes because the emotions mirrored some things I was processing in life.  Coincidental but therapeutic.

Unrelated, I am on the home stretch now of the poetry contributions to an e-publication with two more months to go.

Of the poems submitted this month of April, this one is my favourite - called Identity.

Near death experiences can change you, sort of.

Resuming transmission after being
in that place
of sleep without dreams,
the peaceful sleep of a thousand sleeps,
surrounded by black.
Nothingness.

Revived after a heart stopped beating,
with only the ghost of a dead friend
standing at the foot of the bed,
smiling as if he was there to reassure
that everything would be alright.
The mind can play serious tricks with
too many tubes to count, piercing skin,
and intensive care machines chirping
far more steady than that muscle
losing count inside my chest.

A joyful event marking passing and rebirth.
A second chance at near-life.
Do these scrapes fuel
that out-of-sorts feeling?
Or is treating life as a vacation
gift-wrapping these moments?
Skeleton dancing apparition
animated stardust
unburdened by an uncheckered past
untroubled by an uncertain future.

Contemplate changing something, anything,
sweep away the tangible refuse
of that history strewn throughout the home.
Purging and purifying my psyche
without throwing out pieces of my identity.
Such decluttering does not
really alter who I am.
Impossible to clear the head of trash.
Best to ride out the uneasiness
wait for this disquiet to come and go.

hard decisions

It's been a tough few weeks where I have had to make a couple of hard decisions.  

Without being able to go into details, the day job has been a time stealing exhaustion vortex.

My friends worry about my health deteriorating in these circumstances. Extreme tiredness and stress (and, unrelated, humidity) are the main triggers for my relapsing/remitting MS. Haven't quite reached that stage but a near constant headache over the last ten days is an early signpost. This Easter break has not been much of a break but enough circuit-breaker moments (including three 'sleep-ins' by my standards) to ease the pressure.

Hard decision #1 - The work overload led me to cancel my June trip to Tasmania. I'll do some Rising Festival stuff in Melbourne instead (the Church will be playing again locally so not a complete loss) and will try and do some hikes I had planned on the southern isle possibly over next summer instead. 

Hard decision #2 - The work overload has also led me to stop completely the drafting of the latest novel - "the Peithosian Legacy". Agreed with my publisher and now won't return to it for a few years.  Just not in the right headspace to be writing dystopian fiction at the moment. In its place, I've committed to drafting a different story over the next three years that will be anything but speculative dystopian in theme.  

Have started prepping a new story board for a contemporary fiction novel - working title "One Way Street". Story boards (outlines) are a lot easier to do for contemporary fiction - they can be mapped out in a couple of months. In contrast, speculative story boards involve several months of research to map out how science is relevant to the narrative and how the created 'world' differs from that baseline.  This is important to readers of the genre - getting that 'internal consistency' right, otherwise much of the criticism of an eventual story will centre on any inconsistencies. Even in a speculative world, things have to be believable.  World building is a critical component of prepping before drafting commences. 

The main components of a contemporary fiction story board are otherwise the same:

• what is the 'tagline' (describing in a sentence what question your story is trying to answer)
• what is the main narrative (precis of the story) - this is also the pitch
• who are the main characters (I usually describe their key physical and personality traits and their motivations to help set up the conflict between them (and sometimes with themselves)
• key chapter blocks (I usually start with 12 blocks to tell my story, but this varies depending on the story)
• a timeline of the story's key events (this is particularly important if the story jumps around in a timeline) and
• an initial scene by scene mapping of the story (I say initial because, as a writer, I often find the story can evolve as the writing progresses so a common checkpoint for me is to refine the scene by scene about 100 pages into the story drafting).

This is my method. Every writer is different in their approach. 

What was the pitch for my contemporary fiction story? I have decided to explore this question "we cannot see with eyes welded shut".  The inspiration for this story is an old high school friendship which was in that category of "could have been, should have been, never was" for various reasons - while that friendship faded with the passage of time and distance, I will explore how it might have evolved if circumstances had been different. There will be at least one triangle in it.  I tested it with a couple of friends yesterday who both suggested there should be multiple triangles in it.  Still thinking whether this would complicate the story too much.

Finally, with only a couple of months to do on a poetry contributing writer commitment (last ones due in June), I have come to the conclusion that the readers of my current batch of poems (mostly written over December and January) prefer the darker themed ones. 

An example below - called "Last Thought" - 

I think there is a cicada
under my desk at work.
It is ludicrous to believe
a bug of this ilk could find
its way into a tall building.
Yet its sound is chirping
with a certain rhythm,
loudest at the start
and end of each day.
Hours on either side
before anyone else will
invade this space.

For some unknown reason
its song has prompted
my mind to ponder the idea
what would be its last thought
if it ceased to be.

Would it depend on the circumstance
in which it found itself to be?
Captured under a glass and then crushed
or left without food for such as stretch
that it starves alone?
Perhaps memories would come flooding back
of swarms that have come and gone
in its life past.
Perhaps their collective memory
of this creature would fade with time
but at least for a moment
it will be remembered.

And then forgotten.

I cry a little with only
my desk cicada within earshot
to hear my quiet sobs.
I fall to my knees to search for it
among the pool of tears.
Worried there would be no cicada
to keep me company tomorrow.
Relieved to discover he is mechanical.
He will live without food
beyond the electricity that sustains him
For as long as I need his steady beat.