Character

These past couple weeks I came across a snag in my writing. At first, Shea was a Knight of the Guard. Boring, right? So I changed him into a Knight of Callaghan. I gave them a backstory, and it's not all nice things. I realized Shea is going to act differently around people because of this. This fact set me back to almost the beginning again, and I started feeling overwhelmed, like this rewrite would never get done. After meeting with my writing group last weekend, I started brainstorming a little more, understanding which questions I needed to be asking. Why does he join this group? What age is he when he joins? What role does the death of his father play in all this? What sort of tension does this create with his relationship with the main character? I realized some of my characters don't have enough depth, and that this whole thing isn't really a setback; it's a deepening of character. Which always makes a good story better.

Yesterday I was able to sit down for a couple of hours and decide on my answers to these questions. More questions came up as I wrote today, but it was much easier to work through them. I just have to realize these things take time, and be glad I'm not on some kind of deadline.

One last piece of news, related to Scotland: I bought my tickets today! I'm going. It's official. It's hard to think about anything else.

Photo: I went to the Seattle Pride Parade last weekend, in which there were many interesting characters. But I also found a pipe band! I couldn't stop grinning as they passed by...