Character revelations

Brynja has been frustrating me, somewhat.  That's good news in that I've been playing with her. But she's been behaving like a TSTL (too stupid to live) heroine from the '80s.  After a great deal of discussion, she acknowledged that she had indeed behaved in such a manner. It perplexed her as much as it did me, and she vowed to never do it again.  Usually when a character says never, they mean until the next time.  I'm going to have to watch her closely. She's reckless. At least, I now know why. 

Bracken is not at all reckless, despite his recent act of pulling up stakes and moving halfway across the world. He was driven to do so by forces beyond his control.  He's pretty pleased with how that's turned out so far.

It seems that no matter how much I plot, I continue to learn things about characters and stories as I go along. That's essential if I'm to stay interested in writing. A big part of why I write is to see how things work out.  Editing isn't as much fun as I already know the story. Then it becomes a game of words.  That's a different kind of interesting.

How's your week been?

Triangles

I'm not a geomtry-cist (I made up the word, indeed I did, blame the head cold)While my Celtic background leans me towards lovely curving lines, I have to admit angles come in handy.  Nor is one type of angle better than another.  Cylinders, squares, rectangles and triangle are all equally important. Can you imagine a turret made like a square? It would be a courtyard.

Triangles though are often used as plot devices and they make me crazy. It's my own personal belief system that if you haven't chosen one lover over the other by book nineteen, you are not the type of person with whom I wish to spend time.  That's selfish, and cruel, behaviour.  At some point in time, your feelings towards one person are stronger than they are for the other person.  Rarely do all three form a perfect equilateral triangle.  As a plot device, they are the more common, and cliched, scalene triangle which has no equal sides. It's unbalanced from the beginning. Walk away.

What plot devices most annoy you?

Plotting

Life is kicking my ass. That happens sometimes. This will come in handy later when I torture my characters. I'll draw on life experience to add depth and reality to their scenes.

In the meantime, I'm plotting what lies beyond this gate...