#and think about how normalised haram is in society

[roses-and-elixir]

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[hoochieblues]

100 Days of Writing: Day 30

Did your main characters change as you wrote them? Was that the plan or did they surprise you?

for @the-wip-project 

As a 60% pantser, yes to all of the above. I usually try to leave room for characters to develop, because I don’t always have a firm idea of how I want them to change over the course of the story. 

There’s usually a basic concept, but sometimes I love the challenge of trying to subvert expectations, particularly when it comes to traditional ‘heroic’ arcs.

Sure, there’s some weirdness here with some of my fic characters, bc I’m coming back to things that have been on multi-year hiatuses, so you’d think they’ve matured - or my writing has fundamentally changed. I’m not entirely sure yet. I can certainly see ways my writing has developed and perhaps improved in structure and technicality, but the people - fictional as they may be - seem to step out of stasis and be as fresh as ever... mostly. If there have been changes over hiatus, I think it’s to do with my viewpoints and how my choices intersect with the changes to character portrayal.

Something that’s been apparent to me is that Merien is a more political Tabris than she used to be... probably because the author suffered through four years of the t*ump era and/or the ongoing circus of bojo haram in the meantime.**

Some things that I used to shy from in fiction I probably grapple with more readily now, and some things I used to handwave as passable character flaws (*cough*Tobias Hawke and his casual ableism/biphobia/misogyny, bc I love him but he’s kind of a prick*cough*totally not based on an amalgam of people I’ve known*cough*) I now scale back, not from a fear of cancel culture but bc society as it now is just has no need of extra casual -isms. It costs nothing not to normalise something negative and all that. I know that was always true, but lemme have my growth.

I feel like I’m lucky to have this opportunity to redux and revisit older work as I finish it, as it’s not just nostalgic but also pretty instructive, and has got me thinking about creative process as well. 

Too often, I’ve been rigid in what a character’s role is, because I’ve written a lot of pretty rigid genre fiction. Like, this is exactly the role and no more. It’s only in my own work “for fun” I’ve given things more free rein and not been on super tight deadlines etc. 

...And it’s showed. When I wrote commercial cishet romance, at least one publisher I worked for had a very strict and extremely traditional house style. I wasn’t allowed to write women who were too gnc... hell, once I had to revise a character’s hair color from brown to blonde bc she was ‘too plain’(!) and the male character wasn’t allowed to a) be under 6′ tall or b) have any ‘physical imperfection’ (I’d given him a knee injury from sportsball bc he was a big soft jock but also clumsy. ...he wasn’t allowed to be clumsy either. Sigh.)

They were cardboard people, wholly neutered. 

Perfection is so dull to me. I want to read and write characters who feel like real people, who are neurotic messes some of the time, and spend too long pulling themselves together, or make bad choices or stupid decisions because of very relatable reasons. 

Some of the best feedback I’ve ever got on my writing has been people saying ‘wow, I was screaming at those characters’ - not the writing, not my choices, but the characters’ choices. If you can trip that balance, you’ve made something that feels real. 

In fic writing, I’m enjoying kicking back and letting my MCs’ autonomy and development surprise me a bit more. That certainly didn’t go to plan before with Merien, who ended up basically having an entire Walpurgisnacht for about 2/3 of vol 4 of FoD (including borderline fucking up her LI because of internalised Things and a wholly irrational desire to prove herself to the Dalish)... that needs paring back and fixing a little, because it drags too hard, but in my defence my life was imploding at the time, hence then falling into hiatus. 

On a more level playing field, though, I love the things I learn and I’m excited to see the directions things might take.

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**Note for clarity: yes, I’m in Europe ~ohwaitnotanymorefuckbrexit~ but my partner’s American and I had the joy of being over there in 2016 and ‘18-19, aside from t*ump affecting us all globally. Real things that happened: so many lawn signs. people taking angry creepshots of us and complaining. One dude was so mad he accidentally backed his car into a wall in a walmart parking lot, which was every bit as hilarious as it sounds. unclear where the anger originated: partner being mixed race/enby, me being a greenhaired weirdo, or both, but jfc. you guys have a beautiful country; we just need to get the morons dealt with. /endrant