Anybody remember The Roar of Our Stars? If not, it’s right up there with its own page on the blog. I’m tempted to make a “go read it, I’ll wait” joke, but those jokes are kind of stupid, so I’d rather not.
Like many things, this project sort of fell by the wayside when I got pregnant. I still like it. What I had done, what I had planned, the characters and the story (such as it was), all that stuff. I don’t really feel like picking it back up the way it was, though. In the last post I wrote with the TRoOS tag, I mentioned that the chats and prosies were starting to divorce themselves.
So maybe I could try a novel-y version?
I know, I haven’t been able to get back on the wagon properly, again since finding out I was pregnant. And now that Owen is here, he’s more demanding than I tend to realise/remember and there’s also the fact that I need to sleep and exercise. Bevy of health stuff that involves pills and creams. This could well be me talking without anything to back it up again. But I have to try, don’t I?
Anyway, the question here is not just how to do it (which should be interesting to figure out) but which characters will survive the transition from the way TRoOS initially worked, to a novel form. There are ten characters, and maybe not all of them are actually necessary. I just liked them, and I needed as many pairs as I wanted to write for the first round. Ten is too many for a novel, though.
Not that I’ll get an answer (did anyone read TRoOS?), but who should hang on for a novel attempt? There are a couple that I know will have to be in it, either because they’re the most integral to my intentions or I like them a lot. Many of the integral characters are either actively involved with the existence of monsters or have some kind of supernatural leanings or connection.
Delia was the first character I wrote anything with, and although she isn’t aware of monsters, she does have supernatural entanglements. The duller or less developed characters, like Button and Persephone, probably won’t make the cut. Granted, they did have something to offer originally–Button’s surety that he had something important to do, and Persephone’s value hidden in a possibly put-on ditzy nature–but those aren’t super important things.
There are a few inherent pairs, pretty much set up by the first round. If Persephone doesn’t make it, then Travis probably won’t either. But Carlos and Wen, another inherent pair, won’t likely protect the other from being left out. Carlos is an active (for want of a better term), but Wen falls under the category of ‘less developed’ and tended to play off of Carlos a little too much. He didn’t do enough on his own. But we’ll see. Wen could well be an important foil for Carlos, and with some more thought, could develop to the level he needs to reach.
Kaapo and Aronshy, perhaps a pair, perhaps not, are safely superfluous. I think this happened because they became a bit of a pair, while I did not have enough actives. And two passives do not a strong monster plot link make. Another problem is that at the outset, and for some time after, I mixed up Delia and Aronshy, so the latter’s character got a bit lost. Maybe I could re-make Aronshy with a more distinct background and personality, or merge the two characters and pick which name to use.
Of course, Vivane is pretty much the flagship character. Or battleship cruiser. It’s hard to tell with her. And Ronit is an excellent passive to make up the other half of that pair. Hmm. Thinking about all these pairs, maybe I ought to make that a thing.
To sum up:
Will likely stay – Delia, Vivane, Ronit, Carlos
Will likely go – Button, Persephone, Travis, Kaapo
Requires work to stay – Aronshy, Wen
I just started thinking about this last night, so it’s all up in the air and entirely cloud-thinking at the moment. I don’t know if I’ll keep the chat aspect at all, but I still love the usernames. Shillelaghins. Haw.
Would chats be annoying in prose? I’m inclined to think so, but I dunno.
Notebook Pages 