Sometimes when I’m working on the White Forest series I find myself worried, overwhelmed, and slightly stressed about it all. I feel a pressure to deliver each story as good, or preferably even better, than the last. Sometimes the romance of writing gets lost in the day-to-day nitty-gritty of having to produce.
Sometimes I have to remind myself of my more “innocent” days of writing. When there was no pressure but to write for the sheer pleasure of it.
Hence, lately, I’ve been blogging about those “secret projects,” the ones no one knows I’m working on, where I can experiment and play, try a new form, a new direction, a new genre for the sheer pleasure of it.
This morning I started thinking about the “sheer pleasures” of my series protagonist, Brigitta. As the series continues, as she faces greater and greater dangers, she has much less time for daydreaming in the lyllium fields, languishing in the mist of Precipice Falls, or interpreting shadowfly dances. She has her own pressures and responsibilities (that’s also mistakenly called “growing up,” because really, we should not forget our sheer pleasures).
What do your characters do for the sheer pleasure of it? Not just your heroes and their allies, but the villains, antagonists, and monsters, too. Even Hitler loved art and was wild about the opera. That doesn’t detract from the monstrous things that he did. As a matter of fact, there was a curated art show a few years ago depicting Hitler as “a perverted artist” and theorizing about how his artistic aesthetic was echoed in his politics and Nazi pageantry.
I find it particularly sinister when an “evil” character has time to sit back and enjoy a piece of music and at the same time have no compassion for his victims. How could someone like Hannibal Lecter, for instance, recognize the beauty of a song and at the same time violently destroy a life? In the average person’s mind, the two cannot be squared.
How can you use a character’s “sheer pleasures” to demonstrate losing innocence (as Brigitta’s story does) or complement / contrast a character’s twisted nature?
Your Workout:
Set your timer for 5-7 minutes.
Start at the top of the page with the following startline:
1) My Protagonist/Antagonist/Villain has an uncanny talent for…
Write, don’t stop, don’t edit, don’t cross out.
When the timer stops, Set your timer for 7-10 more minutes.
Start with the following line:
2) My Protagonist/Antagonist/Villain sees great beauty in . . .
Write, don’t stop, don’t edit, don’t cross out.
When the timer stops, Set your timer for 10-12 more minutes.
Start with the following line:
3) My character’s appreciation for beauty becomes obsession/repression/twisted when …
Write, don’t stop, don’t edit, don’t cross out.
Read your exercises, make notes, highlight what makes sense.
Happy Weekend!
Ooh, this is another good exercise, Danika. I think character development might be my favorite element to play around with, so I will have fun with this. My students will too. They’re still at that age where they think ‘evil is evil’ and it’s hard to visualize their villains being normal or carefree or even sensitive.
Thanks, Kate. It’s my favourite, too.