Character Development – Salem – Liam

Character Development – Salem – Liam

 

Salem is on another rewrite and the first book centers around a seventeen-year-old boy named Liam.  The second book was easy, the point-of-view is a girl named Sam and I got a better fix of who she is.

Liam, Liam, Liam.  This character has been a thorn in my side for a year now and I realized that he’s a very superficial character.  Time to give him a shot in the arm of personality, Stat.  This blog post is going to be written as I work so some parts are going to seem random and disjointed, but it will record an afternoon spent beefing up Liam’s character.

 

Pertinent information about Liam.

1. Lives in Aberdeen, Scotland with his family.
2. Grandfather lives nearby and the two are close.
3. He plays rugby and other sports.
4. His family is involved in a secret organization who hunts witches.
5. They are also witches.  (Yeah, I know.  It fits.)
6.  There is a lot of sibling rivalry between his younger brother and himself.
7. Thanks to the secret organization, his father is wealthy.

 

Okay, not a whole lot to go from.  I’m going to start with the Rugby and work my way out.  In chapter 3 I’ve already stated he has a chipped tooth from playing that he runs his tongue over as a nervous habit and it drives his mother crazy.  I’m going to add that his nose is a little crooked from a Rugby injury.

The idea of writing about a guy who likes rough contact sports doing magic is appealing.  I’ve been writing Liam as a quiet/brooding type.  That doesn’t fit with the sporty persona so with some rewriting he’s going to be the type to approach any problem head-on and blast it out of the way with pure brute strength.  He won’t be a ditherer, if there’s a problem he’ll fix it with a minimum of fuss.

Next step, let’s look at his family dynamics and figure out how this will play into his character and how it would’ve shaped him.  His father is a member of the Secret Organization and is almost never around.   Early in Salem I wrote that they didn’t get along, but I’m changing that now to Indifference.  Liam’s father is a thin, non-athletic type so he wouldn’t have much patience for his son’s interest in sports.  The two may not get along, but I’m tweaking that to the fact they don’t understand each other and neither is trying to change that.

Liam’s mother makes a quick appearance in the second chapter, she bought an art gallery a few years before and runs it with all her time.   She’s also got a bit of a naughty relationship with the bodyguard put on her by Secret Organization.

Callum is the younger brother, he’s intense with a real jealousy problem regarding his brother.  He’s their father’s favorite, but he still resents any attention Liam might get from any family members.

Four people living in the same house, but each living their own life independently.  There isn’t any overlap or a lot of affection.

Enter Liam’s grandfather.  This is the man who taught him to ride a bike, took him fishing and taught him to drive.    He’s also the only one in the family who doesn’t agree with Secret Organization and tries to save Liam from what they have planned for him.

What do these family dynamics mean for Liam?  At a glance, I’m going to figure he’s not a touchy feely type of person, his nuclear family are indifferent to each other so there will be little affection.  When offered said affection, he’ll probably be suspicious and wondering what said person wants from him in return.

At the beginning of the story he moves to the United States to live with his aunt in an attempt to escape Secret Organization.  He’ll be going from a life of comfort and luxury to one of moderation and uncertainty.  How would he react to this?  With all the enthusiasm of a coffee lover being told they need to brew their own from now on, of course.  Nobody likes having to tighten their belt and make do with less than they’re used to.  Enter a more sullen, dissatisfied with his lot Liam.

 

A good start to revamping this character, I think.   This will be enough to rewrite the first few chapters to see how it flows with the storyline.

Character Relationship Analysis- Tony Stark and Pepper Potts- IRONMAN 2

Iron Man 2 begins eight months after the original Iron Man movie in that world.  The changes in the relationship between Tony and Pepper are apparent immediately with a scene that was ultimately cut from the theatrical version.  Pepper seems to have taken a firmer hand in keeping Tony in one piece now that he’s come out as Iron Man.  She’s more forceful and less likely to take his crap.

The cut scene shows a hung over Tony emptying his stomach into a toilet while wearing his Iron man suit.  Pepper tough loves him into jumping out of the plane to land at the Stark Expo, but before he jumps he tries to weasel a kiss out of Pepper and she responds by kissing his helmet then throwing it out of the plane.

I was fascinated by that scene, it was great from a director’s standpoint, but it also showed a certain amount of relaxing between the two characters.  A year before, Pepper never would have done something like that.

The movie progresses and continues with the theme between them that; ‘Behind every brilliant mind is a second person who holds it all together.’

The core of the reactor keeping Tony alive is killing him.  We are shown this early in the movie and it explains a lot of the things he does that seem impulsive, even for Tony Stark.

Back to the Tony and Pepper relationship, the BIG thing that happened, in my opinion, was Tony making her CEO of Stark Industries.  It’s clear from their dialog that she’s been running the company for him for months, probably since he came out as Iron Man.  Stark Industries is the only thing that Tony really has a vested interest in, it was the company founded by his father and a constant theme with him is to make it as great as his father intended.  So he gives it to Pepper.  This is big.  He effectively makes her his equal, elevating her from the secretary role and he cuts his CEO ties with Stark Industries immediately.  There’s no looking over her shoulder, he knows she will run it better than he could.

There is a moment on the jet from Monaco to California where Tony -almost- fesses up about the Palladium core killing him.  He makes her the most disgusting looking omelet, she twigs that something is up with him.  When pressed, Tony tries to talk her into going to Venice, Italy with him to relax, but Pepper is not Tony.  She refuses to drop her responsibilities at such a horrible time and he drops the idea completely.

A lot of people didn’t like the way Gwyneth Paltrow played Pepper Potts in IM2, but I think the way she played Pepper was brilliant.  Pep got a huge promotion dumped on her shoulders and Tony…well, Tony was just being Tony on steroids.  He’s dying and he’s going to live it up before he goes.  Both characters go into a rather dark place, more so with him, but she also starts getting hard.

Tony hits rock bottom at his birthday party, getting trashed and using his suit to blow things up for fun.  He effectively alienates both Rhodie and Pepper before getting his butt handed to him by his friend in the War Machine suit.

Fast forwarding past the hangover and Tony’s meeting with Nick Fury, Tony Stark finally figures out he’s messed up.  He picks up strawberries and heads to his old office at Stark Industries to apologize to Pepper.  He actually almost manages to squeeze out a ‘I love you’ before she cuts him off and kicks him to the curb.  After the way Tony treated her the previous night, that’s the best thing she could have done before you consider he brought her the only food in the world she was allergic to as a peace-offering.  Oops.

Thanks to help from his dead father, Tony discovers a new element that will replace the Palladium core just in time for Ivan Vanko to attack the Stark Expo.

During a recent screening of Iron Man 2 I noticed something…odd.  Natalie Rushman- aka Black Widow- aka Natasha Romanov- seems to be pulling double duty.  She’s shadowing Tony Stark, but she also appears to be shadowing Pepper Potts on the side.  Not just because she works with Pepper as a ruse, it’s more of a situation that she is shadowing her as part of the Iron Man investigation.  The last scene of the movie with Nick Fury echoes this hunch.  It’s only when Tony mentions that he’s trying to do the right thing by Pepper that Fury informs him that’s why they would rather keep him on as a consultant.

Most people will argue that it was the reasons prior to that one that Fury was referring to, but it makes me wonder.  In movies every single word is weighed, measured and debated.  The rest of the Avengers tied to SHIELD usually work solo, there are love interests, but most of them don’t have the level of involvement in the superhero identity that Pepper Potts has with Iron Man.  I think Fury knows that if he takes on Tony Stark/Iron Man, that anything that happens involving Tony will also involve Ms. Potts.  Maybe there is another reason they don’t want to involve Pepper that I’m not seeing, but I think there might be something to this hunch.

By the end of Iron Man 2, Pepper and Tony have kissed and made up…literally.  A few days later we see Tony meeting with Nick Fury about working with SHIELD and it’s alluded that they are in a relationship.  This surprised me the first time I saw IM2 because, frankly, at this point with both of them I don’t see a relationship lasting.  Maybe this is done on purpose…give the fans what they want but not in the way they want it.

My next post will dig into The Avengers and Iron Man 3.  There isn’t a lot of information out there yet, but I think I can guess how this will play out with the Tony Stark-Pepper Potts relationship.

Big Changes

Alrighty then, it’s been a while since my last post.  I’ve been working on a SekritProjekt and every time I’ve thought to blog, my muse interrupts me with brilliant ideas for my books.  Bloody, slavedriving muse.

The Last Carlysle is shelved for the time being, it’s a bit too niche to be spending a lot of time on.  The Salem book is coming along nicely, I put a new sample of the chapter up because the book got a massive overhaul recently.

My new project is a romance called Bon Voyage.  It’s set on a cruise ship and has quite the cast of characters.  Nate Bainbridge is an actor trying to flee a crazy stalker, Gwen is a writer hiding from the past.  I tossed  a sample of that up on the main page too.

Finishing Touches

The ending of The Last Carlysle is spec’d out and the writing has been going well for the last few days.  There was a couple days that involved me staring blankly at walls trying to manipulate the story for the best ending.  I think I’ve got it now.  The previous ending was so perfect but with the content I pulled last weekend it won’t work.  Pity.

My oldest son is five years old and for the last few days he’s been on a kick about wanting another sibling.  This is leading to a lot of uncomfortable questions because when he asks his father and I usually laugh and say no.  He wants to know why and where babies come from.  I let my husband handle that answer and yesterday it led to a comment that I’m still giggling over.  Jon is telling people “I’m going to walk to God’s house and pick out a new baby for us.”  He still thinks God has a giant workshop that He assembles people in so I guess now he’s added a baby Walmart to his imaginary heaven.

Time to start writing again.  These scenes aren’t going to write themselves.

Ciao

The Twitter/Facebook phenomenon

The past few days have been a delightful blur for me.  The Last Carlysle revisions are almost done and the end word count is about 20k words short of it’s previous length.  I’m very happy with it though, it flows better.

I got a big surprise a couple days ago.  I had an agent contact me directly about the sample chapter I posted last week here on wordpress.  How often does this happen to writers?  In my case, twice.  I got another message the day after the first from another agent.  I’m…stunned.  I think I sat in the corner and burbled to myself for a good two hours.  I checked out both agents and they are legit so I had no problem answering their questions.   I just keep thinking to myself ‘it’s not supposed to be this easy’.  Where is the catch?   I’ve gotten my fair share of rejection letters but I didn’t expect agents to start contacting me.

Before I can let myself get too excited I should go finish those revisions.

Ciao

Slice and Dice

I did it.  There was one part of The Last Carlysle that has been mocking me, daring me to pull it out of the book.  I wanted it to work but it just wasn’t working out.   The book is now about 25,000 words lighter.   I’m now cleansing the rest of the book and purging all the references and tie-in’s to the missing material.  This means the ending is going to have to be rewritten (again) but I don’t care.  It’s sad to have to remove that material, I really liked the concept but the last two months has been trying to rewrite that part and it’s not working.

If I write another book in this world that character will be able to use the cut plot.

Now, as soon as the fat, smelly, hairy guy sitting next to me would leave the cafe I could get to work.

The Big B Pays Off

The Dell laptop saga has entered a new phase.  Yesterday afternoon right after I brought the boys home from school the Fedex guy showed up.  In his hands was a brand new dell laptop.  Dell would like me to go away now.   It’s been twenty-four hours and it’s working perfectly so far.

I managed about 7,000 words in revisions in the last two days, rewriting the mages academy chapters.  I think there is room for an entire book of it’s own but I sort of skimmed the surface in the first draft.  Figuring out the ins and outs of how magic works in this world is taking time, my goal is to have this society use magic in the way we use technology today.  Communication.  Health.  Security.

Building a Better Book

I haven’t had too much to update lately.  Rewrites are still underway and I’m really starting to love how well this story is coming together.    I’ve had the saga of my new laptop to deal with and that has been extremely annoying.  I ordered a Dell laptop to use solely for writing a couple weeks ago.   It arrived last Thursday and it seemed good, I liked the layout and configuration.  That afternoon I got the first error message, I hadn’t loaded a single thing but I kept getting the ‘you are running out of virtual memory, please save your work to prevent loss’ messages.

Great.  Wonderful.

Updated all the software, disabled the pig that is McAffee and all seemed fine.  Saturday we went up to my mother-in-law’s home and I brought the new laptop with a plan to do some editing while everyone visited.  It worked fine but when we got home I got the best message yet.  ‘Startup recovery attempt’

 

I had Dell on the line so fast I’m sure heads were spinning.  The techs wanted me to try debugging the lemon I got, but after some strong words on my end they agreed to replace the laptop.  It should be here today sometime.  FedEx usually doesn’t stop here until late afternoon so I’m just keeping an eye out.

 

So.  The Last Carlysle.  I did some editing and tweaked some scenes between Kathryn and Donal to add more tension and conflict to their relationship.  Now I’m rewriting the first chapter to make it flow a bit smoother, I think if I make the first chapter told from Donal’s point of view instead of Kathryn’s it would be more interesting.  Maybe.

 

Here comes the fedex truck!

Character Development

I’ve had some sort of nasty virus the past few days, the same thing my kids brought home from school.  I think I would prefer a valentine next time.

Today is the first day I’ve felt up to writing and with input coming in from my test readers I’ve made some changes to the Carlysle story.  Everyone loves a character that I really didn’t think much of but due to the love being sent her way Caroline is getting more face time.  I’ve added several scenes that involve her and edited a few to include her where it makes sense.  There is one scene that I was surprised I hadn’t added her to the first time.

Donal is getting more of a showing too, he needed some fleshing out.  His scenes are getting reworked and he’s getting new ones added to fill in some gaps of what was happening to him during key stages in the story.  I’m very excited about these changes.

I use a writing program called WriteWay Pro that allows me to create character profiles.  That took a lot of time but it was worth it.  Now I have all the crucial data on all the major and minor characters that I need and it is really easy to add little bits as I write.  Like, so and so wears a cologne that smells nasty to most people.  One button and the information is neatly stored so I don’t lose it.  My wall of post it notes wasn’t cutting it when it came to the itty bitty crap.  I’m hoping tomorrow to start posting parts of the character profiles and notes if anyone is curious.  The notes will have small back stories that don’t make the books, information that I deliberately didn’t put in but is hedged about.

Reshaping a world

I’m still rewriting The Last Carlysle.  Or, in my words, playing with my imaginary friends.

With feedback coming in from the few people who have read the first manuscript I’m able to fix the problem areas.   Victoria is less wishy-washy now, she’s selfish and has a ‘me me me’ mindset.   Caroline will probably be axed from the manuscript entirely, her character didn’t fill the roll I thought she would.  Preston got fleshed out and more of a leading roll as the long-suffering manservent.  He’s adorable.   I haven’t been able to blog much because of the ‘pukey virus’ making it’s way through my household.

I hope I never have to clean vomit out of a carseat ever again.