THE YEAR OF CHARACTER

I’m sitting here tonight (last night actually) working on the major characters that will be a part of my fictional book and novel series. I’ve spent much of the past week doing the same.

One invaluable thing I learned from James Patterson’s Master Class on commercial fiction is the importance of ongoing, serialized characters that others adore. I’ve known this intellectually for a long time based on my own reading history both as a youth and throughout my life (John Carter, Tarzan, Spock, Jesse Stone, Sherlock Holmes, Doc Savage, Batman, etc.) but looking back on my fiction writings I’ve realized that it hasn’t really sunken in until now. It had sunken into my mind long ago, but not into my soul. Not until now however. But now, finally, I am fully getting it.

I’ve always been a “Story-First” kind of guy and looking back upon it all I suspect I very much now know why. I was trained and self-trained to write stories through D&D (Dungeons and Dragons) and through game writing in general and D&D was indeed the very most excellent practice and training for story-development. But because I so rarely played and was almost always the DM or GM (Dungeon or Game Master) and was always the one creating worlds and writing the stories I never concentrated much at all upon “Character Development.”

That is to say I always let my players develop and run their characters with as little possible interference from me as I could ever get away with. Therefore almost all character development was in their hands and I become STORY AND PLOT AND WORLD FIRST and in many senses, I just habitually adopted the idea of STORY ONLY. Character-Work was for them, I was the World Man.

Not that I couldn’t write or develop characters, I did have several characters of my own I played and I developed some very complex Non-Player Characters (NPCs) but that kind of thing happened rather rarely compared to my World Building and plot and background elements development and so Character Development became a secondary and almost a background issue to me as a fiction writer and story teller. I realize now that I have for most of my life had this sort of subconscious psychological habit of developing stories in complex detail but sort of letting Character Development handle itself in a laissez-faire fashion when I did not outright ignore the issue.

But now that I realize this fault and oversight in my own writings, and the way I go about writing, I have decided that for me this will be the Year of the Characters. This year Characters and Serialized Characters become equally important to me as Story and Plot and World Building.

This is to be my Year of Character, and the genesis of the development of the Great Characters of my Fiction Writing Career.

This year I build Men and Characters and not just Worlds.

HAPPY INDEPENDENCE DAY

I’m gonna have a ball this weekend. First of all my wife and I (and maybe my oldest daughter) are gonna have our Idea Sabbath together tomorrow as well as enjoying our Fourth of July. It’s also my wife’s birthday so we’ll have a real throwdown.

Later this weekend my wife and daughters are leaving for their annual summer camp. Meaning I will have part of the weekend and most of next week entirely to myself. I plan to spend that time cutting brush, clearing land, hauling dirt, exercising, talking with God and writing my novel (the Basilegate), on which I expect to make great progress.

I also plan to spend at least an hour or two each day relaxing and entertaining myself. I have some films to watch, a new Batman graphic novel, and several new fiction books to read, including The Pagan Lord (Cornwell), an interesting looking new science-fiction book called The Dark Between the Stars (Anderson), and the Western Ragtime Cowboys (Estelman).

I also picked up a new copy of Schubert’s Unfinished Symphony (my favorite symphony by Schubert), Blood on the Tracks (Dylan), True Believers (Rucker), and the Best of the Doobie Brothers as CDs to listen to as I work.

I’ll finish up my lecture on mathematics by Bloch of Wheaton College, and listen to some more of Mythology by Edith Hamilton on CD. I haven’t read Mythology since college and it’s very interesting to listen to it instead of read it. Listening to it gives me different idea sets than reading it.

Of course I’ll also watch any Cup games being played.

Then finally I was able to download and print out the new version of the Dungeons and Dragons Basic Game (which is free) and once I put those papers in a notebook I’ll read over it this weekend. I’ve only made a cursory examination so far but the game looks very, very good to me. Simple to play, logical, efficient, and interesting Old School goodness.

When my wife and girls return I’ll have an adventure already made up to play. If it works as good as it looks then we should all enjoy it.

By the way you can find the download link the the Basic Game on my new Gaming Blog, Tome and Tomb. Just hit Tome and Tomb here and you’ll find the link. My gaming blog doesn’t have much content yet but I’ll be building it up soon.

If I don’t get back here until after the Fourth then have a Great Independence Day folks.

Enjoy yourselves, stay safe, don’t forget our military friends and family still in service, and be very grateful for your liberties.

See ya,

Jack.