Episode #111: How Manly Are My Characters?

One of the many, many food items that my family partook in this past Thanksgiving, which was brought by a dear cousin who I haven't seen since '19 {and you can guess the reason why}. And I do believe there were no leftovers to this monstrosity.

So here we are with another scintillating post about the Average American Novel, with topic of choice being how I came up with the main characters of the story and  the other assorted details associated with it.

But first, a word count update, since I've managed to complete two more chapters.

Overall word total: 42,882.

Handwritten: 20,062.

Percentage: 46.7%.

Not too shabby here, especially since the main goal is to have at least 50% of this novel being handwritten first, before transcription. I must admit, I am enjoying myself doing it this way, because at the bare minimum, going at this turtle pace is allowing me to properly concentrate on where the story is and how I need to get to where the ending is in the most sensible way possible.

Anyways, back to the topic of choice: characters.

Back in 2011, I had a baker's dozen of main characters and another baker's dozen and a half of throwaway characters originally written for this story. Suffice to say, that was way too many people to keep track of, so when I got to recreating this story from scratch, roughly 85% of those characters were either pitched or turned into major/minor throwaways. 

The reason as to why I make a distinction for my throwaways, is that the minors are basically those who simply fulfill a need for a scene arc {e.g. a bartender, a waiter, a henchman} before being taken out to the woodshed to be turned into kindling; while the majors are semi-throwaways, in that there's no real in-depth info dump on them, but they periodically pop up throughout the story to properly move key scenes a particular way.

With that out of the way, this week's post I will talk a little bit about my main male characters and explain why I wrote them the way that I did for the story. Next week I will talk a little bit about the important female characters in my story.

Male MCs

Just about all of my male MCs fall into two basic categories: Walter Mitty-esque types and those who are supremely self-confident in the own skin and aren't afraid to let you know.

For those who do not remember the story "The Secret Life Of Walter Mitty" nor the film featuring Danny Kaye, Walter Mitty is a mild-mannered severely hen-pecked husband who daydreams feats of daring-do/courage/bravery while running errands with his shrew of a wife.

I've always liked that particular combination of a man {or what we now call a keyboard commando} and strove to use that caricature/trope almost from day one of my writing, and yes that includes blogging, whenever possible. I've managed over the years to really refine that trope to the point where it doesn't stick out like a very bad toupee, by applying a unique twist to it.

So, my first Walter Mitty-esque character for this still untitled story, Jon Morris, starts off like that particular trope: a bit hen-pecked with fits of badassness against those who do not matter. But in this case, the hen-pecking actually starts when he has to deal his boss's wife, because she's a hybrid learning the ropes of what she can and can't do, so she's basically making it without faking it.

The second Walter Mitty-esque character is Jon's boss Bradley, who is basically a wannabe BMOC, but folds a little while under pressure. He basically uses people to his advantage, before discarding them like yesterday's stale bread once he's done with them. In this story, he's basically everyone's tool and he doesn't know until the bitter end that he is one.

My final character falls into the latter category of being a badass and being supremely confident of their badassness. Terrance Torquicelli, called T.T. for short, is the kingpin of his organization and is know far and why as one not to be trifled with. He does some truly despicable things in the beginning that makes him amoral, but eventually changes to play the short game, all the while keeping his personal morals separate from business. He doesn't apologize for what he does, except beyond saying/implying it was just business.

It's flashback time, one again. This time we're exploring the month of February 2011 for ye olden post, and I must say, while some of the posts that were written some 11 years ago were incredibly long, more than a few had a ton of broken links {that is, no longer exists}, which made it a bit problematical to find something good.

But I did have success! I found ye olden post from Valentine's Day featuring a piece flash fiction harking back to simpler times of youth, and which an actual functioning YT link. Published on February 14, 2011, this post is called 60% Of A Key. Please enjoy one of my better attempts at flash fiction.

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