Characters

If you’re going to write an action/adventure story…

Nerds Have More Fun, The Twirl and Swirl of Letters

you had better name your main character “Jack.”

Seriously.

A few months ago, my friends and I noticed that a large quantity of action heroes had the name Jack. I thought I’d share an abridged list with you.

Jack Bauer, 24

Captain Jack Sparrow, Pirates of the Caribbean Trilogy

Jack Shepard, Lost

Jack Aubrey, Master and Commander and Aubrey-Maturin Series

Jack Ryan, The Hunt for Red October and others

Jack Harkness, Doctor Who and Torchwood

Jack O’Neill, Stargate SG-1

This is merely a brief selection of Heroes Named Jack. Save yourself the trouble of coming up with new names for your action hero. “Jack” is perfect.

Turning out quite differently from what I expected…

The Twirl and Swirl of Letters

I’m commencing work on The Continent now that it is WWII oriented. Alas, the first thing that got scrapped was the characters. Well, the main character and his brother, definitely. Liv’s been replaced with a kid named Jim (for now), a pilot in the RAF.

Why?

Well, first off, Liv’s name. Livius is more a sci fi/spec fic name, not that of a WWII pilot. Secondly, I hope to tell his story eventually, and I can’t have two Livs running around. It would get too confusing.

At the moment, Jim is Liv’s shadow; they are both incredibly patriotic and would gladly sacrifice themselves for their respective countries. But I’m working on making Jim very different from Liv. I think the situations Jim finds himself in will define him.

I just realized that I like short, one syllable names for my protagonists.

By the way, does anyone know any good books about WWII era RAF?

Recycling: Not just good for the environment

The Twirl and Swirl of Letters

In my attempts to jump start short story writing after a long drought, I find myself going back to stories I’ve written before. Not just for inspiration, but for structure. In one case, I rewrote the story with different characters, setting and outcome, but kept the structure (and some key points) the same.

I wonder if this is a “bad thing.” It got me thinking about plotting short stories again. Heck, it got me to write the first draft of a story. But by taking the plot of a story and throwing in new characters, is this self plagerism?

Dealing with Prima Donna Characters

The Twirl and Swirl of Letters

I’m not sure how it happened. There they were, minding their own business, being perfectly fine main characters…until they met the secondary ones.

My secondary characters have the habit of being demanding. They don’t like being secondary. They feel they are more important than the main characters. And I believe them.

Geoffrey, the subject of my never-ending-ever-revisiting fantasy story, began his life as a typical mentor type for this wide-eyed-naif Thomas. Geoffrey quickly assured me (well, it took a year or two) that he was far more interesting than Thomas who was just a typical idiot on a quest. Geoff’s a rather bored historian who runs a Boston hotel.

See also Liv. He was supposed to be the second in command to a space ship captain (who was the primary character). Liv told me that as a grumpy, I-hate-children type person, he’d be better suited as the main character. He must be the center of attention at all times. Well, they’re on terra firma and Liv is still the center of attention. Cheeky little scene stealer.

Thank God Geoff and Liv reside in different universes. I’d never get a story told with their egos butting around.

Destroying characters in one smack

General Geekiness

Ah, the pages of pulp fiction. A place to lose yourself in the fast paced world of fancy…or laugh hysterically at an author’s expense.

I’m currently reading Dan Brown’s Angels & Demons. It’s light and a quick read; thus far I have only one major beef.

How idiotic can the physicist Vittoria Vetra be?

Case in point:

“Is the Pantheon even a church?”

It is. Vittoria, you’re Italian. You’re apparently intelligent (you helped create an antimatter-creating particle accelerator for Chrissake) and your adopted father was a ROMAN CATHOLIC PRIEST. I imagine he must have taught you something about it amongst all the math and science.

I realize that not everyone knows the Pantheon is a church or that it is in Rome (no, it isn’t the Parthenon, that’s in Athens). But seriously.

Casting your Characters

The Twirl and Swirl of Letters

Do various actors ever pop into your mind when working on a story? Do you ever think, “Oh man! Hugh Jackman would be perfect as my character”?

I took a class on modern theatre a year ago. For our final project, we had to read a play and then cast it, design costumes, etc.

I read Martin McDonagh’s The Pillowman. We cast David Tennant as Katurian, Sean Bean as Ariel, Michael Fairman as Tupolski, and Edward Norton as Michel (solely because we couldn’t think of anyone else).

Ever since that course, I’ve been thinking about who looks like my characters, or at least could pull them off. I haven’t been able to pinpoint anyone as Will, yet. But I’ve noticed that I rarely watch movies/TV shows with characters in their late teens-early twenties, so that may be part of the problem. Having just rewatched Dead Poets Society, I’m thinking a young Robert Sean Leonard or a young Ethan Hawke. They look completely different, but Will’s coloring is closer to Ethan’s.

For other characters, it’s a little easier. In my mind, Geoffrey looks like Peter Wingfield (a semi-underground actor who’s in mostly sci-fi stuff, but was in this season of 24).

But what about you all? Does anyone else do this?