Jonathan Eaton's Blog - Posts Tagged "ticks"
Mind the Chelicerae
The other day, we were on our way to lunch when my wife asked me if I put a lot of myself in my characters. "That's a good question," I said, and off I went. Fortunately for my wife, our favorite Korean restaurant is only a fifteen minute drive away, and nothing shuts me up quite as quick as a sizzling stoneware pot of bibimbap.
You are not so lucky.
I am a pretty mild-mannered guy. Not a chump or a pushover (I hope), and I can be really, really stubborn, but I am definitely someone who will go to great lengths to avoid unpleasantness. Fictional versions of guys like me don't make great protagonists in a novel, and yet, I felt compelled to create them. The problem was, if I tried to write a character differently, it felt really phony. I would say to myself, "no one is going to believe that person would do that interesting, stress-inducing thing." I felt the constraint, and I hated the constraint, but I didn't know what to do about it.
So the first two novels I wrote were pretty crappy and shall never see the light of day (while I live, anyway). When I started on my third novel "Walther Harp Dreams" I knew I had to do something. So I made the protagonist a lot like me, but I gave him a strange neurosis, a sort of OCD that compels him to complete certain tasks, regardless of the consequences. By the time I was done with the novel (which I consider my first not-terrible novel) I realized that "Kirby” didn’t have to have a neurosis to do what he did, he could just be a guy that did that sort of thing. What to me was a neurosis was, to Kirby, just being Kirby.
That was a real breakthrough for me, and has opened up a whole new world of writing possibilities. Just because I would never venture out into the Scablands to hunt down giant mutated ticks for the purpose of extracting their valuable salivary glands, doesn’t mean Pete Barlow wouldn’t. All I can say is, more power to ya, Pete (and mind the chelicerae!).
You are not so lucky.
I am a pretty mild-mannered guy. Not a chump or a pushover (I hope), and I can be really, really stubborn, but I am definitely someone who will go to great lengths to avoid unpleasantness. Fictional versions of guys like me don't make great protagonists in a novel, and yet, I felt compelled to create them. The problem was, if I tried to write a character differently, it felt really phony. I would say to myself, "no one is going to believe that person would do that interesting, stress-inducing thing." I felt the constraint, and I hated the constraint, but I didn't know what to do about it.
So the first two novels I wrote were pretty crappy and shall never see the light of day (while I live, anyway). When I started on my third novel "Walther Harp Dreams" I knew I had to do something. So I made the protagonist a lot like me, but I gave him a strange neurosis, a sort of OCD that compels him to complete certain tasks, regardless of the consequences. By the time I was done with the novel (which I consider my first not-terrible novel) I realized that "Kirby” didn’t have to have a neurosis to do what he did, he could just be a guy that did that sort of thing. What to me was a neurosis was, to Kirby, just being Kirby.
That was a real breakthrough for me, and has opened up a whole new world of writing possibilities. Just because I would never venture out into the Scablands to hunt down giant mutated ticks for the purpose of extracting their valuable salivary glands, doesn’t mean Pete Barlow wouldn’t. All I can say is, more power to ya, Pete (and mind the chelicerae!).
