Luke Green's Blog, page 4
December 29, 2011
Have fun and don't worry about message
Okay, you will see me wax philosophic and start to delve into deep and meaningful stuff here and there all over my blog in places. I might even start delving into what I consider to be the big philosophical meanings and metaphors of my various works. Said discussions might get fairly complex, deep and insightful.
Most of them are things I come up with after the fact of writing the story and are more ways for me to analyze myself than to analyze my work.
I am a huge fan of JRR Tolkien and in particular, I am a firm believer in his concept of applicability. I had come to pretty much the same conclusion before I'd ever heard the term before.
Basically, to me, meaning does not belong to the writer but the reader, and thus might be the thing that most makes me dislike George Lucas's recent ret-cons of his most famous works.
George Lucas commented that a work is always unfinished and there is always more to add to it, more to change and to make it perfect. He is correct in that, but he then went on to disregard the people that knew the story as being unimportant since he was the creator and it was only his vision that mattered.
Let's be clear on this.
Once you write something and let it out into the public, it will take on a life of its own and it is no longer yours. You will own the commercial rights, probably, but the story itself now belongs to anybody who reads it. Once you have published it, you should do everything you can to avoid changing what you have already put out save for clear errors in grammar and printing.
It is sheer arrogance to tell someone that their interpretation of your story is wrong.
You don't know what their life is like, and you can't know what images will provoke what responses in a particular individual. You can make a reasonable guess based on the fact that most people in a particular culture will respond the same way to the same symbols, but there are always outliers.
And those meanings change in a particular person.
Ranma 1/2 and the various things inflicted on Ranma by his father as training were hilarious to me when I was a teenager.
Then I became a teacher.
Even before that, you can see a fair amount of my developing dislike of Genma Saotome in pretty much any of my stories, but especially in Genma's Journal and Lost Innocence. Just upon becoming a teacher who taught a large variety of ages and was turning somewhat protective of my students, the concept of someone doing that to any kid, much less their own, drives me bananas.
I try not to think about it too much so that I can still enjoy the comedy.
In the end, to me, the best way to get the heart of who and what you are into a story is to write a story that you would enjoy reading, that you would buy for pleasure. All the work you do to define the characters and make the story into something fun and enjoyable will call on the essence of who and what you are.
Your personality and true beliefs will move into the story whether you want it or not.
And to me, a story is much more effective when it encourages the reader to fill in some of the blanks themselves and, even better, to make their own stories.
Most of them are things I come up with after the fact of writing the story and are more ways for me to analyze myself than to analyze my work.
I am a huge fan of JRR Tolkien and in particular, I am a firm believer in his concept of applicability. I had come to pretty much the same conclusion before I'd ever heard the term before.
Basically, to me, meaning does not belong to the writer but the reader, and thus might be the thing that most makes me dislike George Lucas's recent ret-cons of his most famous works.
George Lucas commented that a work is always unfinished and there is always more to add to it, more to change and to make it perfect. He is correct in that, but he then went on to disregard the people that knew the story as being unimportant since he was the creator and it was only his vision that mattered.
Let's be clear on this.
Once you write something and let it out into the public, it will take on a life of its own and it is no longer yours. You will own the commercial rights, probably, but the story itself now belongs to anybody who reads it. Once you have published it, you should do everything you can to avoid changing what you have already put out save for clear errors in grammar and printing.
It is sheer arrogance to tell someone that their interpretation of your story is wrong.
You don't know what their life is like, and you can't know what images will provoke what responses in a particular individual. You can make a reasonable guess based on the fact that most people in a particular culture will respond the same way to the same symbols, but there are always outliers.
And those meanings change in a particular person.
Ranma 1/2 and the various things inflicted on Ranma by his father as training were hilarious to me when I was a teenager.
Then I became a teacher.
Even before that, you can see a fair amount of my developing dislike of Genma Saotome in pretty much any of my stories, but especially in Genma's Journal and Lost Innocence. Just upon becoming a teacher who taught a large variety of ages and was turning somewhat protective of my students, the concept of someone doing that to any kid, much less their own, drives me bananas.
I try not to think about it too much so that I can still enjoy the comedy.
In the end, to me, the best way to get the heart of who and what you are into a story is to write a story that you would enjoy reading, that you would buy for pleasure. All the work you do to define the characters and make the story into something fun and enjoyable will call on the essence of who and what you are.
Your personality and true beliefs will move into the story whether you want it or not.
And to me, a story is much more effective when it encourages the reader to fill in some of the blanks themselves and, even better, to make their own stories.
Probable Impossibilities are preferable to improbable possibilities
The title here is a quote from Aristotle and should probably be one of the first things any author of fiction considers when deciding on plot direction and events.
The quote has been restated to me in the past in the following way:
"You can have the possible. You can have the impossible. But it has to be probable."
What this means is that the audience has to find the story believable within the framework of the world setting chosen.
There is a tricky distinction between impossible and improbable. This is because we so often include the improbable with the impossible.
Imagine a story where a dangerous animal is smuggled onto a plane and it escapes mid-air causing a panic that brings the plane crashing down and killing almost everybody on the plane.
How about another story where a plane crashes and over a hundred people die with the only survivor being a newborn baby.
Or another story about an important election is decided by people trying to figure out whether or not a hole was punched deliberately or mechanically with the deciding factor over millions of total votes being a question of less than five hundred.
Or what if I told you about a man who decided that the officials of the town he was in were out to get him and decided to build his own tank in order to get revenge against them.
Which of these would you assume to be a real life story that actually happened? And which would you dismiss as a terribly unlikely event that was concocted for a piece of fiction?
The answer, all four of them are events that really happened.
http://www.foxnews.com/world/2010/10/...
http://www.newyorkinjurynews.com/2010...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Florida_...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marvin_H...
But they all sound like bizarrely unlikely things that would only exist in the pages of a comic book.
For a more extreme example, check out this tongue in cheek essay summarizing the history of the World War II conflict and try to imagine that as a TV series.
http://squid314.livejournal.com/27561...
"Probable impossibilities are preferable to possible improbabilities."
If I were to write a story where the evil, racist main bad guy decides to ally his nation with a group of people that are far more racially divergent than the same ones he's trying to erradicate, then I would be called a hack writer. Unless I'm writing World War II historical fiction.
By comparison, on TV and movies we see people outrun explosions, survive tremendous falls and perform amazing stunts regularly without even questioning it.
Then we hit into those stories that involve magic, monsters, heroes and divine intervention. Those things that are clearly impossible, but which many audiences will accept with only the flimsiest sorts of explanations.
You could consider this maxim to be the one that encourages some of my other pieces of advice in earlier blog posts.
Which means, while you're checking reality to see if something is possible, you should also think about what your reactions would be if you were to encounter your decided plot direction in somebody else's work.
Are you going to have one of your main characters suddenly doing something completely in the opposite direction of what he has done in the past? You'd better have some decent set-up or a good explanation for it, because otherwise it's just going to cause people to have frothing at the mouth rants about how annoying that scene or sequence is.
The context that a reader uses to determine probability is determined by the information that you gave them. And falls into that idea of maintaining consistency which I have linked earlier.
It doesn't matter if your "normal" characters are doing impossible things.
But it matters a hell of a lot if any of your characters are doing things that you just flat can't believe them doing.
The quote has been restated to me in the past in the following way:
"You can have the possible. You can have the impossible. But it has to be probable."
What this means is that the audience has to find the story believable within the framework of the world setting chosen.
There is a tricky distinction between impossible and improbable. This is because we so often include the improbable with the impossible.
Imagine a story where a dangerous animal is smuggled onto a plane and it escapes mid-air causing a panic that brings the plane crashing down and killing almost everybody on the plane.
How about another story where a plane crashes and over a hundred people die with the only survivor being a newborn baby.
Or another story about an important election is decided by people trying to figure out whether or not a hole was punched deliberately or mechanically with the deciding factor over millions of total votes being a question of less than five hundred.
Or what if I told you about a man who decided that the officials of the town he was in were out to get him and decided to build his own tank in order to get revenge against them.
Which of these would you assume to be a real life story that actually happened? And which would you dismiss as a terribly unlikely event that was concocted for a piece of fiction?
The answer, all four of them are events that really happened.
http://www.foxnews.com/world/2010/10/...
http://www.newyorkinjurynews.com/2010...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Florida_...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marvin_H...
But they all sound like bizarrely unlikely things that would only exist in the pages of a comic book.
For a more extreme example, check out this tongue in cheek essay summarizing the history of the World War II conflict and try to imagine that as a TV series.
http://squid314.livejournal.com/27561...
"Probable impossibilities are preferable to possible improbabilities."
If I were to write a story where the evil, racist main bad guy decides to ally his nation with a group of people that are far more racially divergent than the same ones he's trying to erradicate, then I would be called a hack writer. Unless I'm writing World War II historical fiction.
By comparison, on TV and movies we see people outrun explosions, survive tremendous falls and perform amazing stunts regularly without even questioning it.
Then we hit into those stories that involve magic, monsters, heroes and divine intervention. Those things that are clearly impossible, but which many audiences will accept with only the flimsiest sorts of explanations.
You could consider this maxim to be the one that encourages some of my other pieces of advice in earlier blog posts.
Which means, while you're checking reality to see if something is possible, you should also think about what your reactions would be if you were to encounter your decided plot direction in somebody else's work.
Are you going to have one of your main characters suddenly doing something completely in the opposite direction of what he has done in the past? You'd better have some decent set-up or a good explanation for it, because otherwise it's just going to cause people to have frothing at the mouth rants about how annoying that scene or sequence is.
The context that a reader uses to determine probability is determined by the information that you gave them. And falls into that idea of maintaining consistency which I have linked earlier.
It doesn't matter if your "normal" characters are doing impossible things.
But it matters a hell of a lot if any of your characters are doing things that you just flat can't believe them doing.
The Woman With No Name Character Profile
World Setting: Zodiacs
Status: Published:
Amazon: http://www.amazon.com/Zodiacs-Siege-a...
DrivethruRPG: http://rpg.drivethrustuff.com/product...
Height: 5'6"
Weight: 112 lbs
Hair: Black, Yellow and Red
Eyes: Green
Complexion: Pale
Race: Zodiac - Snake
Nationality: Star Republic
Home: None
Languages: Republican, Horder, Bharitan, Ryouiki
Quotes:
"Time to go."
"Humans deserve to face their own butchery."
"(Red meets yellow,) kills a fellow."
"I'm no ranger."
"I guess I'm lucky."
"I'm fixin' a problem that's mostly solved by a bullet or two."
Abilities:
Heat Sense: Like most snakes, she has heat pits that allow her to sense the variance of temperatures around her.
Venom/Poison: Zodiac snake venom is usually fatal within minutes if injected, but hours if ingested. Since she lacks fangs, she is no longer able to inject the poison efficiently. Like most snakes, she rarely uses her venom as a weapon, recognizing that it provokes more extreme emotional responses than a bullet.
Skills:
Medicine: The woman is an extremely skilled pharmacist and doctor, having been involved in drug research based on snake venom from a very young age and then trained for three years as a Republican combat medic, which has some of the most advanced medical knowledge of the area. In reality, she is much more skilled than a simple medic, and is probably one of the better healers of the world. Primarily, she is skilled with venoms and anti-villains and drugs that can be created out of her own venom.
Firearms: As a Republican, this woman has training in the use of rifles and pistols. She is an extremely talented pistoleer with a very fast draw and her skills at quick loading are almost second to none.
Knifework: She tries to avoid fighting close up due to her physical fragility, but she is proficient in the use of knives.
Wilderness Survival: As a bounty hunter, she has honed her skill at living off the land and following trails.
Weaknesses:
Fanged: Her damaged venom-sacs continually leak venom into her system leaving her physically wracked and requiring daily injections of anti-venom to avoid a worsening state of health.
Appearance: Like all snakes, her hair comes in three colors, red, yellow and a third. In her case, the third color is black. She is very skinny and looks as if she hasn't been eating enough. She has been losing weight regularly since leaving the Republican military and going onto the road. She has a pair of long scars through her lips.
Personality: She is a reserved, angry person who can often be found talking to her horse as if it understood her. Often these conversations seem to be some sort of way to justify a decision. Very rarely does she reveal any emotion other than anger. She commonly expresses an intense disdain, even hatred, for humanity. It is uncertain how much of this is a front or act since she seems to have trouble following through on her coldest decisions. Like most snakes, she considers children sacred and will step in to protect them reluctantly or otherwise.
Background: She was found wandering the Hordelands by the Amelatu clan, but at about the same time, her yellow and red hair were starting to come in and she was recognized as a snake. Fearful of what she might do once her fangs came in, they quickly brought her to the Republican lands and left her in the care of a human apothecary.
She spent the next few years as the man's assistant and research subject. He was trying to create an anti-venom for the venom of zodiac snakes and had barely reached success when a group of bandits working for Lady Adrasteia came by to collect some research the researcher owed her. The bandits killed the apothecary but decided to leave the girl alive after ripping open her lips and tearing her fangs out. They expected her to die within the year, but she also knew how to craft the anti-venom from her own venom and has been able to medicate herself.
When she turned sixteen, she went into the Republican military despite her disability, she was expected to remain as a career officer. However, she chose to leave the military after an incident with another soldier where a shared kiss resulted in him being hospitalized. She has since been on the road looking for the men that maimed her as a child.
Zodiacs: Siege at Berutuha
Zodiacs Campaign Guide
Status: Published:
Amazon: http://www.amazon.com/Zodiacs-Siege-a...
DrivethruRPG: http://rpg.drivethrustuff.com/product...
Height: 5'6"
Weight: 112 lbs
Hair: Black, Yellow and Red
Eyes: Green
Complexion: Pale
Race: Zodiac - Snake
Nationality: Star Republic
Home: None
Languages: Republican, Horder, Bharitan, Ryouiki
Quotes:
"Time to go."
"Humans deserve to face their own butchery."
"(Red meets yellow,) kills a fellow."
"I'm no ranger."
"I guess I'm lucky."
"I'm fixin' a problem that's mostly solved by a bullet or two."
Abilities:
Heat Sense: Like most snakes, she has heat pits that allow her to sense the variance of temperatures around her.
Venom/Poison: Zodiac snake venom is usually fatal within minutes if injected, but hours if ingested. Since she lacks fangs, she is no longer able to inject the poison efficiently. Like most snakes, she rarely uses her venom as a weapon, recognizing that it provokes more extreme emotional responses than a bullet.
Skills:
Medicine: The woman is an extremely skilled pharmacist and doctor, having been involved in drug research based on snake venom from a very young age and then trained for three years as a Republican combat medic, which has some of the most advanced medical knowledge of the area. In reality, she is much more skilled than a simple medic, and is probably one of the better healers of the world. Primarily, she is skilled with venoms and anti-villains and drugs that can be created out of her own venom.
Firearms: As a Republican, this woman has training in the use of rifles and pistols. She is an extremely talented pistoleer with a very fast draw and her skills at quick loading are almost second to none.
Knifework: She tries to avoid fighting close up due to her physical fragility, but she is proficient in the use of knives.
Wilderness Survival: As a bounty hunter, she has honed her skill at living off the land and following trails.
Weaknesses:
Fanged: Her damaged venom-sacs continually leak venom into her system leaving her physically wracked and requiring daily injections of anti-venom to avoid a worsening state of health.
Appearance: Like all snakes, her hair comes in three colors, red, yellow and a third. In her case, the third color is black. She is very skinny and looks as if she hasn't been eating enough. She has been losing weight regularly since leaving the Republican military and going onto the road. She has a pair of long scars through her lips.
Personality: She is a reserved, angry person who can often be found talking to her horse as if it understood her. Often these conversations seem to be some sort of way to justify a decision. Very rarely does she reveal any emotion other than anger. She commonly expresses an intense disdain, even hatred, for humanity. It is uncertain how much of this is a front or act since she seems to have trouble following through on her coldest decisions. Like most snakes, she considers children sacred and will step in to protect them reluctantly or otherwise.
Background: She was found wandering the Hordelands by the Amelatu clan, but at about the same time, her yellow and red hair were starting to come in and she was recognized as a snake. Fearful of what she might do once her fangs came in, they quickly brought her to the Republican lands and left her in the care of a human apothecary.
She spent the next few years as the man's assistant and research subject. He was trying to create an anti-venom for the venom of zodiac snakes and had barely reached success when a group of bandits working for Lady Adrasteia came by to collect some research the researcher owed her. The bandits killed the apothecary but decided to leave the girl alive after ripping open her lips and tearing her fangs out. They expected her to die within the year, but she also knew how to craft the anti-venom from her own venom and has been able to medicate herself.
When she turned sixteen, she went into the Republican military despite her disability, she was expected to remain as a career officer. However, she chose to leave the military after an incident with another soldier where a shared kiss resulted in him being hospitalized. She has since been on the road looking for the men that maimed her as a child.
Zodiacs: Siege at Berutuha
Zodiacs Campaign Guide
Maintain Consistency
Consistency is a big part of any story, if you are not consistent then people are going to quickly get fed up with your story as it becomes harder and harder to relate things.
A lot of people might point to George Lucas when thinking of examples of inconsistency. However, George's arbitrary decision to change some things in the Star Wars universe is not really a very major example of this situation.
A much better example is Heroes, the TV show that everybody loved on the first season and which got progressively less buyable from the second season onward. It became quickly apparent that they were tacking on consequences and ramifications to the powers as time went on. I could go on forever with the number of times they suddenly up and decided to add something without regard to previous developments.
In fact, the link above has already done it for me.
So I will go on.
If you are not consistent, then you are continually pulling the rug out from under your readers. They will eventually get fed up with being pushed around and given no clear guidelines as to what they can or cannot expect.
This doesn't mean that you can't have some inconsistancy, however, any inconsistancy has to have it's own consistancy. There has to be a reason that the inconsistancy exists and preferably, someone in the story should comment on it to confirm to the reader that, yes, something is not right here. You do not need to explain the reason for the inconsistancy, which gets into something I'll write later, but you yourself need to understand that it is there.
A good example of this is Lucretia from Bystander. Her levels of strength and toughness have so far appeared to be what my brother described as "as high as she needs it to be." In fact, what she does in Shake Ups doesn't work with pure strength regardless of how strong she is.
Robles comments on the fact that things don't add up. Lucretia herself, upon listening to the news on the radio is confused as to how she accomplished that. A certain person gets so freaked out over the implications of what Lucretia is that they abandon all reason and logic and simple goes on a berserk attempt to kill her.
All three of those tell the reader that there's something funky about Lucretia and thus makes her inconsistant level of power a consistant part of the world setting. They won't be uncomfortable when, in one scene, Lucretia is getting a black eye from gun fire and, in the next scene, surviving something that might be worthy of Nanoha Takamichi.
Bystander
A lot of people might point to George Lucas when thinking of examples of inconsistency. However, George's arbitrary decision to change some things in the Star Wars universe is not really a very major example of this situation.
A much better example is Heroes, the TV show that everybody loved on the first season and which got progressively less buyable from the second season onward. It became quickly apparent that they were tacking on consequences and ramifications to the powers as time went on. I could go on forever with the number of times they suddenly up and decided to add something without regard to previous developments.
In fact, the link above has already done it for me.
So I will go on.
If you are not consistent, then you are continually pulling the rug out from under your readers. They will eventually get fed up with being pushed around and given no clear guidelines as to what they can or cannot expect.
This doesn't mean that you can't have some inconsistancy, however, any inconsistancy has to have it's own consistancy. There has to be a reason that the inconsistancy exists and preferably, someone in the story should comment on it to confirm to the reader that, yes, something is not right here. You do not need to explain the reason for the inconsistancy, which gets into something I'll write later, but you yourself need to understand that it is there.
A good example of this is Lucretia from Bystander. Her levels of strength and toughness have so far appeared to be what my brother described as "as high as she needs it to be." In fact, what she does in Shake Ups doesn't work with pure strength regardless of how strong she is.
Robles comments on the fact that things don't add up. Lucretia herself, upon listening to the news on the radio is confused as to how she accomplished that. A certain person gets so freaked out over the implications of what Lucretia is that they abandon all reason and logic and simple goes on a berserk attempt to kill her.
All three of those tell the reader that there's something funky about Lucretia and thus makes her inconsistant level of power a consistant part of the world setting. They won't be uncomfortable when, in one scene, Lucretia is getting a black eye from gun fire and, in the next scene, surviving something that might be worthy of Nanoha Takamichi.
Bystander
Check Reality before you reject it
A lot of fiction can be called larger than life. The Rule of Cool is repetitively invoked in all manner of stories. This is why the star-fighters in Star Wars make strange whining sounds and action heroes can outrun explosions. This is why characters in movies and TV shows seem like they're experts in just about everything. This is why the characters in romance movies can so flawlessly express themselves. Fiction, even realistic fiction that says it sticks firmly within what is possible in real life, still seems to stick strongly to the mantra "I reject your reality and substitute my own!"
However, you should not simply reject reality when making your stories. The first thing you should do when writing a scene and desiring to make something "cool" is to do the research as to the reality of the subject. If you don't know precisely what is or is not possible or realistic, then you increase the risk of breaking the willing suspension of disbelief.
There is a big difference between someone who did not do the research and someone who studied the subject and decided to ignore reality anyway.
For example, in Bystander, I have a couple of instances where I've let reality take a break. Robles BASE jumping in "Shake Ups" is probably ridiculously difficult in real life, but I decided to have her pull it off with really no issue simply because it was cool. Likewise, Lucretia herself, as a superstrong individual with better than human reflexes, should be a bit more effective in a fight than she is, but I've ignored some of that because it is more interesting if she is bad in a fight.
The audience can accept a lot of changes from reality without blinking, but the level of tolerance is different from person to person and subject to subject.
My brother once picked up a game book detailing modern weapons and flipped to the section on mortars. I was then treated to a thirty minute frothing at the mouth lecture about how inaccurate the mortar section was. Among other things, I was assured that three shots a minute was a ridiculously slow rate that would mark any crew as incompetent. I was also assured that the kill radius of the mortar rounds was about ten times larger than what the book suggested it was,
A story can easily survive a handful of those, however, if every reader is making the same observations, then you have made a mistake. Understanding the reality behind certain things is the best defense against that. If you understand the reality, then your choices to reject it are likely to be made in ways that support the story rather than counter it.
Bystander
However, you should not simply reject reality when making your stories. The first thing you should do when writing a scene and desiring to make something "cool" is to do the research as to the reality of the subject. If you don't know precisely what is or is not possible or realistic, then you increase the risk of breaking the willing suspension of disbelief.
There is a big difference between someone who did not do the research and someone who studied the subject and decided to ignore reality anyway.
For example, in Bystander, I have a couple of instances where I've let reality take a break. Robles BASE jumping in "Shake Ups" is probably ridiculously difficult in real life, but I decided to have her pull it off with really no issue simply because it was cool. Likewise, Lucretia herself, as a superstrong individual with better than human reflexes, should be a bit more effective in a fight than she is, but I've ignored some of that because it is more interesting if she is bad in a fight.
The audience can accept a lot of changes from reality without blinking, but the level of tolerance is different from person to person and subject to subject.
My brother once picked up a game book detailing modern weapons and flipped to the section on mortars. I was then treated to a thirty minute frothing at the mouth lecture about how inaccurate the mortar section was. Among other things, I was assured that three shots a minute was a ridiculously slow rate that would mark any crew as incompetent. I was also assured that the kill radius of the mortar rounds was about ten times larger than what the book suggested it was,
A story can easily survive a handful of those, however, if every reader is making the same observations, then you have made a mistake. Understanding the reality behind certain things is the best defense against that. If you understand the reality, then your choices to reject it are likely to be made in ways that support the story rather than counter it.
Bystander
Yoon-Ji Jeon Character Profile
World Setting: Divine Blood
Status: Published:
Amazon: http://www.amazon.com/dp/B006ESG092
DrivethruRPG: http://rpg.drivethrustuff.com/product...
Age: 16
Height: 5'7"
Weight: 112 lbs
Hair: Black (Fake Color) - Royal Purple (True Color)
Eyes: Brown
Complexion: Healthy tan
Ethnicity: Korean-European(unknown ethnicity)
Nationality: Korean
Home: Vollstahl, Australia
Languages: Korean and English
Quotes:
"The one European thing I could have appreciated was the figure."
"...are you going to apologize before I start getting creative?"
"I swear, one of these days, the whole badass thing is going to fall flat on its face and one of these giants is going to pancake me!"
"Dngsn"
"Don't call my mum an evil stepmother."
"Uh, I blew you up and tried to hide from your family."
"I know where all of you live."
"It's a Raske debate...it's like a Rorschac test, but it's more subjective."
Abilities:
*SPOILER*
Charisma: Yooji has an immense amount of Charisma and willpower.
Skills:
Statistics and Probability: Yooji is a skilled mathematician with a leaning toward using the analysis to make predictions about the results of events. She has used this knowledge to program a very useful analysis program she's called "survey says" with which she plans out things as much as possible.
Backscratcher of Imminent Beatdown: Whatever Yooji believes, she honestly is one of the better fighters in Bravura. Especially, she has gotten creative with the use of her backscratcher, which has acquired a nickname despite her best intentions. She's good enough to deal with common thugs (though she herself thinks her ability here is pure bravado) but not with complete certainty.
Intimidation: Yooji, through sheer force of reputation and personality is comparably intimidating to Eija's fear aura.
Weaknesses:
Doesn't Like Surprises: Yooji doesn't deal with things turning out differently than she expects. She has to face this a lot.
Sleeping Disorder and Headaches: Yooji suffers from a difficulty in waking up regardless of when she wakes up or how long she sleeps. She also occasionally has intense headaches, possibly seizures.
Appearance: Yooji has dyed her hair black to hide their weird color and tries her absolute best to maintain a straight-haired Korean hairstyle. By the end of most days, her hair goes back to being curly again. She is very slender, almost rail thin though she has an athletic muscle definition. She can commonly be seen carrying her beaten up metal backscratcher and dressing in basic, everyday clothes.
Personality: Yooji is a very order driven, rather humble personality who has grown frustrated during her years in dealing with the strangeness of Karl Raske. She believes herself to be jaded, though she is actually one of the more sheltered characters. Indications are that her massive amount of will and initiative are recent developments as a result of having to deal with Karl and Amber.
Yooji commonly puts herself off as a tough girl despite her desire to be seen as a normal, Korean young lady. This act is because of a fear that letting the act slip will cause her to be sought out and beaten up by a growing list of bullies and such that she has faced down over the last three years.
Background: Yoon-Ji was an abandoned child who was raised in the Korean system until she was four years old and adopted by industrialist Kyung-Suk Jeon despite the qualms of his somewhat more purist wife, Eun-Mi. Yoon-Ji was sent to the Bravura boarding school three years ago and, until recently, was the only heir to her parents' property.
Divine Blood: Semester Start
Status: Published:
Amazon: http://www.amazon.com/dp/B006ESG092
DrivethruRPG: http://rpg.drivethrustuff.com/product...
Age: 16
Height: 5'7"
Weight: 112 lbs
Hair: Black (Fake Color) - Royal Purple (True Color)
Eyes: Brown
Complexion: Healthy tan
Ethnicity: Korean-European(unknown ethnicity)
Nationality: Korean
Home: Vollstahl, Australia
Languages: Korean and English
Quotes:
"The one European thing I could have appreciated was the figure."
"...are you going to apologize before I start getting creative?"
"I swear, one of these days, the whole badass thing is going to fall flat on its face and one of these giants is going to pancake me!"
"Dngsn"
"Don't call my mum an evil stepmother."
"Uh, I blew you up and tried to hide from your family."
"I know where all of you live."
"It's a Raske debate...it's like a Rorschac test, but it's more subjective."
Abilities:
*SPOILER*
Charisma: Yooji has an immense amount of Charisma and willpower.
Skills:
Statistics and Probability: Yooji is a skilled mathematician with a leaning toward using the analysis to make predictions about the results of events. She has used this knowledge to program a very useful analysis program she's called "survey says" with which she plans out things as much as possible.
Backscratcher of Imminent Beatdown: Whatever Yooji believes, she honestly is one of the better fighters in Bravura. Especially, she has gotten creative with the use of her backscratcher, which has acquired a nickname despite her best intentions. She's good enough to deal with common thugs (though she herself thinks her ability here is pure bravado) but not with complete certainty.
Intimidation: Yooji, through sheer force of reputation and personality is comparably intimidating to Eija's fear aura.
Weaknesses:
Doesn't Like Surprises: Yooji doesn't deal with things turning out differently than she expects. She has to face this a lot.
Sleeping Disorder and Headaches: Yooji suffers from a difficulty in waking up regardless of when she wakes up or how long she sleeps. She also occasionally has intense headaches, possibly seizures.
Appearance: Yooji has dyed her hair black to hide their weird color and tries her absolute best to maintain a straight-haired Korean hairstyle. By the end of most days, her hair goes back to being curly again. She is very slender, almost rail thin though she has an athletic muscle definition. She can commonly be seen carrying her beaten up metal backscratcher and dressing in basic, everyday clothes.
Personality: Yooji is a very order driven, rather humble personality who has grown frustrated during her years in dealing with the strangeness of Karl Raske. She believes herself to be jaded, though she is actually one of the more sheltered characters. Indications are that her massive amount of will and initiative are recent developments as a result of having to deal with Karl and Amber.
Yooji commonly puts herself off as a tough girl despite her desire to be seen as a normal, Korean young lady. This act is because of a fear that letting the act slip will cause her to be sought out and beaten up by a growing list of bullies and such that she has faced down over the last three years.
Background: Yoon-Ji was an abandoned child who was raised in the Korean system until she was four years old and adopted by industrialist Kyung-Suk Jeon despite the qualms of his somewhat more purist wife, Eun-Mi. Yoon-Ji was sent to the Bravura boarding school three years ago and, until recently, was the only heir to her parents' property.
Divine Blood: Semester Start
Naiki Semezou Character Profile
World Setting: Divine Blood
Status: Published:
Amazon: http://www.amazon.com/dp/B006ESG092
DrivethruRPG: http://rpg.drivethrustuff.com/product...
Age: 16
Height: 5'10"
Weight: 186 lbs
Hair: Green
Eyes: Green
Complexion: Healthy tan
Ethnicity: Greek-Japanese
Nationality: Australian (by Descent)
Home: Vollstahl, Australia
Languages: Greek, English, Japanese
Quotes:
"Okay, do I pack the glasses with the..." *crash* "Uhhh...okay, we're not packing the glasses...I'll get the broom."
"Oh, please, it's just school. There's nothing dangerous or worth worrying about."
"But I'm not part of the average class, so we're fine. Next class was history, right?"
"uhhh...well...I guess...maybe I should...apologize?"
"Uh, do I have to clean that up?"
"Well, it's always the dream, isn't it? Normalcy. No monsters. No witches. No cultists. No ghosts. Just....living. Blond on each arm. Like anybody else."
"He should have known who the bigger shark was."
"Wait....what?"
Abilities:
Life-Force Channeling: Of the three siblings, Naiki is the most capable channeler, capable of driving her chi to enough of a density that it appears black rather than green. She also tends to use her second type of life-force with more frequency and capability than the other two siblings.
Aquatic: Naiki breathes water and has no trouble maneuvering in deep water. In someways she is actually more comfortable underwater. Most assume her to be a "Deep One" but like most people with aquatic natures, she considers the term to be a racial slur.
Smell: Naiki has intense levels of smell which she has trained with, enough to be able to get a picture of maneuvering individuals in a busy crowd within a large building. She is also able to identify blondes and non-humans by scent, but she isn't able to tell psychic humans apart from non-psychic humans. Her sense of smell is better in the water.
Vibratory and Electrical Sense: Naiki can sense electrical fields nearby within air and out to several yards underwater. She is also able to target based on the vibrations given out while under water.
Earthquake: Naiki is able to induce seismic events within her area. As unsubtle a power as this is, Naiki is able to shape it fairly fluidly toward different levels revealing that she isn't as unpolished as she seems at first.
Skills:
Martial Arts: Naiki is not the best technical fighter of the three Semezou siblings, but her enthusiasm, the proficiency she has in enhancing her physical stats and her general instincts mean she's the most dangerous and destructive of the three. Naiki's combat abilities are easily within the range of some of the more inexperienced Psyche secretaries.
Weaknesses:
Reckless: Naiki's primary weakness is herself. She tends not to hold back in battle and pushes more for power than efficiency, especially if stressed, which means she burns herself out quickly and often suffers self-inflicted wounds based on trying channel more power than she is really capable of.
Focus: Most people think Naiki is unfocused and borderline ADD, however, the reverse is actually true. She has difficulty in thinking of multiple things and can sometimes get so focused on one thing that she forgets everything else. The most obvious result of this is her recklessness above which results from focusing on defeating an opponent while forgetting about her own safety.
Blonds: Naiki is more than a little obsessed with blonds, such that she can be distracted in even life and death combat by beautiful or handsome blond men or women.
Fear of Flying: This isn't fear of heights, but fear of riding in an airborne vehicle. This is due to a traumatic childhood incident.
Appearance: Naiki is tall, with broad shoulders and a generous bosom. She does not have the classic hour glass figure, and her face isn't especially remarkable save for the sharp teeth. Her muscles are honed to a slim, predator's perfection. She keeps her hair in a "shark tail" braid the bottom of which is split into two other tails similar to the way a shark's tail looks. Most people don't realize how athletic she is or spend much time noticing her teeth because Naiki is very genuinely friendly.
Personality: Naiki considers fighting to be a game. She is always ready to respond to a perceived "threat" though she holds off on going offensively all out unless she decides that an opponent really is a threat. This is partially a way of dealing with the sort of near-paranoid alertness that the rest of her family has developed due to their frequently dangerous lives. By looking at things like a game, she can relax and still keep sharp. At least she tells herself tht.
Naiki does not like to think too much if she can avoid it. If pushed to consider things to deeply, she tries to change the subject and avoid the other. This habit has resulted in her focus problems as noted above. She isn't unintelligent, being able to pass Bravura's curriculum despite her lax way of doing things.
Of the three Semezou's, Naiki is probably the least mature and the most well-adjusted.
Background: Naiki is one of the Semezou triplets. Like the others, she's lived in various places all over Europe. She's been involved in life or death battles since at least the time she was ten and somehow managed to try to keep as innocent as she is.
When she was ten, her sister was almost killed in a tense situation, and a lot of Naiki's personality has grown out of her reaction to what happened in that incident.
Divine Blood: Semester Start
Status: Published:
Amazon: http://www.amazon.com/dp/B006ESG092
DrivethruRPG: http://rpg.drivethrustuff.com/product...
Age: 16
Height: 5'10"
Weight: 186 lbs
Hair: Green
Eyes: Green
Complexion: Healthy tan
Ethnicity: Greek-Japanese
Nationality: Australian (by Descent)
Home: Vollstahl, Australia
Languages: Greek, English, Japanese
Quotes:
"Okay, do I pack the glasses with the..." *crash* "Uhhh...okay, we're not packing the glasses...I'll get the broom."
"Oh, please, it's just school. There's nothing dangerous or worth worrying about."
"But I'm not part of the average class, so we're fine. Next class was history, right?"
"uhhh...well...I guess...maybe I should...apologize?"
"Uh, do I have to clean that up?"
"Well, it's always the dream, isn't it? Normalcy. No monsters. No witches. No cultists. No ghosts. Just....living. Blond on each arm. Like anybody else."
"He should have known who the bigger shark was."
"Wait....what?"
Abilities:
Life-Force Channeling: Of the three siblings, Naiki is the most capable channeler, capable of driving her chi to enough of a density that it appears black rather than green. She also tends to use her second type of life-force with more frequency and capability than the other two siblings.
Aquatic: Naiki breathes water and has no trouble maneuvering in deep water. In someways she is actually more comfortable underwater. Most assume her to be a "Deep One" but like most people with aquatic natures, she considers the term to be a racial slur.
Smell: Naiki has intense levels of smell which she has trained with, enough to be able to get a picture of maneuvering individuals in a busy crowd within a large building. She is also able to identify blondes and non-humans by scent, but she isn't able to tell psychic humans apart from non-psychic humans. Her sense of smell is better in the water.
Vibratory and Electrical Sense: Naiki can sense electrical fields nearby within air and out to several yards underwater. She is also able to target based on the vibrations given out while under water.
Earthquake: Naiki is able to induce seismic events within her area. As unsubtle a power as this is, Naiki is able to shape it fairly fluidly toward different levels revealing that she isn't as unpolished as she seems at first.
Skills:
Martial Arts: Naiki is not the best technical fighter of the three Semezou siblings, but her enthusiasm, the proficiency she has in enhancing her physical stats and her general instincts mean she's the most dangerous and destructive of the three. Naiki's combat abilities are easily within the range of some of the more inexperienced Psyche secretaries.
Weaknesses:
Reckless: Naiki's primary weakness is herself. She tends not to hold back in battle and pushes more for power than efficiency, especially if stressed, which means she burns herself out quickly and often suffers self-inflicted wounds based on trying channel more power than she is really capable of.
Focus: Most people think Naiki is unfocused and borderline ADD, however, the reverse is actually true. She has difficulty in thinking of multiple things and can sometimes get so focused on one thing that she forgets everything else. The most obvious result of this is her recklessness above which results from focusing on defeating an opponent while forgetting about her own safety.
Blonds: Naiki is more than a little obsessed with blonds, such that she can be distracted in even life and death combat by beautiful or handsome blond men or women.
Fear of Flying: This isn't fear of heights, but fear of riding in an airborne vehicle. This is due to a traumatic childhood incident.
Appearance: Naiki is tall, with broad shoulders and a generous bosom. She does not have the classic hour glass figure, and her face isn't especially remarkable save for the sharp teeth. Her muscles are honed to a slim, predator's perfection. She keeps her hair in a "shark tail" braid the bottom of which is split into two other tails similar to the way a shark's tail looks. Most people don't realize how athletic she is or spend much time noticing her teeth because Naiki is very genuinely friendly.
Personality: Naiki considers fighting to be a game. She is always ready to respond to a perceived "threat" though she holds off on going offensively all out unless she decides that an opponent really is a threat. This is partially a way of dealing with the sort of near-paranoid alertness that the rest of her family has developed due to their frequently dangerous lives. By looking at things like a game, she can relax and still keep sharp. At least she tells herself tht.
Naiki does not like to think too much if she can avoid it. If pushed to consider things to deeply, she tries to change the subject and avoid the other. This habit has resulted in her focus problems as noted above. She isn't unintelligent, being able to pass Bravura's curriculum despite her lax way of doing things.
Of the three Semezou's, Naiki is probably the least mature and the most well-adjusted.
Background: Naiki is one of the Semezou triplets. Like the others, she's lived in various places all over Europe. She's been involved in life or death battles since at least the time she was ten and somehow managed to try to keep as innocent as she is.
When she was ten, her sister was almost killed in a tense situation, and a lot of Naiki's personality has grown out of her reaction to what happened in that incident.
Divine Blood: Semester Start
Sightseer Character Profile
World Setting: Bystander
Status: Published:
Amazon: http://www.amazon.com/dp/B0040GJBS2
DrivethruRPG: http://rpg.drivethrustuff.com/product...
Birth Name: Eldon Dwyer
Aliases: Sightseer
Age: 38
Height: 5'9"
Weight: 192 lbs
Hair: Brown
Eyes: Brown
Complexion: Healthy tan
Ethnicity: Caucasian
Nationality: American
Home: Seattle, Washington
Occupation:
Languages: English,
Quotes:
"Too young, she had to be a minor when she went in. There had to be a better option."
"I can't take him out, Sergeant. He's not in the missions specs you gave us."
Abilities:
Projection: Sightseer is a stronger projector than the average person, but has not developed that talent and thus has no telepathic ranking or license.
Skills:
Sniper: Sightseer is a skilled sharpshooter.
Stealth: While he stands out of a crowd, Sightseer has developed his skill to remain hidden from sight and thus usually takes the role of "angel" or overwatch-far support when working with Robles.
Weaknesses:
Noticeable: Sightseer's undeveloped projective abilities cause him to stand out of a crowd even when he's dressed and styled to look as average as he can manage to appear as. As such, he usually tries to adopt the attitude of someone not-native to the region in the hopes that people will overlook him. This resulted in his nickname/codename.
Appearance: Sightseer is deliberately bland. He wears basic clothes and cuts his hair to a basic, average cut. His one step away from that is the inclusion of dark glasses to cover the color and shape of his eyes in order to make identification more difficult. Despite this average appearance, he stands out due to his higher than average projection rating.
Personality: Eldon tends to be very reserved and serious, but does have something of a sense of humor that appears occasionally, such as his response to Robles asking if he needed to "step down" after a possibly dangerous fall: "not thanks, already did." He is very principled and sticks strongly to his morales.
Lucretia reminds him of his own younger sister and as a result he tends to be very protective of her. He is very much aware that she has more than a little interest in him but rarely comments on it for fear of encouraging the crush. He has made the fact of his sexual orientation clear to her and she has respected that for the most part.
Background:
Sightseer was accepted into the army sniper program before testing for psychic ability was developed. When the tests were refined and applied to various branches of the military and special forces, he was found to have a level of projection ability considered too high for a good operative despite having no training with that ability. Simply speaking, he was considered too noticeable despite being one of the better operatives they had to that point.
Following his return to the regular army, he was given first a deskjob and then he dropped his enlistment. He later found himself picked up by the "Temple" run by the Goddess code-named Tlazotoetl: Genevive Robles. He spent the last half of the Cartel Wars running operations for her in Mexico, the Caribbean, Texas, Californian and New Mexico. When the Goddess program was blown as an operation run by the North American Military Alliance, NAMA, Robles was cut loose and the Temple was supposedly dissolved. Since then he and a handful of others who'd worked with Robles have done common mercenary jobs throughout the Americas.
Bystander
Status: Published:
Amazon: http://www.amazon.com/dp/B0040GJBS2
DrivethruRPG: http://rpg.drivethrustuff.com/product...
Birth Name: Eldon Dwyer
Aliases: Sightseer
Age: 38
Height: 5'9"
Weight: 192 lbs
Hair: Brown
Eyes: Brown
Complexion: Healthy tan
Ethnicity: Caucasian
Nationality: American
Home: Seattle, Washington
Occupation:
Languages: English,
Quotes:
"Too young, she had to be a minor when she went in. There had to be a better option."
"I can't take him out, Sergeant. He's not in the missions specs you gave us."
Abilities:
Projection: Sightseer is a stronger projector than the average person, but has not developed that talent and thus has no telepathic ranking or license.
Skills:
Sniper: Sightseer is a skilled sharpshooter.
Stealth: While he stands out of a crowd, Sightseer has developed his skill to remain hidden from sight and thus usually takes the role of "angel" or overwatch-far support when working with Robles.
Weaknesses:
Noticeable: Sightseer's undeveloped projective abilities cause him to stand out of a crowd even when he's dressed and styled to look as average as he can manage to appear as. As such, he usually tries to adopt the attitude of someone not-native to the region in the hopes that people will overlook him. This resulted in his nickname/codename.
Appearance: Sightseer is deliberately bland. He wears basic clothes and cuts his hair to a basic, average cut. His one step away from that is the inclusion of dark glasses to cover the color and shape of his eyes in order to make identification more difficult. Despite this average appearance, he stands out due to his higher than average projection rating.
Personality: Eldon tends to be very reserved and serious, but does have something of a sense of humor that appears occasionally, such as his response to Robles asking if he needed to "step down" after a possibly dangerous fall: "not thanks, already did." He is very principled and sticks strongly to his morales.
Lucretia reminds him of his own younger sister and as a result he tends to be very protective of her. He is very much aware that she has more than a little interest in him but rarely comments on it for fear of encouraging the crush. He has made the fact of his sexual orientation clear to her and she has respected that for the most part.
Background:
Sightseer was accepted into the army sniper program before testing for psychic ability was developed. When the tests were refined and applied to various branches of the military and special forces, he was found to have a level of projection ability considered too high for a good operative despite having no training with that ability. Simply speaking, he was considered too noticeable despite being one of the better operatives they had to that point.
Following his return to the regular army, he was given first a deskjob and then he dropped his enlistment. He later found himself picked up by the "Temple" run by the Goddess code-named Tlazotoetl: Genevive Robles. He spent the last half of the Cartel Wars running operations for her in Mexico, the Caribbean, Texas, Californian and New Mexico. When the Goddess program was blown as an operation run by the North American Military Alliance, NAMA, Robles was cut loose and the Temple was supposedly dissolved. Since then he and a handful of others who'd worked with Robles have done common mercenary jobs throughout the Americas.
Bystander
Try to be predictable and surprising
Predictability, very much like stereotypes, has a bad reputation amongst readers and writers alike. To most people, predictable is the same thing as boring. They want, or say they want, unpredictable stories that end in ways that they did not expect whatsoever.
"I did not see that coming."
That is one of the phrases that most people connect with a story that is well-written and surprising.
It is something of a misdirection.
Stories are not truly unpredictable. The closest sorts of stories that can be called unpredictable are things like Looney Toons, Monty Python and Alice In Wonderland. However, even in this case, the apparent randomness is expected by the viewers and readers. Same with such humorous works as Discworld, with its mountain of puns.
The unpredictability of these stories is, itself, predictable. It is well within your expectations in dealing with such things.
True unpredictability is very easy to achieve. If you decide, out of the blue, to introduce an entirely new character in the last pages of the story in order to solve all the problems, you've just done something unpredictable.
Mystery novel enthusiasts the world over can tell you how popular that sort of thing is.
Anything you do in a story must be either fitting within the framework of what has come before, or establishing the framework for what will come afterwards. Everything in fiction is defined, and the further in the story you get, the more defined that story becomes.
Unpredictability renders such definitions null and void and ruin the consistency of the story.
However, you still want that appearance of unpredictability. You want to be surprising.
You do not want the reader to see "it" coming.
Surprising, however, is not the same unpredictable. You can work with the definition of the world in order to achieve surprise.
When you reach your surprise, or your twist, you want the reader to immediately agree that the sequence makes sense. You want them to have evidence from earlier parts of the story that points to exactly what you just decided to show them.
This is what we call foreshadowing.
You leave clues strung throughout a story that imply a specific end or result. The closer an event is to occurring, the more frequent and obvious you want your foreshadowing to be, but you want to start foreshadowing in small, occasional ways for any major event you have decided on as soon as you have decided it.
At the best, you want this foreshadowing to be so minor that nobody notices it until they've reached the end and all those clues click into place. You want the foreshadowing of minor events in a story combine to foreshadow the greater events.
You want to have enough clues in the storyline that someone who reads your book or story can possibly figure out what is coming, but in a way that few people will piece it together. The same clue, for instance, can foreshadow many different things coming in the longer story.
Also note that only the reader requires this subconscious level of predictability. The characters in your story do not need to be able to predict the ending of the story. In fact, very often, it is better if they can't predict the ending.
Some of the evidence that readers will be using to predict your story, subconsciously or unconsciously, include knowledge of cliches, tropes and stereotypes. As such, you should be well educated about such things. It is best to be aware of these rather than let these guide your story entirely, but a lack of awareness of these trends is likely to ruin your surprises.
Some people like to make use of red herrings, clues that lead the reader off in entirely the wrong direction. For my own style, I do not prefer to deliberately create truly extraneous and misleading clues. Instead, I prefer to have clues that can be read in more than one way. To me, it is best if the reader creates their own red herrings rather than for me to give them a primrose path leading off in the wrong direction.
"I did not see that coming."
That is one of the phrases that most people connect with a story that is well-written and surprising.
It is something of a misdirection.
Stories are not truly unpredictable. The closest sorts of stories that can be called unpredictable are things like Looney Toons, Monty Python and Alice In Wonderland. However, even in this case, the apparent randomness is expected by the viewers and readers. Same with such humorous works as Discworld, with its mountain of puns.
The unpredictability of these stories is, itself, predictable. It is well within your expectations in dealing with such things.
True unpredictability is very easy to achieve. If you decide, out of the blue, to introduce an entirely new character in the last pages of the story in order to solve all the problems, you've just done something unpredictable.
Mystery novel enthusiasts the world over can tell you how popular that sort of thing is.
Anything you do in a story must be either fitting within the framework of what has come before, or establishing the framework for what will come afterwards. Everything in fiction is defined, and the further in the story you get, the more defined that story becomes.
Unpredictability renders such definitions null and void and ruin the consistency of the story.
However, you still want that appearance of unpredictability. You want to be surprising.
You do not want the reader to see "it" coming.
Surprising, however, is not the same unpredictable. You can work with the definition of the world in order to achieve surprise.
When you reach your surprise, or your twist, you want the reader to immediately agree that the sequence makes sense. You want them to have evidence from earlier parts of the story that points to exactly what you just decided to show them.
This is what we call foreshadowing.
You leave clues strung throughout a story that imply a specific end or result. The closer an event is to occurring, the more frequent and obvious you want your foreshadowing to be, but you want to start foreshadowing in small, occasional ways for any major event you have decided on as soon as you have decided it.
At the best, you want this foreshadowing to be so minor that nobody notices it until they've reached the end and all those clues click into place. You want the foreshadowing of minor events in a story combine to foreshadow the greater events.
You want to have enough clues in the storyline that someone who reads your book or story can possibly figure out what is coming, but in a way that few people will piece it together. The same clue, for instance, can foreshadow many different things coming in the longer story.
Also note that only the reader requires this subconscious level of predictability. The characters in your story do not need to be able to predict the ending of the story. In fact, very often, it is better if they can't predict the ending.
Some of the evidence that readers will be using to predict your story, subconsciously or unconsciously, include knowledge of cliches, tropes and stereotypes. As such, you should be well educated about such things. It is best to be aware of these rather than let these guide your story entirely, but a lack of awareness of these trends is likely to ruin your surprises.
Some people like to make use of red herrings, clues that lead the reader off in entirely the wrong direction. For my own style, I do not prefer to deliberately create truly extraneous and misleading clues. Instead, I prefer to have clues that can be read in more than one way. To me, it is best if the reader creates their own red herrings rather than for me to give them a primrose path leading off in the wrong direction.
Eija Semezou Character Profile
World Setting: Divine Blood
Status: Published:
Amazon: http://www.amazon.com/dp/B006ESG092
DrivethruRPG: http://rpg.drivethrustuff.com/product...
Age: 16
Height: 5'2"
Weight: 106 lbs
Hair: Black
Eyes: Red
Complexion: Pale
Ethnicity: Greek-Japanese
Nationality: Australian (by descent)
Home: Vollstahl
Languages: Greek, Japanese, English
Quotes:
"I like herbology and painting, actually. I do not have any shapeshifting abilities nor do I have much use for blood rites....Did I say something wrong?"
"Lockers go boom."
"I...I was acting like my sister does around blondes. I can't believe I..."
"B...but I'm not a goth! And I don't have minions!"
"No, really!"
Abilities:
Lifeforce Channelling: While not as skilled as her two siblings, Eija is trained in focusing and channeling her life force in order to enhance her physical capabilities and perform other seemingly superhuman feats.
Lifeforce Cloak: Eija can almost completely cloak herself from living perception, however, she is not able to perform both a cloak and enhance her physical capabilities.
Body Hardening: Not to the standards of the rest of her family, but small caliber bullets would still need to be accurately placed in order to do more than bruise her.
Lifeforce Shaping: Eija is by far the most skilled shaper of her siblings. She focuses more on curse breaking than on placing curses, however. She is also capable at creating seals.
Death-Seer: Eija can see and talk to ghosts as well as help them to cross over. She is also able to tell whether other people have witnessed or caused death and has some sense over the manner of those deaths. She is also able to sense what is most likely to kill a person in front of her, she is able to use this to either treat medical conditions or inflict lethal damage depending on her current need.
Magic: Of the three siblings, Eija is the most practiced with magic and the most willing to suffer the consequences of the family curse in order to make use of this skill. She prefers white magic.
Skills:
Medicine: Eija has fairly extensive knowledge of Chinese medicine for her age. She is qualified to give emergency treatment via both Western and Eastern philosophies. Her apprenticeship in more advanced medical studies is spotty, however, as some of her previous teachers objected to her using her knowledge for self-defense as well as to treat injuries. As such, she tends to depend upon magic for healing, especially in emergencies.
Martial Arts: Eija has studied Stav, Savate, Pankration, Juijutsu and Karate. The Juijutsu and Karate are mostly through her mother, the other styles are from family acquaintances through Psyche and other means. She leans toward a blend of Stav and Juijutsu.
Feng Shui: Eija is reasonably skilled with conventional Feng Shui, but she is not to the point that she can reliably make use of it to enhance her psychic abilities yet. At best she can create an environment to encourage lifeforce healing.
Artist: Eija is a talented artist, but tends to be uncertain and produce more sketches than finished works. She tends to wander from subject to subject on a single page.
Cook: Eija is a skilled chef of Greek recipes. Her Japanese fare is good, but not as good as her Greek and her Western food tends to be merely passable.
Weaknesses:
Family Curse: Eija suffers from a family curse which severely limits the amount she can use magic. Essentially, while casting magic, she suffers lifeforce damage as per using much more power than she really is.
Uncertainty: Outside of dealing with the dead or a medical situation, Eija is slow to take initiative. She's uncertain, nervous about hurting people and nervous about being hurt. She's very much afraid that she'll mistake an innocent action for an attack and seriously hurt or even kill someone that didn't mean any harm.
Fear: Eija scares people, for the most part this is limited to the average person only so it rarely serves as a benefit against men or women used to dangerous situations while it constantly causes issues in having normal interactions on a day to day basis with other people.
Appearance:
Eija has her mother's face and height for the most part, being slightly taller, but her build is much more the classical hourglass than either her mother or her sister. She keeps her black hair long enough that when it comes time to cut it, she can do it herself. She really hates to have her hair cut by other people because the scissors make her nervous when someone else is holding them. Most of the time, Eija can be seen wearing a pair of dark John-Lennon sunglasses to protect her light-sensitive eyes. She prefers to wear Chinese style dresses when not in her school uniform.
Personality: Eija is always friendly and polite to people she deals with, but she tends to be reserved and quiet. She does not initiate conversation if she doesn't have to and feels rather uncomfortable when she does. The fact of her fear-aura always makes her feel guilty for frightening the people around her even though she can't stop it. In addition, she hates to look at herself or her siblings while having her death-seer eyes all the way open so that the blood appears on people's hands. She is probably the most mature of the siblings, but might be the least well-adjusted to living.
In her spare time, Eija very thoroughly enjoys drawing pictures as well as studying herbalism, gardening and cooking. However, she sometimes blames herself for engaging in such "frivolous" activities even when her mother encourages them. She is most comfortable with speaking Greek, but her English and Japanese are equally good.
Given a direction or task, Eija will do her best to complete it and does not need any micromanaging. However, she prefers to leave the overall decision making to other people and tends not to dwell on her own opinions much.
Background: Eija is one of three fraternal triplets born to Mao Semezou. She has lived in several places around Europe ranging from Greece to Iceland. Around the time she and her siblings were ten years old, there was a traumatic event that she still has issues dealing with. When she comes to Bravura Academy, it is the first time she will be in a classroom without a brother or sister present.
Divine Blood: Semester Start
Status: Published:
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Age: 16
Height: 5'2"
Weight: 106 lbs
Hair: Black
Eyes: Red
Complexion: Pale
Ethnicity: Greek-Japanese
Nationality: Australian (by descent)
Home: Vollstahl
Languages: Greek, Japanese, English
Quotes:
"I like herbology and painting, actually. I do not have any shapeshifting abilities nor do I have much use for blood rites....Did I say something wrong?"
"Lockers go boom."
"I...I was acting like my sister does around blondes. I can't believe I..."
"B...but I'm not a goth! And I don't have minions!"
"No, really!"
Abilities:
Lifeforce Channelling: While not as skilled as her two siblings, Eija is trained in focusing and channeling her life force in order to enhance her physical capabilities and perform other seemingly superhuman feats.
Lifeforce Cloak: Eija can almost completely cloak herself from living perception, however, she is not able to perform both a cloak and enhance her physical capabilities.
Body Hardening: Not to the standards of the rest of her family, but small caliber bullets would still need to be accurately placed in order to do more than bruise her.
Lifeforce Shaping: Eija is by far the most skilled shaper of her siblings. She focuses more on curse breaking than on placing curses, however. She is also capable at creating seals.
Death-Seer: Eija can see and talk to ghosts as well as help them to cross over. She is also able to tell whether other people have witnessed or caused death and has some sense over the manner of those deaths. She is also able to sense what is most likely to kill a person in front of her, she is able to use this to either treat medical conditions or inflict lethal damage depending on her current need.
Magic: Of the three siblings, Eija is the most practiced with magic and the most willing to suffer the consequences of the family curse in order to make use of this skill. She prefers white magic.
Skills:
Medicine: Eija has fairly extensive knowledge of Chinese medicine for her age. She is qualified to give emergency treatment via both Western and Eastern philosophies. Her apprenticeship in more advanced medical studies is spotty, however, as some of her previous teachers objected to her using her knowledge for self-defense as well as to treat injuries. As such, she tends to depend upon magic for healing, especially in emergencies.
Martial Arts: Eija has studied Stav, Savate, Pankration, Juijutsu and Karate. The Juijutsu and Karate are mostly through her mother, the other styles are from family acquaintances through Psyche and other means. She leans toward a blend of Stav and Juijutsu.
Feng Shui: Eija is reasonably skilled with conventional Feng Shui, but she is not to the point that she can reliably make use of it to enhance her psychic abilities yet. At best she can create an environment to encourage lifeforce healing.
Artist: Eija is a talented artist, but tends to be uncertain and produce more sketches than finished works. She tends to wander from subject to subject on a single page.
Cook: Eija is a skilled chef of Greek recipes. Her Japanese fare is good, but not as good as her Greek and her Western food tends to be merely passable.
Weaknesses:
Family Curse: Eija suffers from a family curse which severely limits the amount she can use magic. Essentially, while casting magic, she suffers lifeforce damage as per using much more power than she really is.
Uncertainty: Outside of dealing with the dead or a medical situation, Eija is slow to take initiative. She's uncertain, nervous about hurting people and nervous about being hurt. She's very much afraid that she'll mistake an innocent action for an attack and seriously hurt or even kill someone that didn't mean any harm.
Fear: Eija scares people, for the most part this is limited to the average person only so it rarely serves as a benefit against men or women used to dangerous situations while it constantly causes issues in having normal interactions on a day to day basis with other people.
Appearance:
Eija has her mother's face and height for the most part, being slightly taller, but her build is much more the classical hourglass than either her mother or her sister. She keeps her black hair long enough that when it comes time to cut it, she can do it herself. She really hates to have her hair cut by other people because the scissors make her nervous when someone else is holding them. Most of the time, Eija can be seen wearing a pair of dark John-Lennon sunglasses to protect her light-sensitive eyes. She prefers to wear Chinese style dresses when not in her school uniform.
Personality: Eija is always friendly and polite to people she deals with, but she tends to be reserved and quiet. She does not initiate conversation if she doesn't have to and feels rather uncomfortable when she does. The fact of her fear-aura always makes her feel guilty for frightening the people around her even though she can't stop it. In addition, she hates to look at herself or her siblings while having her death-seer eyes all the way open so that the blood appears on people's hands. She is probably the most mature of the siblings, but might be the least well-adjusted to living.
In her spare time, Eija very thoroughly enjoys drawing pictures as well as studying herbalism, gardening and cooking. However, she sometimes blames herself for engaging in such "frivolous" activities even when her mother encourages them. She is most comfortable with speaking Greek, but her English and Japanese are equally good.
Given a direction or task, Eija will do her best to complete it and does not need any micromanaging. However, she prefers to leave the overall decision making to other people and tends not to dwell on her own opinions much.
Background: Eija is one of three fraternal triplets born to Mao Semezou. She has lived in several places around Europe ranging from Greece to Iceland. Around the time she and her siblings were ten years old, there was a traumatic event that she still has issues dealing with. When she comes to Bravura Academy, it is the first time she will be in a classroom without a brother or sister present.
Divine Blood: Semester Start
