I'm still savoring my victory from yesterday, though I must say that I started out with one character, who promptly decided that they had a spouse and children.
Actually, having a family makes the character a nicer fit for where I want to put them in this current tale. I went back and pulled up my main characters fact sheet and began knitting her history and the new characters history together. As I was doing that this morning, I realized that because of the age difference, it would make more sense for the character to have a connection with the main character’s father, not her. This really was a cool surprise and something I desperately needed as well. I wanted her father to have some old pals from his rather wild days but because I am working on getting the plot down and the bones down I didn’t bother to give him any. Poor man, no one liked him before the current time in story.
So, her father now has an old.. . well let’s just call them a buddy for now, who will later help out his daughter when she needs it the most. This trick isn’t anything new; in fact it’s probably one of the most used writing devices when constructing a quest storyline. The younger protagonist needs a more experienced mentor to come along and help shape them into the necessary hero and viola’ somewhere along the way they meet an old friend of their fathers’ or mothers’ or someone that is a friend of the family and willing to help them along for the sake of their parents.
Lemony Snickets’ A Series of Unfortunate Events uses this concept well, where the friends of their parents are both help and hindrance to the final revelation.
Inkspell and Inkheart by Cornelia Funke are also masterful examples of a friend of a parent helping the protagonist out.
Right, well that’s the thought for now, I’m going to go and write some more seeing as I’m laid up for today.
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