Protagonists and The Promised Queen

Our topic at the SFF Seven this week is "Avoiding Same Protagonist, Different Name, Different Story: How do ensure your lead characters are unique per series/standalone?"

This isn't a great topic for me because I ... don't. In that, I don't ensure or strategize this kind of thing. Maybe because I'm an intuitive writer? Characters come to me and tell me about themselves. I don't have to avoid finding the same one any more than I have to worry about running into the same people over and over in the larger world.

But that's cool because it's release week for me! 

THE PROMISED QUEEN - book three in the Forgotten Empires - comes out on Tuesday, May 25!

        

As far as protagonists go, an early reviewer said this to me:

Really appreciate how at no point did Con become some magically articulate prince. He still said "...stuff" instead of somehow finding a way to wax eloquent in the third act. Thank the gods.

I love that! In honor of Con's uneducated and rough ways that have him saying "stuff," here's a scene where he does exactly that.

******************

We walked in quiet for a few steps, Lia turning us at a four way intersection where all the paths looked the same to me. “Do you know where you’re going?” I asked.

“Metaphorically in my life, or literally in this maze?” she replied lightly.

“Now you sound like Ambrose.”

“He has his moments. The answer is yes to both.”

“You know where you’re going in life?” 

“That has never been a question for me. My life belongs to Calanthe.” Before I could say anything to that, she continued. “And there’s a pattern to the turns in the maze, which everyone knows, even if they never come this way. The maze is here primarily to prevent anyone from stumbling into the heart of the night court by accident.”

“Am I going to be shocked by what I see?” I blurted out, figuring I’d better ask.

She gave me an assessing look, eyes glowing with color, like the decorative lanterns did. “You might be. Do you mind? We can turn back.”

“No way. Not after I just confessed to regretting not learning what I could when I had the opportunity.” Besides, maybe I’d get some ideas about pleasing Lia. If I could figure out how to be a better lover for her, she might want to marry me again.

“You could still learn, you know,” she offered. “It’s never too late.”

For a pained moment, I thought she’d read that thought—then I realized she meant reading and stuff. “I’d feel like an idiot.” I could just picture it, sitting there like a hulk in some schoolroom, painstakingly reading aloud from a kid’s book. 

“You said you feel like an idiot most of the time anyway,” she countered.

“Good point.” We turned twice more, and I began to get the pattern now. “Two lefts, then a right, and repeat?”

“Exactly. Now you know.”

“Not that I’d come this way without you.”

“You could. The night court would—”

“I know, I know. You offered this before and I said I didn’t want it. Quit bringing it up.”

“No need to growl, grumpy bear.”

I laughed, a hoarse grating sound. “I thought I was a wolf.”

“It changes, moment to moment,” she replied. “And you’re not, you know.”

“A wolf or a bear?”

“An idiot. You’re a very intelligent man. One of the smartest men I’ve been privileged to meet.”

When Your Antagonist Is the Whole World

Our topic at the  SFF Seven this week reminds me of an AP English essay question. The question is: "The Antagonist’s Arc - how do you choose one that will not only compliment your protagonist’s arc but drive it?"

Okay, you guys know me. Or you SHOULD by now! As soon as we get to the "how do you choose" part of the question, you've lost me. I mentioned (briefly, as a drive-by remark) that Meyers-Briggs puts me pretty squarely and consistently in the INTJ category. I think, I judge, I am an introvert, and - that capital N? - that correctly identifies me as an intuitive.

People, I am an intuitive writer. I don't know what to tell you. GMC (Goal-Motivation-Conflict)? I have no idea. Character analysis? Not gonna happen. Picking out a plot ahead of time? Don't make me laugh!

How do I find out what the antagonist's arc is? I watch them when they appear on the page and follow along. Because I'm not much of a believer in black and white lines, my antagonists tend to change over time, better or worse, depending on how their lives are going. 

Now, I can tell you of something I did work up deliberately with a fair amount of mulling on top of the intuition. In DARK WIZARD, book #1 in my new Bonds of Magic dark fantasy romance series, the antagonist is not a person. Yes, there are characters making the lives of my protagonists very difficult, which will wax and wane, as is my wont. But the real antagonist of the story is the world itself.

Or, more precisely, it's a repressive political and social system. All the characters are caught up in this rigid and ancient system. Some benefit from it. Some are crushed by it. Only a very few live outside of it, and even they are impacted by its far-reaching effects. As the series progresses, everyone in this world will be affected by what happens when a few people take on the gargantuan task of changing the world they live in. 

When Nature Says 'Hold My Beer'

Bear with me. I have a story to tell. This is Perceval. Perceval was rescued by a neighbor who presented the kitten for foster care as a 'he'. Then 'he' went into heat. He became she and (because of the aforementioned heat) developed a raging urinary tract infection. A sterile draw (with a needle and syringe) of urine at the emergency vet revealed a new mystery. Perceval had sperm swimming in her bladder.

Yes. I have male cats. They're shooting blanks. Have been since December of last year.

Thus, the vet proposed the notion that Perceval might just be both 'he' AND 'she'. Jeffe, on Instagram, instantly proposed swapping out Perceval's pronoun to They. Motion seconded, voted upon, and passed. Surgery was undertaken. It was a spay - there was a uterus and nothing more internally. Had Perceval been a true hermaphrodite, there would have been a set of male gonads as well as the female reproductive organs. There weren't. However, the doctor did point out that Perceval's external genitalia are ambiguous. While there's clearly female anatomy, it appears that a pair of testicles also tried to develop. They never fully formed, so the cat didn't have to have a neuter surgery on top of a spay surgery. And the mystery of the sperm in the bladder? We may never know. Subsequent checks of the boy cats confirms they're in the clear.

What does this have to do with writing characters in SFF? Simply this: Nature and life recently proved to me that they are far too ready, willing, and able to shatter our preconceived notions about gender, sex, and identity. So getting hung up on any kind of either/or question about who's what and therefore gets to love whom, when writing seems silly. SF and Fantasy is, to me, about who characters are as individuals - including their identities, preferences, marginalization, and how they cope. This may be privilege speaking, because I'm part of a population that doesn't often have to get to grips with being in mortal peril simply for existing. I suspect that shows in my writing because while I have a trans character, a bisexual main character, PoC as main characters - in my stories, these people are rarely under threat based on being either bi, or a PoC, or trans. Mainly because part of the joy of SF and Fantasy for me is getting to dabble in a world that's much broader than this one - one that encompasses possibilities and embraces them. I'd like to think that makes me idealistic rather than simply naive. Or worse, hurtful.

Honestly. Does anyone really think that when we finally do run into life out there in the stars that they're gonna all be CIShet/clear binary with no richness? No variety? No specialization and adaptation? If yes, do you science at all? Cause yeah, nature doesn't work that way. And so long as I'm writing, neither will I.

Can You Spot the Tertiary Character in This Novel?

I gave the man an aquarium for Christmas and Jackson finally discovered it has living creatures in it. He's quite bemused by the concept.

Our topic this week at the SFF Seven is tertiary characters who demand the spotlight.

It's a funny thing about my brain that the word "tertiary" takes me right back to organic chemistry, and not to writing things at all. As far as chemistry is concerned, tertiary structure is when a chain of proteins (for example) is folded up, with disulfide bonds maybe. Primary structure is the basic molecule, secondary structure is when they get chained up. After the folding of tertiary, you might get bundles clumped together to make quatenary structure.

What about the quatenary characters, I ask you???

Really... does anyone think about tertiary characters? I certainly don't as a reader. I don't even really think in terms of secondary characters. Do you, as a reader?

I suppose secondary characters come into play because most stories focus action on one or two protagonists. It's been an interesting game for those of us watching A Game of Thrones who haven't made it through all the books in A Song of Ice and Fire, to see the story wrapping up to show that the sprawling epic with tons of characters - and protagonists - is about the Stark family in the end. And that Jon Snow may be the protagonist after all. Hard for me to tell how much of that is the show runners refining the story that way, however.

But in most books that aren't multi-tentacled monster fantasy epics, there is one protagonist, maybe two. They are the single molecules upon which everything is built. The secondary characters are part of the world they live in, because no person is an island, so those connections create chains of people.

As we all know, secondary characters in one book often become the protagonists in sequels, and all of you readers are adept at picking out who those people might be. But can you spot the tertiary characters?

If I extend the chemistry analogy, those are secondary characters who get wrapped in and cemented with extra bonds. I think, however, that the suggester of this topic wasn't thinking in those terms. Instead, tertiary must mean to them another rung lower than secondary. But if you have the protagonists, everyone connected to them, then the next rung down is.... bit players? Characters without lines? Pets and livestock?

I frankly don't know, so I'll be interested in what the rest of the gang has to say this week. For my part, I'm a believer in the advice that all characters live full lives that begin long before they walk onto the page and continue after they walk off. Some of the best observations on this come from theater.

In this perspective all "tertiary" characters demand the spotlight, because they are all the protagonist of their own tales. Whether the author chooses to spin the POV to show that tale is another question.

But you all tell me, is there a character you've read who you'd regard as tertiary who then became a protagonist?