Characters Behaving Badly Reprised
Firstly, I promised a Great Revision update for either today or next Monday, and owing to a series of events it shall be Monday.
Some but not all of the events were unexpected — although I guess it’s the time of year for events and some of them are going to be surprises, like unanticipated visitors. ๐
In this case, one event (neither expected nor unexpected) was Malian behaving badly when it came to cooperating with the revision process. I know I’ve talked about Characters Behaving Badly on at least one prior occasion, but I wonder if I have ever shared that Kalan is, by and large, easy to write, while Malian is far more tricky?
What fascinates me about this, from an “inside the writing life” perspective, is how it reflects their characters. Yet while I think it’s true that Kalan is a far easier-to-know personality (you may recall that Faro reflects, at the end of Daughter of Blood that he “…is always bright, like the sun”) I don’t believe the correlation between easy-to-know and easy-to-write always applies.
For example, the Earl of Night, like his daughter, is always at the difficult-to-write end of the spectrum — but Asantir, who is an equally complex character, has always leapt from pen to page.
Returning to Malian, and as with Thanir in the original Characters Behaving Badly post, this last week she has proven particularly opaque when it comes to ensuring her actions and reactions remain “in tune” with both who she was and has become through the series. Probably because, citing Faro again, she is “…full of cleverness and secrets…and twisty…”
All of which adds up to a Monday progress update. And the author working a whole lot harder — situation normal, in other words. ๐