Vagabond142

A threefold plan appears! It is super effective: happybounce:

1) Dark War has takena dramatic shift in direction. The next two or three chapters are going to see major shifts, so if you're a reader, brace for some epic stuff. If you aren't, go read my stuff! www.freeonlinestories.net

2) By making this shift, I am taking Dark War from a planned and outlined story to an OPEN ENDED story. So, like a webcomic, there really is no end o_O

3) This will also allow me to focus in more on the main characters, something I've wandered away from in recent chapters

So, all this starts FRIDAY!

I have ten people that follow me here on DeviantArt... and one of you, I won't call you out because I respect the question asked too much, one of you asked me in a note, "How do you generate a character and bring it to life in your writing?"

Well, the simple answer is: I don't.

Let me get on to the long answer, now that you're scratching your head.

Character creation is the single hardest thing to do properly. Almost everyone can draw up a character bio in 10 minutes, and that's usually how I start. However, if you base everything off the 10 minute bio, then all your characters will be fairly flat and, frankly, boring. Let's take, for example, Desyrynel from Dark War.

On the surface, what is she? She's the typical "strong warrior" stereotype. She fights for honor, for the Queen, yadda yadda blah blah. Yet, halfway through the prelude, what does she do, based simply on a feeling? She abandons EVERYTHING, everyone, drops every shred of duty and honor and screams off into the distance, because she felt her daughter was in danger. In a word, that's "depth."

Depth is what makes a character a CHARACTER. Give your characters something to battle, internally. In Angels of the Night, Jessica, the main protagonist, is a recovered drug addict, now working as a policewoman. Velinas is a murdered and savaged English noblewoman that was turned to the night centuries ago. Warren Elliot is a self-assured businessman with an addiction to power and persuasion. Depth makes a character, not simply their existence.

So, here's my suggestion to the one that sent me the note: Write a 10 minute biography of your character. Read it over a few times, not making any changes. Sleep on it. Dream on it. Daydream about your character when it's safe to do so (ie sitting on the throne, lunchbreak at work, commercials during your favorite show, etc). Have a notebook handy and scribble down your thoughts. After a few days, take your notes and write them into the biography. Trim, add, shape, and add depth. And pretty soon, you'll have a character.

And, fun fact of the day: I actually came up with the events of Chapter 19 of Dark War when I was on the throne... yes, I take a notepad with me when I need to visit the porcelain gods

Starting tomorrow, Arc 3 starts in Dark War... it's been teased at, hinted at, suggested, even outright demanded.....


So, tomorrow evening, as the saying goes, "shit gets real."

This arc will last 6 chapters. Someone dies. Someone betrays. Someone falls in love. Someone goes absolutely batshit crazy with the stress of the whole loss of Nyrtha.

Read on these next 6 weeks! I'll be posting the chapters back to back to back, on a 1 week interval instead of the standard two weeks. I hope you all enjoy!

Bleh

You read that right! I've decided to start building a programming portfolio as I head into a 2 year software development diploma course, and as part of that, I'm going to be making Dark War into an RPG, either using Flash or using a premade engine and scripting it in (I'm considering using the StarCraft II toolkit). It'll be a while to make, but it's something that will come along and I hope to publish it either on my own site or on NewGrounds or some such

Anyways, apart from that, writing is still going well on Dark War and Angels of the Night, and new updates should be coming soon, including the much awaited big battle and the start of the actual deep story