Over the years I've been writing, I've had a lot of characters I've used that have stuck in my head. The feeling I get from them is that they have never really been done justice, that the stories they were in were just waypoints on the road to something greater. Even characters where I've written and rewritten the same story a half dozen times, I still feel like they are just waiting for their big break, like an actor trying to get into a blockbuster movie. Part of it, maybe, is that they have been so crystallized by the time I've spent on them that I don't want to let them go. I don't want to put them in the story where I can see all its flaws and then relegate them to that poor, lifeless existence when they could be so much better off.
For instance, I have a character from a story I've been hammering on since college -- a woman soldier, wounded so badly in combat that her arms and legs had to be amputated and replaced with cybernetics. She doesn't really know any other life, but in the story, she can't go back to being a soldier because someone with so much damage isn't medically fit for it. Most of it is about her going through getting adjusted to what happened and her new limbs and what happened to the other people in her unit, and at the end, she gets redemption somehow. I rewrote that one at least five or six different times, but it never really felt right. The story just didn't seem to bring the emotion across right, the ending seemed really lame, and overall, I just wasn't happy with it. I wasn't happy with the setting it took place in either, which, in truth, was almost irrelevant to the story.
The last few days I've been thinking about her and wondering if maybe it wasn't time to drag that story back out and try working on it again. I don't think I even have a copy of it anywhere anymore. But now, though, I think I have a good way to use her story; I've been thinking about writing some Cthulhu Rising fiction and I think her story is one I can use for it. The problem is that I feel like I'm cheating -- that every story I write forever is just going to be a retread of this one, or at least, a retread of this character. I don't want to get stuck in a rut and have people think the only thing I can write is about this woman, and this story.
Is it cheating to keep coming back to these characters? If I wrote this story, finally liked it (or maybe not), finally put it out there and it had been read by more people than just my RHET 304 class, I suppose that would make it a lot harder to coming back to this particular story again, or I would be looking at that criticism. Could I come back and use her in another story down the road? Do I have to put her away and never come back to her? Writers do sequels all the time, I guess, but the best ones can create a lot of unique characters, not just one. Am I handicapping myself by not trying to branch out now, or is this good practice?
Until I can really get them out of my blood though, I don't think I'll ever be able to move on -- I just don't know what the best way to do that is.
For instance, I have a character from a story I've been hammering on since college -- a woman soldier, wounded so badly in combat that her arms and legs had to be amputated and replaced with cybernetics. She doesn't really know any other life, but in the story, she can't go back to being a soldier because someone with so much damage isn't medically fit for it. Most of it is about her going through getting adjusted to what happened and her new limbs and what happened to the other people in her unit, and at the end, she gets redemption somehow. I rewrote that one at least five or six different times, but it never really felt right. The story just didn't seem to bring the emotion across right, the ending seemed really lame, and overall, I just wasn't happy with it. I wasn't happy with the setting it took place in either, which, in truth, was almost irrelevant to the story.
The last few days I've been thinking about her and wondering if maybe it wasn't time to drag that story back out and try working on it again. I don't think I even have a copy of it anywhere anymore. But now, though, I think I have a good way to use her story; I've been thinking about writing some Cthulhu Rising fiction and I think her story is one I can use for it. The problem is that I feel like I'm cheating -- that every story I write forever is just going to be a retread of this one, or at least, a retread of this character. I don't want to get stuck in a rut and have people think the only thing I can write is about this woman, and this story.
Is it cheating to keep coming back to these characters? If I wrote this story, finally liked it (or maybe not), finally put it out there and it had been read by more people than just my RHET 304 class, I suppose that would make it a lot harder to coming back to this particular story again, or I would be looking at that criticism. Could I come back and use her in another story down the road? Do I have to put her away and never come back to her? Writers do sequels all the time, I guess, but the best ones can create a lot of unique characters, not just one. Am I handicapping myself by not trying to branch out now, or is this good practice?
Until I can really get them out of my blood though, I don't think I'll ever be able to move on -- I just don't know what the best way to do that is.
Leave a comment