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Raise Holy Hex ~ Series (2005) |
Showing posts with label Raise Holy Hex. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Raise Holy Hex. Show all posts
Friday, January 20, 2012
Thursday, December 8, 2011
Do any of your characters have children? How well do you write them?
Oh snap, not many of my characters at all have children. Let me ponder this…
I’ll restrict it to main characters (parent side-characters don’t count) and that leaves me with, I believe, one character of mine who has canon children. Kieran from Raise Holy Hex is a child in the first story, in the second story she’s a teenager, and in her third and final story, she is a mother of three (one daughter and twin boys.)
Due to my extensive babysitting experience, I like to think I’m pretty good at depicting children in my stories, though these particular children haven’t been written yet. It’s not the children that make me nervous though- it’s the mother-child relationship that I’m hesitant to write.
Since I’m not a mother, the closest experience I have to mother-child relationship would be with my pets. (When I say mother-child relationship, I place the perspective character first. So a character with the perspective of a mother would make it mother-child, as opposed to my experience with my own mom, which is a child-mother relationship.) Children are not pets. And babysitting isn’t exactly a good basis for mother experience since being full-time responsible for children is, I imagine, so much more complex.
Perhaps that’s why I’ve only plotted the third story rather than sat down to write it. Kieran’s relationship with her children is very important to that story.
I’ll restrict it to main characters (parent side-characters don’t count) and that leaves me with, I believe, one character of mine who has canon children. Kieran from Raise Holy Hex is a child in the first story, in the second story she’s a teenager, and in her third and final story, she is a mother of three (one daughter and twin boys.)
Due to my extensive babysitting experience, I like to think I’m pretty good at depicting children in my stories, though these particular children haven’t been written yet. It’s not the children that make me nervous though- it’s the mother-child relationship that I’m hesitant to write.
Since I’m not a mother, the closest experience I have to mother-child relationship would be with my pets. (When I say mother-child relationship, I place the perspective character first. So a character with the perspective of a mother would make it mother-child, as opposed to my experience with my own mom, which is a child-mother relationship.) Children are not pets. And babysitting isn’t exactly a good basis for mother experience since being full-time responsible for children is, I imagine, so much more complex.
Perhaps that’s why I’ve only plotted the third story rather than sat down to write it. Kieran’s relationship with her children is very important to that story.
Saturday, November 5, 2011
By age, who are your youngest/oldest characters?
Disregarding vampires/immortal characters (of which there are a few.)
My youngest character is probably… Well, I have two eight-year-old characters.
Emma is my character from my senior thesis. She’s an eight-year-old girl who has a lot of big dreams. Her favorite color changes every couple of weeks between pink, green, and light blue. She loves sweets, her favorite animal is a kitten, and she counts her age by months (she’s eight and three months.) Emma wants to be lots of different things when she grows up, which she tends to combine into a string of things, such as- “I want to be a traveling dancer veterinarian nurse horse-riding superhero when I grow up.”
Elspeth is an eight-year-old from a dramatically different story and so has a dramatically different personality. She’s extremely quiet and only talks when she has something important to say. She’s not shy but people sometimes perceive her as such (they can’t imagine why a little girl would be so quiet otherwise.) In truth she just doesn’t have much interest in social interaction. Elspeth is exceptionally good at identifying patterns, so she has a fondness for mathmatics. She gets along better with computers than she does people.
This also makes me think of another character from my first story. His name is Laboosh and he’s nine years old. This story is a scifi that involves different worlds, which is why his name is so odd. Laboosh is a hyperactive little boy, bursting with energy and interest in his world. He lives on the ship with primarily adults, so he’s learned how to keep himself occupied on his own, but since he doesn’t have friends his age he can sometimes be a bit of an attention-hog. As a result, he sometimes gets in trouble just so that people will notice him. He’s a good kid at heart, he’s just misunderstood and lonely.
As for the oldest character I have, that would be Gram from a story called You Too & Stuff. Gram is the main character’s grandmother, and she’s 88 years old. She makes it a point to keep active and sharp. She has a sarcastic sense of humor that can sometimes make her seem cynical but she’s otherwise pretty kind. Gram is a little bit out of touch with the modern generation, which puts her at odds with her grandson, who she’s raising on her own. Sometimes her grandson is a bit tiring or rebellious so she generally lets him do as he pleases and gives him advice when he starts running into trouble.
These characters tend to be the exceptions, however. Most of my characters are currently in their twenties because that’s how old I am. They’re easier to write and more likely to be in the situations that I like to focus on right now.
My youngest character is probably… Well, I have two eight-year-old characters.
Emma is my character from my senior thesis. She’s an eight-year-old girl who has a lot of big dreams. Her favorite color changes every couple of weeks between pink, green, and light blue. She loves sweets, her favorite animal is a kitten, and she counts her age by months (she’s eight and three months.) Emma wants to be lots of different things when she grows up, which she tends to combine into a string of things, such as- “I want to be a traveling dancer veterinarian nurse horse-riding superhero when I grow up.”
Elspeth is an eight-year-old from a dramatically different story and so has a dramatically different personality. She’s extremely quiet and only talks when she has something important to say. She’s not shy but people sometimes perceive her as such (they can’t imagine why a little girl would be so quiet otherwise.) In truth she just doesn’t have much interest in social interaction. Elspeth is exceptionally good at identifying patterns, so she has a fondness for mathmatics. She gets along better with computers than she does people.
This also makes me think of another character from my first story. His name is Laboosh and he’s nine years old. This story is a scifi that involves different worlds, which is why his name is so odd. Laboosh is a hyperactive little boy, bursting with energy and interest in his world. He lives on the ship with primarily adults, so he’s learned how to keep himself occupied on his own, but since he doesn’t have friends his age he can sometimes be a bit of an attention-hog. As a result, he sometimes gets in trouble just so that people will notice him. He’s a good kid at heart, he’s just misunderstood and lonely.
As for the oldest character I have, that would be Gram from a story called You Too & Stuff. Gram is the main character’s grandmother, and she’s 88 years old. She makes it a point to keep active and sharp. She has a sarcastic sense of humor that can sometimes make her seem cynical but she’s otherwise pretty kind. Gram is a little bit out of touch with the modern generation, which puts her at odds with her grandson, who she’s raising on her own. Sometimes her grandson is a bit tiring or rebellious so she generally lets him do as he pleases and gives him advice when he starts running into trouble.
These characters tend to be the exceptions, however. Most of my characters are currently in their twenties because that’s how old I am. They’re easier to write and more likely to be in the situations that I like to focus on right now.
Tuesday, August 30, 2011
Your favorite writing project/universe that you’ve worked with.
Oh my gosh, my favorite changes depending on whatever story I’m working on at the time!
For the sake of this question, I’ll respond with this. My “favorite” universe I wrote in would have to be the one for Raise Holy Hex. This is my favorite universe because it’s the first time my friend and I really poured extensive amounts of research into world-building.
We created all the different races for this world, drew maps, developed a world history, country’s history, history that affected the story, discovered political leaders, designed architecture for different parts of the world, fashion for different cultures, entire languages. We plotted major rivers, figured out political alliances, used that to figure out trade routs, discussed economies of different countries and how it affected each other. Designed technology, different methods of transportation, figured out how nature affected the cities and viceversa.
Then we added another continent. We figured out how immigration worked between the continents, figured the climate changes, resources, magic differences between the regions. We created segments of history where the continents used to be aware of each other’s existence but due to a dark ages following apocalyptic natural disaster, they lost contact with each other and slowly their history fell into legend.
And finally, we wrote one story in this world. Then fast forwarded a few years and wrote another story. Then again. And then wrote stories for side characters, created alternate histories to see what we liked better. Raise Holy Hex turned into a sandbox for our imagination and the project just kept getting bigger and bigger. I don’t think we have any other project with world-building on such a grand scale.
For the sake of this question, I’ll respond with this. My “favorite” universe I wrote in would have to be the one for Raise Holy Hex. This is my favorite universe because it’s the first time my friend and I really poured extensive amounts of research into world-building.
We created all the different races for this world, drew maps, developed a world history, country’s history, history that affected the story, discovered political leaders, designed architecture for different parts of the world, fashion for different cultures, entire languages. We plotted major rivers, figured out political alliances, used that to figure out trade routs, discussed economies of different countries and how it affected each other. Designed technology, different methods of transportation, figured out how nature affected the cities and viceversa.
Then we added another continent. We figured out how immigration worked between the continents, figured the climate changes, resources, magic differences between the regions. We created segments of history where the continents used to be aware of each other’s existence but due to a dark ages following apocalyptic natural disaster, they lost contact with each other and slowly their history fell into legend.
And finally, we wrote one story in this world. Then fast forwarded a few years and wrote another story. Then again. And then wrote stories for side characters, created alternate histories to see what we liked better. Raise Holy Hex turned into a sandbox for our imagination and the project just kept getting bigger and bigger. I don’t think we have any other project with world-building on such a grand scale.
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