Who are you? (I really want to know)
That’s a lyric from The Who by the way… Just want to throw that out there. Anyway, back to your regularly scheduled programming…
Ever since I was a young child I would make up stories in my head as children often do. I had a character I would use, I called him power man and he was the strongest person in the whole world! He was a cross between a DBZ character, a power ranger, and a digimon with a dash of other superheroes here or there. I would create battles and stories all the time until something happened…. I grew up. As I got older I was saddened by the thought that something I was so proud of and entertained me so much was being lost. I could no longer come up with interesting enjoyable scenarios (which is my theory as to why I suck at any type of creative or fictional writing… I lack the imagination for it) and as such I let that character fade away… Put him on a back shelf if you will, just another knick knack to be looked at but rarely thought of or used.
I mention all that because I did end up picking him back up again, just in a way I never expected. As I got more into video games, movies and of course books, I wasn’t satisfied with simply seeing how the story played out, so I decided to inject my own character into the story that I could use vicariously to enjoy it more. It doesn’t work with every story of course, but enough of them.
First I have a basic frame, a character with set personality traits that has room to be molded to the story I inject him into, with a few simple rules I have an good fit for nearly any series… It goes like so
1. (MOST IMPORTANT) He cannot change the laid out course of events, minor changes only. 2. He cannot be more powerful or more skilled than the main character(s) 3. It must make sense for him to be in the given situation. 4. Being in multiple locations with different characters is ok, enjoy the story 5. Have fun 6. He is not immune to injury or death I feel that I have to explain #4 a little bit. A lot of the stories, movies, games that I read watch and play have multiple threads going on with multiple characters at once, because of that I couldn’t decide where I most wanted my character to be and fit in with the narrative. After going back and forth several times and not knowing where I ultimately wanted him to fit in, I decided it was ok to put him in several places at once. It felt wrong for some reason to do so but I can’t really say why, it felt like going against the natural law of things…. Again in a fictional story with a fictional character I felt it was wrong to move a character around where I wanted to. It took me a long time to get over that by the way… Still feels weird sometimes…. Allowing him to be killed off in certain circumstances is how I bring them back together again when they eventually do meet back up. I know that this is by no means a unique thing to me. I’ve asked different people I meet what they do when they read and I can usually tell what they’re stance is based on our conversation leading up to the question. People are broken up into three groups… The person who just reads and doesn’t really interact with the story, the person who drops themselves into the shoes of the main character and sees it through their eyes and the person who like I said an over uses a character they’ve created to take part in the story. I enjoy the interactions and I enjoy seeing what other people feel and do with their stories because it makes me feel closer to others, learning how they interact with their favorite tales and movies gives me a better insight than anything else could… I hope you found something interesting here. As always, till next time, Nautilus Suravye ninto manshima taishite