My ear is giving me hell today, so I’m mostly sitting on the couch in my living room reading a good book on Characters & View Point. I want to finish this one, and then read one about story structure I bought recently, and then I’ll continue plotting Masquerade. I read a section of Masquerade yesterday, the 30k I had written before realising the story was taking a new direction and that I needed to rethink the current plot in light of that, and the changes to the characters.
I’m getting good ideas for it, but it’s going to be difficult to take Vivek, the hero, who is shown in poor light in the first chapter because we’re in Sophis’s, the heroine, point of view and she’s pretty riled at him and set on being in a bad mood with him, and is therefore slightly off in her opinion of him (heck, we’ve all been there right? Someone does something and we interpret it the way we want to because our judgement is coloured by our current emotions… rather than seeing things clearly and for what they really are, we put what the person has done in a bad light and grow angrier at them when in reality we should find out why they did something and perhaps their explanation would temper our foul mood). Basically, Vivek comes across as a less than sterling bloke, but she’s totally misinterpreting everything and flying off the handle because he’s hurt her feelings and she feels as though he’s on a non-stop mission to get her kicked out of the guard.
Okay, he is in a way, but only because he’s going about tackling his desire to protect her in the wrong way and the guy wants to keep her safe to a fault, so he doesn’t quite see that what he’s doing is actually hurting her since her life is the guard.
So you see… it’s the age old dilemma. I need the tension between them, but I don’t want the reader to lose all sympathy for the hero in chapter one and have him painted as a bad guy that is then irredeemable to the reader. No one loves a hero like that. I guess I need to make sure that it’s clear in chapter one that Sophis knows that this isn’t like Vivek and she feels she needs to find out what changed him from the man who saw her through her training and had always had time for her. I need to make sure that the reader… yes, you… realise in the first chapter that Vivek isn’t usually like this and what he used to be like, how close they once were, and make you stick it out so you find out why he’s acting like an ass in her opinion (he’s not really… she’s just blinded by her anger towards him because of his behaviour towards her).
Why do my heroes always give me trouble? lol. It’s never the heroines. It’s always the men in my life that like that cause these little upsets. Although… if Vivek hadn’t given me such grief, and therefore my writer heart hadn’t tried so tirelessly to give him a reason to be so hard-headed and a bit of a male pig, then I wouldn’t have found a new depth to Vivek and the story.
My meds are kicking in to get rid of the ear ache but Vivek is giving me a royal headache! I’m sure I’ll find a way to balance him in the first chapter so readers aren’t judging him badly and will give the guy a chance to show just how fiercely protective, passionate and brave he is. I can vouch for him. He’s a good bloke once you get to know him. lol.
Anyway, I’m off to assess my work load and continue reading this book on Characterisation. I think it’s really important as a writer to keep learning. I’ve read a lot of books on writing but I find something new in each book I read, so every one is worth it and I feel it really helps me hone my craft and offer a better experience to readers. Maybe while I’m reading I’ll find a way to fix Vivek and that first chapter, and find that balance I need to intrigue readers about Vivek and have them questing to discover just why he wants her off the guard, and just what happened in their past to change him.
😀
