So I decided that this new post gets to be a character chat. I'm basically getting to know a character in one of my new works in progress, so you can kinda guess what is going on here.
Mac
Usually characters are quite demanding. Take my previous stories. They've all had characters who simply insist who they are, crawl into my work in progress and demand that they be the centre of attention for the duration. Not Mac. Mac sat waiting patiently for attention. He shifts his glasses firmly up his nose and pours over my collection of books, perfectly aware that he's not going to find anything but fantasy there. The brilliant part? He doesn't seem to care! The others were all too self-centred to worry about my collections. It was all about them. Then I realise the truth of the matter. I might just have run head first into my first, truly heroic character.
"Artemis Fowl?" Mac comments, picking the book from the shelf. "You really read this stuff?"
"Yes," I say, attempting to match Mac's level of patience. "I've read nearly all of those books."
"Who is this? Harry Potter? A wizard? I remember reading these when they first came out," Mac mused, moving along my reading list. He's interrogating me, rather than the other way around. I can't let this happen. I want to get to know him, not let him ascertain exactly who I am simply by looking at my reading materials.
"Tell me about yourself," I said as he settled down with the Northern Lights. The Northern Lights is about a girl named Lyra, who sets about going North to rescue her best friend, Rodger. Its quite a tale, and famous, known by many – I paused. He'd not answered my question. "Mac!" I exploded.
"What?" Again he pushed his glasses further up his nose. Already I could tell that this would be a nervous habit of his, perhaps his way of showing his intelligence. Or lack of it. I couldn't tell, because he wouldn't say anything.
"Tell me about yourself."
"I really don't like monologue," Mac said. "That's what got all the great antagonists killed in the end. Take Voldemort, for example. Rambled on about his past too much and then his past destroyed him."
"Do you have family?" I asked. I poised my fingers over the keyboard, desperately hoping to at least get something out of the man.
"Yes. I have a little girl," Mac glanced at me. "She's five. She enjoys reading too. I got her Peter Rabbit just the other day, and introduced her to Dr Seuss. Emma's really bright; she's already doing well at school."
It was easy to get him talking about his daughter, but what about a wife and kids? I had a feeling that if I let him carry on about the subject, he'd keep going and going. By the end of the day, all I'd have is a wealth of information about his little girl. Then I had a nagging suspicion about the child. If she was quite bright at age five, then what did that say about Mac, or the woman he'd had the child with?
"Are you an antagonist, protagonist, villain or hero?" I looked at his character chart. There were quite a lot of blank spaces that needed filling.
"A little bit of each," Mac said. "I've done some things I'm not really proud of. Hells, that's part of the reason I wound up with Emma. Her mother's dead, and I've been trying to track down her killer for a long time. But that doesn't make me a hero."
I nodded. I could see this information could be valuable; perhaps the little girl would come in handy in a future part of the work in progress. Characters needed motivation and if the mother really had died – I hesitated. What if she hadn't died? What if she'd simply abandoned them, because she had no choice? It made perfect sense.
"Is the mother a Sweeper?" I asked, determined to get my way.
"I don't know," Mac said. "What's a Sweeper?"
What's a Sweeper. Mortals don't know about the magical folk that exist. So he doesn't know that she's still alive, working on the side of good, fulfilling tasks set down upon her from on high. The role of Sweeper was a promotion for mortals, just as Angels and Reapers could have similar promotion systems.
"What do you know about magic?" That was a loaded question. Mac looked at me quizzically.
"A bit of this and that," Mac replied. "I know it exists. I've been tracking a kind of wild magic. It possesses people and makes them appear insane. The power eventually turns against them and destroys them from the inside out. I have a team working on a cure. I'm worried that Emma possesses wild magic. It would explain a lot about her behaviour. She isn't insane, not that I can tell. But the magic comes out of her, in the most inappropriate moments. Put a keg on it, and it'll explode."
There – I just obtained another motivation for my main character. He was chasing wild magic and would eventually run into Abigail again, only to be faced with the possibility of all his memories being erased. Abigail would attempt to take Emma away from him, but Mac would always remember having a child. Perfect! That is what makes him act against the Sweepers, instead of with them. It turns him slowly into an antagonist.
