I got out of classes today at 3 pm and had this really strange sensation. I wanted to go anywhere but the place where I was. It was very wierd. All through my last class, I’d been watching the clock, counting down the minutes, and when the time finally came, I still felt really cramped. So, naturally, I headed right over to the library and worked on my story.
I think it helped. I made good progress. It took more time than I was expecting, but I spat out about 2,000 words and I’m really excited to keep working on it. I just got through the scene where Leila and Ian meet each other for the first time. Now, Leila gets back at the women who abused her, Ian cluelessly follows her until she takes him back to the kingdom.
I’ve got Leila and Aaron’s character figured out fairly well, I think. They tend to match some archetypes that I’m pretty familiar with. Aaron is kind of like the gritty, reckless fighter pilot / mechanic type guy, the kind who has a magic touch with machines and spaceships, who shoots first and asks questions later, who talks and laughs in a brash, unrestrained way, and who has a fierce loyalty to his friends. He’s kind of like Starbuck from BSG, or maybe Hagrid (in some ways, but not all). Leila is an adventurous, strong, self-willed woman who has a lot of curiousity, an optimistic self-confidence, and a clever mind. She’s kind of like Mulan, or maybe Yuffie (ha, since I’m listening to the new FF7 album from ocremix).
However, I really don’t know very much about Ian’s character. He’s still a mystery to me. That’s not very good, because I really need to know who he is if I’m going to tell his story. He doesn’t seem to fit into any stereotypes that I know of, though in some ways I imagine him to be like myself before my mission. His greatest strength is that he’s got a very strong sense of justice and mercy, of what is right, etc. His greatest weakness is his own self-doubt. He has talents that he doesn’t know anything about.
Here is his story, as I imagine it now: He was born on a beautiful planet that was destroyed by the Naimechs when he was a child. He and his mother escaped and became refugees, while the rest of his family died. Soon afterwards, his mother died, and he was taken in by the government. He went through the military academy and found a home in the military. He was trained as a lower level technician and basically spent most of his late teens and early twenties going from battleship to battleship without anyone noticing him. He’s comfortable with that, and is basically a yes man, content to live in his little sphere without any interruptions or disturbances. However, he gets chosen for this mission to the lost colony world of Nova Salem, which completely throws him out of his comfort zone since he’s the chief navigator. When the ship gets hit by an sort-of EMP and he gets stranded basically alone on the surface, every barrier he’s built to keep his life from falling apart basically breaks down, and the real man emerges. He’s revered by the natives as a powerful religious figure, and eventually comes to be an ambassador for that world. He goes through a number of crises, where his true leadership talent and strong sense of right and wrong help him to find his way through them. He also comes to have a greater capacity to love, to serve others, and basically becomes an uncorrupted hero.
The story is basically about how he grows from being a nobody to a hero, by finding out that he had the capacity the whole time. It’s about more than that, of course, but that’s one of the key parts. The problem is that I don’t really understand him on a gut level–I don’t have this idea in my head of who he is and how he’d respond if we were just hanging out and doing stuff together. I don’t have a real pattern for him, and it’s hard to start from scratch.
Oh well. If you have any suggestions, I’d like to hear it. Other than that, this story is progressing surprisingly well.
