Tag Archives: fiction

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The ruggedly handsome rogue hero.

I suppose the ruggedly handsome rogue hero, is technically more appropriately called the lovable rogue, but I like my description better. I could try to write a how-to here, but that’s pointless, because there’s a lot of that out there and everything I’ve seen I generally disagree with to a certain extent. I’m also not out here to pick a fight with other bloggers or advice givers, so picking apart someone else’s analysis isn’t worth the time. Instead, I thought I’d rather muse on three of my favorite lovable rogues. These would be Han Solo, Malcom (Mal) Reynolds from Firefly, and Uhtred of Bebbanburg from the Saxon Stories series*.

First question – Who would win in a fight if they were all pitted against each other at the same time? Uhtred is from the 800s, and only has a sword. I expect he would go down first. Both Mal and Han have firearms. Then Mal would go down because (Wait for it … ) Han shoots first.

Now that’s sorted out, who is the most roguish? Before I can tackle this question, I need to discount the killing of bad-guys. It’s an occupational hazard of the stories these characters appear in. Let’s start with Han. Turns’ out he’s actually a scoundrel. Yes, he comes back to save Luke at the end of movie 1, and he sticks it out through the series, even leading a dangerous expedition on Endor, but his back story is one of real crime, and his motives throughout the rest of the movies aren’t clear – I suppose it’s for the love of Leia. What about Uhtred? The most notable bit of roguishness involves the double-crossing and sacking of a Welsh village. Most of the rest of his exploits involve fighting with Danes, and as it’s part of a war between the Saxons and Danes so I’m not sure that counts as roguish behavior. His back-story has him turned out from a noble Saxon family to be brought up by Danes. Now for Mal. His day job involves running illegal cargo, BUT he’s got a strict set of rules about what that cargo is. He gives up jobs that directly hurt regular folk. His back story involves being on the wrong side of a war. I hardly count this as roguish. Once again Han comes out on top.

What about the strict set of rules this character lives by? In my opinion, Mal really has the best and most idealistic set of rules, generally centered on letting people live their lives. I can’t tell you what sort of rules Han lives by – he’s a scoundrel. Uhtred lives by the sword, and the oath. I’d put him second in the strong belief’s category.

Who’s the most ruggedly handsome? I don’t care.

I could go on, but I think that’s enough. What’s the point of this musing? To be honest, this is some rubber-ducking to help me work out a main character. I hadn’t initially imagined him as a lovable rogue, but that’s where it’s landed. This is one of the reasons I’m having trouble making the character really pop (because I’m fighting against this characterization). Now that I’ve accepted the reality of who this character needs to be in order to make the story work, I need to make sure that I do it right. There are a whole lot of ways to achieve this type of character, I just need to settle on one and go with it. I’m thinking of placing him just outside the not a lovable rogue sphere, but slightly more on the soldier quadrant.

 

LovableRogue

Do you have a lovable rogue? Where does s/he belong on this chart?

 

* By Bernard Cornwell. You need to read this.

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Flash-in-the-pan fiction; Eight donated words

As I was perusing twitter today, and looking for new ways to procrastinate, I came across a gem of a tweet from @EmilyFRussell (https://pisscoffeeandvinegar.wordpress.com/), the author of Aurian and Jin: A love story. She donated to the twitterverse the following eight words: Kerfuffle, shibboleth, axiom, seraglio, hexerei, sanguine, and squeen. I have taken up the totally unnecessary challenge of using all of these in a sentence (not really possible). The further challenge was to do it in fewer than 800 words. Well, my distinguished challenger (of sorts), I have done this in fewer than 800 characters, with some bonus vocab. Enjoy.

 

Amoleqi tugged nervously at the sleeve of his thawb and squeaned at the door to the seraglio of the prince’s women. Just striding past caused a shortness of breath and light-headedness. He firmly believed in the old axiom that seraglios were dens of hexerei. A whiff of pungent incense from under the door put a vision of the lurid hangings of sanguine, incarnadine, and puce that must furnish such a place. More than anything, he wished to petition the king to eliminate such places, where the minds of men were molded like soft clay, but he was among the shibboleths of the court. No man, no matter how noble, from a different district could bring up such a topic without starting another contentious kerfuffle.

 

Definitions, from the OED where possible, and yes I’m taking some liberties, but I think I was true to the intent and general meaning.

Incarnadine – Properly, Flesh-colored, carnation, pale red or pink; but also used for various shades of crimson or blood red. (OED)

kerfuffle – commotion / disturbance, particularly involving conflicting viewpoints. (This word not in the version of the OED I have)

shibboleth – This one seems to have no easy translation, I’ve checked a couple of sources. Basically it’s a manner of speaking or habit that sets a class apart or distinguishes foreigners. (My version of the OED doesn’t give a particularly good definition of this)

axiom – self evidently true.

seraglio – The part of a Mohammedan dwelling-house (esp. of the palace of a sovereign or great noble) in which the women are secluded; the apartments reserved for wives and concubines; a harem. (From the OED)

hexerei – witchcraft (I hella like this word BTW. IMF use it at some point, the sound of it evokes some really great imagery.)

sanguine – Using definition 1 in my version of the OED – Blood red

squean – to look askance (Squeen appears in the Urban dictionary. I opted for the OED version)

BONUS WORDS

thawb – The robe traditionally worn in middle-eastern cultures

puce – Purple/brown color

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Thinking HARDER about characters

After writing last night’s post, I felt pretty good about the place I thought I’d gotten to. However, when I woke up and checked my Facebook, I noticed a nice little bit of feedback on my post. It pointed out that my conclusion about what change my character will undergo, is not a change. It’s an accomplishment. The offending bit from last night’s post reads:

It’s just a matter of understanding what the change ought to be. The main character starts out the book avoiding his innate magical skill. By the end, he has managed to learn how to harness some of the most powerful aspects of this magic. It’s pretty straight forward.

As an aspiring writer who did not spend a lot of time taking literature classes in college, I can’t tell you how hard it is to differentiate between “The change, growth, development for the character comes with the mastering of some internal turmoil, deep rooted assumptions, or personal landscape*” and some sort of personal achievement. These are very related things. Personal accomplishment, I think, is part and parcel of the broader character change.

So, the real question to answer is: How do the character’s motivations change over time? Then on to the question, How does this effect his personality? An accomplishment, on it’s face, isn’t likely to affect a change in the character’s motivation or personality. Although, it certainly could. To go back to Dune as an example, Paul Atreides becomes the kwisats haderach. There is accomplishment here, but the more important thing to note is that Paul becomes a different character. He reacts to things differently, thinks about things differently and sees them differently.

Another example, this one from the world of YouTube, (and if you’re a big enough nerd you should totally go and check this out), is a comedy web-series, now concluded, called the Guild. At the beginning of the series the main character is a total wreck. Uncertain, addicted to gaming, and her life is falling apart. By the end of the series, she has gotten control of all of this. She is sure of herself, has a steady job, and turns off the game (drops the addiction). From the perspective of a writer who is still developing skills, it could be easy to mistake this real change for accomplishment, thus applying the approach incorrectly to my own character development.

With all that rambling out of the way, what do I do now? As it turns out, I think I can still use the magic angle as the underlying impetus for the change. I’m not totally sure where the change will land him. I think I do actually need to finish drafting the work first before any decisions can be made. It’s going to be something more along the lines of coming to understand and accepting his new found role in the world and going on to embrace what it means. It’s going to take a lot of work and revision to get there and I will very likely be changing my mind on some of this once I get moving on it.

* This is a quote from the feedback I got.