Complex Numbers

RavenCon

First, thanks to all of you who commented on my last entry - I appreciate the thoughts.

In spite of the death of my little cat, or perhaps because of it, I still went to a convention this weekend. RavenCon, in Richmond, not as long a trek as the other con I went to. But this time, I'm without my wife - this con doesn't feature drumming or bellydancing, which along with vampires might be the only thing to drag her to one of these geeky things. I'm not enough, that's for sure.

One of the reasons I'm here is one of my favorite webcomic cartoonists is here. This guy:

http://www.somethingpositive.net/

Which I've mentioned before, but if you're new: it's helpful to click on the "First Comic" link on that site. If you're horrified, disgusted, offended, or anything but amused at the first comic, don't bother reading the rest. I, of course, found it hilarious.

Anyway, I haven't seen Randy yet, though I stopped by his table (someone else was staffing it) and saw his amusing line of t-shirts, also visible through links on the site above. I met him once before, last time he came to Richmond. Hopefully, he doesn't remember me. I'd become a bit inebriated, and was at a table full of fellow geeks, and we were trying to out-Monty Python each other.

What I did do is go to a writing workshop. The weekend is awash in them, and I hope to visit more tomorrow. The concept of tonight's workshop was characterization, which I was interested in because I threw away a line in my last Fantasy newsletter to the effect of the importance of creating memorable characters.

Of course, character descriptions are pretty useless on their own - except to the author. Chances are nobody wants to read your raw notes about a character (unless perhaps they're a writer interested in the process), any more than they want you to spend the first 100 pages of your fantasy novel rewriting the Book of Genesis for the world you created.

So the exercise was to a) create a character, quickly but fleshed out in terms of age, basic background, etc. and b) write a REALLY quick scene where the character meets a hooded female figure on a balcony, and must stop her from doing... something (undefined, and not to be explicitly stated). This effectively takes a character created with no idea what story s/he's going to be in and putting the character into an unfamiliar situation.

What I wrote (hastily, remember) was:

The door slid shut behind me, muting the clamor of voices. Dark clouds brushed most of a moon. I stood still, my gaze sifting through the shadows.

Where was she? She had to be there.

A break in the clouds, a glint of silver, and as if she knew she was revealed, she stepped forward, her face hidden in the hood.

But it was her.

"Ill met by moonlight," I told her.

"You shouldn't have come." Her words were ice.

"I had no choice." I stayed by the door.

"You always have choice."

I got points for referencing Shakespeare, and I think the panel liked my word choices (I've been working on favoring action verbs over linking verbs), but what I really got out of this was:

1) Know your characters.

2) Character is not about what happens to you, but what you do about it.

3) I really need to get back to writing SOME kind of fiction EVERY day. (Blog entries don't count.)

Something's always getting in the way of 3, but I need to do something about it. You know, to reveal my own character - or, perhaps, change it.