Well, it’s been a
while since I’ve done any ranting and rambling about my writing stuff. I mean, given how many times I’ve griped
about the works of others, it’s only natural that I invite scorn upon my
meager, feeble soul by pulling the curtain back on what I’ve been working on. The central premise, on some level, has always
been “test myself by testing others”, but doing the reverse is more than
valuable.
Ideally, this blog
wouldn’t be the platform to do it. Here’s
the thing, though: there were, at one point, plans to hop on TV Tropes’ forums
(for the first time in a while) and try and court feedback there. As a character-focused writer angling for
praise from a character-focused society, it would’ve served me well to have
others weigh in on the leading lady I’ve been cooking up for the past ten
months. Thing is, there was a problem: I
didn’t know her name.
I’ve failed you,
Duran Duran…the Funko Pops of which are seeing a surge in popularity, for some
reason.
Okay, making catchy
songs are a good reason.
Let me back up for
a minute, though. It’s not like I’ve been
losing sleep for nearly a year now, sitting here in my chair night after night
with eyes bloodshot as I try to come up with a character’s name. I’ve had a name for a while. More to the point, because I had that
name, I was able to come up with the words to support her story. Last I checked, the word count was somewhere
around 126,000. That’s before major
editing (i.e. moving to the second draft), so there’s a TON that’ll have to get
cut or sanded down. Then again, there’s
an argument to be made that I’m already on the second draft -- and I’ll explain
why in a bit. For now, though? Names.
Had I gone with the
intent and vision from waaaaaaaaaaaaay before I started this blog, she
would have gone by “Mel”. She also would
have been a curiously tall wannabe knight in a world of swords and sorcery, but
oh well. People change, the world
changes, and stories are only set in stone when they’re in the hands of
would-be readers. You can’t begin to
fathom how many iterations it’s taken to get to this point (least of all
because I don’t even know myself -- not even going to try and ballpark
it). What matters is that I’ve reached a
stage where I’m a few chapters away from finishing this new work. By which I mean I only have one 100% new
chapter to write immediately, multiple chapters I can pull from a previous
version and jury-rig into this version, a second 100% new chapter that I wager
will be a smooth one to write, and after that it’s more jury-rigging until I
can slap a THE END into my manuscript.
So ends the tale of
Julie Ann…or something. I mean, the tale’s
not done, but close to it -- so close that I’ve almost entirely visualized how
things will play out down to the final page.
Also, her name’s not Julie Ann anymore.
Therein lies the problem.
The target word
count is 100K words or below. And with
me being me, it’s challenging to keep that count from being irredeemably
bloated. I mean, granted, I’ve done the
exact same thing before, but this time I’m preemptively sanding down and making
changes before the big rework. That
means if there’s a way to shave words, I’ll shave them. In this instance? “Julie Ann” counts as two words, not one -- so
doing a little find-and-replace immediately gave me a decent-sized cut to the
count. Which is good!
The problem is that
I’ve had that name in mind for over ten months, and doing such a massive
pivot like renaming the main character is akin to making a bullet train do a
330-degree turn. I’m at a point right
now where, even if I’m mentally working through ideas and moments, I
reflexively call her Julie Ann. The
temptation to drop the name change is persistent and virulent.
The thing about me
is that there’s an absurd level of granularity to my “process”. Most of the stuff I’m concerned with is
probably going to be a trifle, least of all because right now I’m not working
in a medium with an audiovisual component -- and thus, those little tidbits
aren’t going to matter to people whose minds will fill in the blanks. But it matters to me. Immensely.
Every detail has to be covered, explored, and answered as needed.
Hair color. Eye color.
Skin tone. Height. Weight.
Body type. Outfit. Personality.
Interests. Hobbies. Poise.
Tics. Habits. Dialect.
Favorite phrases. And then you
get into the nuances of what really matters: her personality. Is she introverted or extroverted? Is she passive, assertive, or
aggressive? Kind, neutral, or mean? How does she respond to stress? To conflict?
What effect has the past had on her?
What effect does the present have on her? There’s so much to consider, all the time,
every time. And what’s been kicking my
ass over the past couple of months is that each time there’s a name change -- one
pulled from a lengthy, multi-columned list -- all of those details end up
getting reset.
There’s a reason
why these days, Faust is my spirit animal.
It feels like the
final great challenge before hitting a writing milestone (or another one, at
least, what with me having an entirely different, finished manuscript sitting
on my left as I type this) is, incidentally, the first: answering the question
of who this character is. Maybe this is
something that I deserve; after all, this story I’m working on now is one that’s
eluded full conceptualization for most of the past three years. Notably, it’s the question that I’ve been
posing here on this very blog for the better part of a decade: how do you make
a good story starring a giant woman?
I’ve posited
before that
it’s possible,
and the only reason people haven’t up to this point is because A) they aren’t
taking the concept seriously, B) they’re convinced it’s only for fetish fuel,
and C) they’re too scurred to give it an honest go. My unchecked insanity makes me immune to all
of those ostensibly-reasonable concerns, which is why I’m a hair’s breadth away
from pushing out the narrative I’ve pushed for ages -- the fabled “kaiju-sized
single mom” I’ve mentioned in passing, give or take mentions of her wrestling
prowess. It’s fertile ground
incarnate. To my knowledge and many Google
searches (some more shameful than others), there’s been so little exploration
of the concept that the number of novels that even approaches it meaningfully
can be counted on one hand. Depending on
how you slice it? On
one finger.
I’m pretty much
standing alone on this frontier, meaning that I’m free to cultivate the land --
which may or may not be on fire or filled with scorpions…which are also on fire
-- as I see fit. As a reminder, the core
qualifiers are “is female”, “is the main character”, and “is huge”. Basic, yes, but it’s the exploration and
execution of concepts/qualifiers that sets the real shit apart from the
disposable B-movie chaff. Thus, here we
have “Julie Ann” to answer the question -- to say “then this would happen” vis
a vis the what-if scenario I’ve provided.
Like I’ve said in a previous post, if we follow the idea of a giant
woman living in modern society (albeit one with a curiously 80s-themed
aesthetic) to its logical conclusion, then her life would be an unmitigated
disaster 24/7.
And I’m not shying
away from that. Others might, stripping
their stories of an honest exploration of the circumstances and
consequences. (Then again, it might dampen
the “fantasy” aspect if creators/fans had to worry about the death toll from a
giantess’ Sunday stroll.) But I’m not. In my eyes, that’s how you get drama. Comedy, too, if you can believe it. Events bound to leave an impression. There’s conflict even before the villains
show up -- but because there are villains, the conflict gets forced
upward and the action beats stamped onto more than a couple of pages. Because I’m me, and I’ll be damned if there’s
not a wrestling match with a giant robot.
But this a post
about a character, and a story about that character. Every question I ask in the story has to be
answered by the heroine through her words, thoughts, actions, and beliefs. The thing is, there are multiple answers to
the questions -- right down to her very nature as a person. It’s to the point where the version I’m
working on is the second, with the first having been scrapped (save for parts I
can salvage) because it ventured down an entirely different path. One that, despite the promise, I didn’t want
to take.
Back then, the heroine
was unequivocally named Julie Ann. And
back then, being a giant woman sucked even more than you’d expect. Having been enormous for as long as she could
remember -- she was 7’6” when she was eight! -- Julie Ann suffered a huge
amount of mental and emotional trauma.
Harassment, scorn, disdain, exclusion, isolation, hate; she had to bear
it all with a smile. Was she strong
enough to crack skulls? Absolutely, and
her size and strength only increased over the years (and rapidly, over the
course of the original story). But she’s
the only one of her kind, a proverbial guest among society. A Goliath among Davids. If she lashes out, it’s game over for her;
she’ll get ostracized by society even more than she already has. Despite her stature, she’s got no choice but
to be a good little girl.
Because of that, in
the original version Julie Ann ended up getting saddled with a slew of mental
illnesses and disorders. We’re talking
crippling social anxiety -- so much so that she starts the story in an
oversized jail cell, and would rather stay there forever than live in the real
world by virtue of her five-year sentence expiring. Anxious, timid, and virtually unable to function
in society; her character arc would have forced her to stand tall as, for
circumstances yet unknown to her, she progressively stood taller.
Thing is, there was
a problem. And it’s got nothing to do
with her name, if you can believe it.
The way things were
going, Julie Ann was going to be too “innocent” to be the protagonist in this
instance. Too skewed towards being a woobie, and
thus dampening the story’s impact. I
needed a heroine whose circumstances welcomed sympathy, yes, but also someone
who was more than just someone to feel sorry for. I wanted a character with faults. With failings. With a history. Someone whose actions, good and bad, construct
the plot around her. By story’s end, it
should be irrefutably obvious that the heroine is exactly that…but it should
also be clear that the problems introduced are, in plenty of instances, her own
creations. Self-inflicted wounds that,
at the risk of spoiling a novel far from being published, lead straight to a
BAD END.
I needed a braver
character. A bolder character. Stalwart, but also spirited, and silly on
more than one occasion. So I started
over, and…incidentally, didn’t rename her.
She was still Julie Ann for a good while, largely because she’s a
southern girl who’s long since transplanted into a pseudo-Los Angeles. That detail is set in stone. Plenty of others aren’t.
I needed a name
that played to the character’s southern roots.
Something that has a cute flair, but not so cute that it makes her seem
infantile (she’s 33, after all).
Something that has meaning without clubbing the reader over the head
with symbolism. Something that reflects
her beauty, yet not so much that it sounds “divine”, for lack of a better
word. Something down-to-earth. Something feminine. Something at least a little boyish, if
possible. Something that isn’t exactly
used every day. Something feasibly used
in the modern day.
And then you get
down to all these arbitrary rules that my Gordian knot of a brain refuses to
reconcile. “No two characters can have a
name that starts with the same letter, unless they’re related.” “The main heroine can’t have a name that ends
with an A, because her foil/villain in the works has a non-negotiable name that
ends with an A.” “Names used repeatedly throughout a story can only have two
syllables.” “The name should rhythmically
flow in a sentence.” “The name should end
with an E sound, if possible…no, wait, never mind, you do that with a ton of
your female characters…well, actually, it’s fine, though…wait, it’s not fine…to
be fair…” And so on, and so forth. In some instances, her name change made me (briefly)
change the names of other characters -- which, as you can guess, made the
struggle realer than real. And also made
me want to jam a carving knife into one of my lobes.
Like I said, the
name changes triggered the chance (at a bare minimum) to redo key aspects of
the heroine. As in, I’ve gone back and
forth dozens of times over whether to make her blonde or give her burgundy
hair. I’m ultimately settling on blonde because
that’s basically my thing now it fits the image/affect/aesthetic
I have in mind, but the appeal of another hair color is eternal. Because I’m me,
though, there have been instances where a different name made me think “Wait,
I can’t make her blonde if she has that name.
Damn it, time for another visual overhaul.” So began another instance where I’d have to
redo her entire color scheme…which is a problem when the novel as a whole has a
purposely-enforced color scheme.
It begs the
question of how much a name can impact a person. In the real world, it probably doesn’t matter
what someone’s name is (unless it’s a real stinker), because their nature and
upbringing shine far brighter. In the
world of fiction, though? The rules are
bent for the sake of purposeful creation -- which is to say that the creator’s
control gives meaning and impact. There’s
a reason they’re called “Jedi”, after all.
So here’s a list of
names that actually -- however briefly -- made it into the manuscript, along
with others in the running...bearing in mind that outside of a couple, her
surname would always be “Haywood”:
Jenna --the OG name following the reboot. Full of vim and vigor, and starts with J to
boot…buuuuuuuuuuuut it sounds a little too young for an adult heroine.
Margaret “Maggie”
Mackenzie -- props to The Walking
Dead for this one. Same as the
above, with the first two letters of both names coming together to form “Mama”. Rejected all the same, though.
Josephine (AKA “Josie”) -- notably, this name means “God shall increase”;
fitting, because the heroine’s growing at a monstrous rate. Full name or nickname, though, it doesn’t
carry the right feel.
Flora -- the heroine loves flowers, so this one’s a serious
contender by default. The problem? It ends with an A, and moreover, it kind of
makes her sound like an old woman, doesn’t it?
Meryl -- came close to using this one, because it
apparently means “bright sea” (which becomes relevant later). Is it a common enough name with enough
southern flair? Probably, but the feel
isn’t quite right…
Fiora -- another close contender, because ironically, it
means “little flower”. A little too rare
and sophisticated, though…
Leanne -- definitely carries with it that southern
affect. It’s solid, for sure, but I had
a feeling I could do better…and did, eventually.
Charlotte (AKA “Charlie”) -- I was SO CLOSE to using this one. So VERY CLOSE. Pretty, but the nickname variant has a spunky
flair to it. The conversation would have
ended right there, had it not been for the fact that her son’s name is Chase --
and me being me, I wouldn’t dare give two characters the same three
letters in their first name, let alone one.
Hannah Hayes -- this one’s the real shot in the dark. It’s the fusion of Daryl Hannah and Alison
Hayes, the two actresses who, fittingly, both played 50-foot women. Given that my heroine wants to be an actress,
it was a strong contender…but it ends in an A sound, if not the letter,
and, well, you know how I do.
I’ll be real: I
have no idea if this is going to pay off.
Historical precedents suggest that it won’t, and it’ll be back to the
drawing board to fumble around, scurrying about to figure out where I went
wrong. But I’d like to think that this
is the one, based on both the premise and the execution. A character with unparalleled destructive
power and a gentle heart; with high hopes for the city around (and below) her, coupled
with her take on the story’s overarching theme of delusional dreams. A hero who fights for good, but whose mere
presence in town makes her a top-ranking villain.
They say the devil’s
in the details, and I believe it. The
granularity of each facet and change, of all these variables that make a
character a character -- it’s staggering.
Mind-numbingly so. I’ve drawn
this character more than any other since mid-2016, and I’ve scrapped plenty of those
drawings because I couldn’t decide on just the perfect styling of her
hair. Think about how much can change in
a novel, where people are depending on me for a cohesive, satisfying
start, middle, and end. It’s not gonna
be easy.
But I think it’ll
work out this time.
Her name is
Rosie. And when she shines, she really
shows you all she can.
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