Why did you choose to write about your main character?

[whaley]

Why did you choose to write about your main character?

This is as complicated as it sounds! Characters are multi-faceted and ever-changing, so when faced with this question, it might be hard to answer. Do you write about them because you relate to them, carry a message through them, or simply enjoy their unique existence? It’s different for everyone. Only some characters get to be protagonists and usually it’s because they have a special ingredient that compels you to write about them.

I have many main characters and they exist for different reasons, some of which are vague to me. So I’ll bow out for the next twenty-four hours and return with my own answer.

I am out of signature ideas

[Elishavet Elroi]

@whalekeeper

Oh, fabulous question!

Let’s see.

In Heirs of Ashes Alyona was originally the MC, but I ended up changing the sibling’s age order and put Viktor in her place. Then he kinda became his own person. It’s funny reading back to some of those old RPs with him. I mentioned his scarring and trauma in almost every post because I had just added that part of his character and was pretty fascinated by the whole idea for some reason, lol. He’s grown beyond that aspect though. I resonate with his struggles personally: feeling like an outsider, overwhelmed by a desperate search for purpose, and generally living with a misaligned self-focus. Basically identity issues. They’re connected with an age I’ve taken a long time to grow out of. So yeah, I like his character in general and want his story written for other young people to connect to.

As for secondary MCs in that series, I write Reúven because I just love the guy. He’s great. Everyone should have a cousin like him. Alyona is about as relatable as her brother, although her issues and strengths are different. I like her approach to life. I write Nadían so I can fluster the other characters by proxy.

Meanwhile, Angelo from Angelo Wings exists because my mom practically dared me to write a story about “mouse angels.” He’s adorable, but I don’t see him outside of his story if that makes sense. I chose to write about him because it was his story that I wanted to write.

You have listened to fears, child. Come, let me breathe on you... Are you brave again? -Aslan

[Koshka]

Ooof. I have way too many MCs. I’ll just pick my more current WIPs and forget about the back burners.

From Gold Eyes: The Wolves’ Tale I originally wrote Zlati and Vulka because I wanted to have twin characters who were copy-paste nor polar opposites–in other words, normal fraternal twins with full personalities and real twin dynamics (later in the series there were going to be normal identical twins too, but they kinda got cut before development). Now I write them because I love the dorks, and their story refuses to shut up.

For TC, Emre is an interesting character. He wants to keep his family safe and the Prince’s future kingdom from falling apart, and preferably survive to see it. His best friend is constantly stressing over changes in his life he can’t control, and Emre just kinda has to roll with it. He tries to do the right thing even with the floor pulled out from under him and a target on his back. Does he always often make the right choice? Hehe, no. But he tries his best. He cares. And someday that’s gonna pay off.

Leoron Benneck from Edge of the Cosmos: Welp. I’m currently writing this guy because Ellette kept bugging me. I like him. I mean, he fits in this kinda nuts little world like a jigsaw puzzle snapping into place. He’s got a lot pitted against his survival, but he loves life, his family, his ship, even this dusty old city. So what if he technically committed treason? His story has changed a lot over the past month (and it might have just become a dualogy??). But I still see him with the same easy smile and slight British accent.

 

Come to think of it, each of these have very strong aesthetics in my head.

A cup of tea is cheaper than therapy.

[RAE]

In Guardian Angels my beloved flop Nahim, in his earliest form, was a broken soldier finding healing. At first he was just another character, but eventually, as I got older and hit troubles in my life, I began to morph him into something that resembled some of my thoughts and feelings. He became almost a way of self-expression over the years, but in a way indirect enough that I was okay with sharing (because obviously my family wasn’t murdered by aliens in space).

In the same book, I have recently decided Mandin to be a second main character. This final decision was made mostly by the fact that people who read my writing always say they love Mandin the most. He’s kind, always smiling with a hearty laugh, and always drawing Nahim out of his shell, trying to help him.

Nahim is the quiet, depressed introvert with the tragic backstory, Mandin is the loud, joyful extrovert with some father issues but otherwise a blessed childhood. Opposites who are best friends and find growth and freedom in each other’s company.

So while deciding Mandin was going to be a main character was partially because of feedback, part of it was that Nahim and Mandin fit together like a two halves of a walnut. (Plus, while Nahim is still my favorite, Mandin is still precious.)

For The Baron Chronicles this was a complete accident. The entire thing wasn’t supposed to exist! And the Baron had to captivate me, and then a previous idea had to latch itself to him, and suddenly poof! We have Clash of Winds. And from there, Baron who was created as just another charrie for my head to think about and never write about, became an assassin who thinks he can never be saved because of the sins he’s committed. I have very little idea what obsessed me with him back then exactly, but now it’s partially the message he represents.

Just this Sunday, my pastor told a story of someone who he was trying to share the gospel with, and that person said he was beyond forgiveness because he was a reporter and lied so much. That encouraged me, because here I have a character who has murdered not just lied, and yet he still finds forgiveness. I had always kinda been like “this is the message I want, the story I want to tell” but now even more than ever I actually think my story might help people, if people still let stories in.

Whatever first pulled me towards him, Baron is currently my favorite charrie of mine.

Confuzzled, RAE
(PS. Pfp by SelkieSeal on Unvale. My dear Chase ❤️?)

[-GRCR-]

There’s not really anything deep behind why I write about my characters. If I like the charrie, high chances I’m going to draw them too much and write about them. If I have to be slightly deep, I think it’s just me enjoying the characters I have while blocking out the real world around me, using writing as a way to embrace different parts of the world and as fuel for more research, and exploring the depths of my crazy imagination. That goes for any story of mine.

 

The Purple Eyed was characters were fun to roleplay, and so I thought I’d write about them. Nothing deep, just writing about my favorites. Their story took a changed massively, though. They’ve evolved so much as I’ve grown up, but I don’t think it’s emotional, beyond like my nostalgia for the roleplaying I’ve done with them… I don’t think I relate to them.

Hylyn Lizino is the main character of my new story, Childhood. (it’s actually a comic wip, but you still have to write comics so idc fight me). He’s the main character because he fits the setting, and he was the talk of the town for a little while. I don’t know how to say this without sounding weird, but I think I’m expressing the darker side of my imagination through Hylyn and his story… the broken side of my worlds that I couldn’t really show in TPE, the sad things I research that make me cry in my bed.

I’ve always felt drawn to broken bad neighborhood, gangs and streetfights, and all that goes with that… hood stories… so I think that’s what fuels my love for/desire to write TPE and Childhood. They are both hood stories, one’s just more light hearted than the other.

What other stories do I have… um. Crazy, I don’t feel like I have a lot rn. Oh, note, TPE is the only story where the characters still shine even though they lost my imagination’s spotlight.

I don’t know if that was clear or answered the question, probably pretty repetitive but I have the attention span of a guppy right now so that’ll have to work.

wa wawawa waaaa

[The Ducktator]

Ryla became the first MC for my current WIP because I was fiddling around with some tiny ducks and arranged them into a scene in which they were in a circle surrounding one laying on a flat rock, and another wearing an eraser cap on his head about to kill her with a tack. I immediately wanted to know what was going through the mind of the poor duck on the altar. (They’re humans in the actual WIP though.) The others were added because I needed someone with each elemental power. With Celarent, I’d always wanted a chosen one type character who had to be bribed into it and then offered the same deal to the opposing side. With Vyette, I’d wanted to write a character who’s struggles were less about how they saw themselves, and more about how they saw other people. With Jorin, Iolyn, and Ardon, the meme applies.

?For our Blessed Lady's sake, bring us in good ale!?

[Loopy]

@theducktator

That meme XD  Yeah, I think that sums up most of my MCs

⭐️World's Slowest Writer⭐️

[Loopy]

Felicity is a side character from a role play I did in middle school with a friend. She became too powerful, though, and demanded her own story. She’s interesting, and she refuses to let me forget about her.

Eddie and Ellie are also side characters from an old scrapped project from like 2020. I’m not sure why they didn’t fade away with the rest of the characters, but I liked them and kept them around. I found that Ellie is a character I relate to a ton, and her and her sister’s dynamic is something I love writing. They’re very nostalgic characters for me, and they deserve to have their adventures written down.

⭐️World's Slowest Writer⭐️

[Esther]

Whaleyyyy, what kind of question is thissss ?

Jk jkkkk, I’m just not sure off the top of my head how to answer this ??

I feel like most of my WIPs start off with a tiny little snowflake of a plot until I snowball it into a full-fledged plot/story idea. But from that little bit of a plot bunny, I always start with the characters before I touch the plot anymore, because it normally all comes together as I develop the characters. As to why I choose to write them though… I’m not sure. XD They’re normally just the first people that come to mind. Sometimes I build them off of a lone picture i took off Pinterest months ago or recently and then they explode into this complex character in my brain. From that point I’m just like, why wouldn’t I write about them.

A lot of the time I identify certain dynamics between two characters that I really want to write, and usually those dynamics end up as a big reason why they’re my MCs (because I have yet to write a single POV book XD).

And then their struggles are always something I personally find important to write about. For example, ever since I’ve really started to establish my style and my writing niche in YA contemporary, I’ve never really delved into the deeper, darker side of YA with poor MCs scarred by some crazy backstory. Like, don’t get me wrong, charries with trauma and those who deal with deep struggles are important and should be written by someone, but I’m not that author. I’m the author who takes the smaller struggles of everyday life that feel big to me, and show readers that these things are important too and that there’s a way to overcome it.

So the more I develop my MCs, the more reasons I have to write their stories and represent their struggles and victories. On the more specific side of things though…

In Worth All the World, I wrote Hallie because she’s a magnification of my own struggle of wanting to follow the crowd and placing my identity in acceptance. It looks a lot different in my life than in hers, but I want other readers to see themselves in her struggle, and also envision themselves starting to overcome it like she does.

I don’t know if Easton’s character arc has any ties to my own life… There are little bits and pieces in there, but not as much as other characters. Portraying his grief in an accurate way though was a really important thing to me in writing his story. Losing his best friend isn’t the main plot of story and deal with grief isn’t the main theme, but that shouldn’t mean his grief should be less authentic. I’ve read books like that before, where the grief was just kinda skipped over, and I don’t want to be that author.

In a new project I’ve been starting to plan and develop in the shadows (currently dubbed Project Whispers), the MCs kinda just developed themselves. And what they are going to learn through the course of their story does touch on things I’m learning and growing in in my life as well. In this story though, their romance is a lot bigger plot device than in any other story that I’ve written, and I think that stemmed from hearing a couple of my friends (and myself, lol) talk about trying to find good Christian or clean romance. So I was like, I could do that. I’ve always wanted to write YA romance based on my values and this was my chance. So that’s one of the reasons I’m becoming more passionate about bringing these two MCs to life.

So yeah, um… that was longer than I thought it’d be. XD I’m not even sure if that answered the question in the right way, but it was nice to finally acknowledge those thoughts that had been in the back of my head and materialize them.

Write what should not be forgotten. — Isabel Allende

[Author]

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