Open Thread: Oracle Hotline

[mithen]

--How did you decide on the protagonist for your WiPs?

"Protagonist" is easy, since I write shipfic it's usually going to be one of the two of them (not always!) Choosing who the point of view character was was a little harder. Usually I end up going with whichever of the two characters is missing key information, since that makes for a more fun story. Like, in "Heroes of the Squared Circle" the key information was that the guy pretending to be Bruce Wayne was really Bruce Wayne, so it's not as much fun if you're in Bruce's head. In another story I'm writing, A/B are pretending to date to make C & D jealous. Part of the point is that C doesn't know A & B aren't really dating, so it's more fun to watch him seethe with jealousy than to watch A, who knows it's not real. (He's also more fun to write because he's oblivious to how he really feels about A, and protagonists clueless about their own feelings are my Kryptonite).

Some characters are also just easier to write! My third WiP has a pair in which one of them is very young, very trendy, a fast talker, uses tons of slang and has a very quick wit. I can't even imagine how he'd think, so I end up in the PoV of his more introspective, reflective friend instead.

How about you, and how are all those WiPs going? I'm putting aside a few hours to write today and looking forward to it very much.

Comments

[prince0froses]

Oh dear. Who the actual protagonist is in my ensemble is a mess. It began with me wanting to write a female-team superhero fantasy, in what could be a multi-protagonist expanded universe eventually, like a comic, but starting with the team of three ladies. Then as I was mulling this all around Dade popped into my head fully formed like Athena out of Zeus and said "I have a story to tell you, pay attention." At first I was like 'great, he can be like the team's mentor/boss and I can keep my 3 lady dynamic' but after coming up with Rose and Heerah I found that because Dade had all this backstory meat to him, with Judah and the Heir of Dade thing and everything, that he slotted into the team just fine and we lost a lady who never came to be. Also, with Dade as team boss, I didn't want to have unfortunate overtones of Charlie's Angels.

Then when it came to starting it I intended for the entire work to be in Heerah's point of view (and even toyed with a first person narrative for Heerah)...and then Dade kind of kept stealing the protagonist flag because, again, he had all the plot meat. So for years it was a big sort of struggle to keep the story centered around Heerah, having it drift toward Dade HARD a lot (especially because of all the good flashback material he has), then trying to steer it back to Heerah etc. etc.

At this point the side characters (Dorian, Sander, Mahir, Giacomo etc) started getting fleshed out a lot and it took a hard turn for the ensemble and never really recovered, except for a short detour point where it felt like Sander was gonna steal the whole story. If I had to pick a protagonist for the piece, I'd be tempted to answer either Dade, Heerah or Sander depending on what segment I'm writing and what mood I'm in. Heck, there's even some argument for Rose, Dorian or Mahir if you squint hard enough.

Though, on a fluffy meta/muse level, if you were to ask them who the protagonist is, Heerah would tell you it's Dade, Dade would tell you it's Rose apparently, and Sander would tell you that it's Heerah or all of them.

[mithen]

Oddly proud that Sander managed to almost swipe the whole thing for herself. Good for her! :D

Oh, I really like how each character has their own opinion about who the protagonist is! I like that Dade feels like it's Rose--in the very long run I think that mnkes a lot of sense.

[me_ya_ri]

Man, that's a hard one. Usually I write into the dark so I just start off with a name and an idea for a story and hey, guess what? That tends to be the protagonist! Amazing how that works! *laughs* The book I'm working on now ended up with (probably) four protagonists, maybe five, as I switch between a group of friends working to save the world together. So far it's working. We'll see how it goes as I keep writing.

Overall, writing has been going well. I want to be getting more because I really want the story to be further so I can read more of it. But then I look at how much I've written in 2 weeks (almost 28K) and yeah. Um. I'm doing fine. *grin*

Hey, I have a question about Japan for you. It's regarding prepaid phone simm cards in Japan. Can I ask you here or should I send an email?

[mithen]

Starting with a name and a story and letting the protagonist kind of create themselves as they go along sounds pretty great! I don't know as I've written a true ensemble--my main characters sometimes have a bunch of different support, but a real equal situation, not so much.

Oh, feel free to shoot me an email at miss.mithen at gmail.com!