Jail - Part 5 of Fate Adjuster

I've been remiss in the posting of this short lately.  Part distraction, part I'm not sure I like where it's gone and where it's going.  It's a bit flat as I read it again.  However, instead of spending time rewriting this I'm working on a few other things.  My brain is not wanting to work on one project at a time and I find it a challenge to actually sit down and work on the projects I've already invested a fair amount of time into.  Eventually I'll take my brain to behavior training so that it'll pay attention to what I want done, but for now, read Part 5 after the break.

Interlude

I keep forgetting to post the sections of that short story to the blog.  Shame on me.  For your trouble, a brief interlude.  I wrote this in late December just on a whim.  Anyway, enjoy.  Jump to after the break for the full thing.

Water was falling again.  It turned to crystals part of the way to the ground.  Small crystalline structures piled upon each other, turning the ground white, if only for a moment.  Without intervention the white was soon covered with dirt and grime.  It had been there all along, hidden from view by muted perceptions.  A single pair of foot prints began to disturb the coat of snow and dirt across the parking lot.  They were booted feet, rugged in their leather and rubber outer shell; insulated from the cold, the dirt, and the wet.  They left impressions in the the light crust of crystals.  Crunching through and breaking structures leaving wet imprints of ridges and troughs before they deformed into only a memory of what they had been, leaving the white and black of the surface below to peer through to the sky again.

Motivations

I've been thinking a lot about what makes a character good.  What really makes the character latch onto the reader's mind and burrow in and drives the person to read on.  For some markets and age groups, just a simple desire and the drive to obtain and fulfill that desire might be enough.  It's not enough for me.  I want to understand the character.  I want to know where he or she is coming from.  What drives them to get out of bed in the morning and put on their crime fighting shoes, or their evil villain cape (and no, just looking good in a cape doesn't work).

That's what I'm going to be working on before I rewrite the first draft for the increasingly muddled novel of pieces and sorts that I sort of completed for NaNoWriMo.  It's a complete mess.  The first 60 pages makes some sort of sense, but I worry that it's just too slow thematically.  And I'm struggling to find the right voice for the female lead still.  So it needs work, but that's not what I wanted to ramble about today.

What is it that makes our heroes and villains get up in the morning?  Villains, I'm finding, are easier to deal with. It's a sinister desire.  They have a want for control, for accumulation of both money and power.  They may want fame with that power.  That I can understand and potentially write about.  It's the less ominous and more subtle motivations of the heroes that I'm still working on.

For instance.  What motivation could a wizard private investigator have to save people he hardly knows?  There's the standard, "it's just doing what is right" nonsense, but I don't buy it.  There must be a reason for it.  Even for the police officer type characters; if I want them to have any depth, I need to give them a reason for upholding the law?  Questions I'm asking myself are almost self-searching.  Why does a person uphold a law?  Is it a sense of duty or honor to a meta-morality?  Is it self guided or selfish?  Even then, I'm having issues buying it.  In my world, there is nothing that is 'just because that's the way it is'.  The world I'm trying to portray is not black and white, it's grey, and that's my hurdle.

Invested - Part 4 of Fate Adjuster

I apparently forgot to post part 4 of my short to post last week.  I'm trying to bury myself in the NaNo project and it's getting to my head.  Oh well, I'll get it done and then the rest of this will go up as well.
Rest of it's after the break.

Mourning - Part 3 of Fate Adjuster

Part three of Fate Adjuster is below the break.  It's a bit short, but it's the full section.  I'm adding the sections around the same time as I post them to additional pages on the side bar.  Take a look there if you want to see it all in one place.


NaNoWriMo is off to a good start on my end.  I hope it's going well for everyone else as well.  Over target by a fair amount for 2 of 3 days.  2k a day is the mantra, but I'm shooting for 2.5k a day.  Sometimes I question my sanity.  Part 4 of Fate Adjuster up next week.