Character Profiling: UnNamed

In case the blog title and any previous posts haven't emphasized this enough, this little exercise in profiling my book characters will definitely prove unconventional. In case you think I go out of my way to be over-the-top on purpose, nah. 

I wrote UnNamed after making fun of myself for the millionth time that, while I never forget a face, I'm 95% likely to forget your name until I've known you for about six months. Even then if I don't see you after a few years, just as likely to forget. The main character survived an incident in his mid-teens that left him badly scarred and with a specific amnesia when it comes to names (and likely the circumstances of an emotional trauma prior to that made his brain trigger the conditions of that amnesia). He skips over any attempts for others to learn his name and he gives people nicknames that serve as mnemonic devices for himself, not always flattering or unoffensive.

For that reason, I cripple the reader a bit. You do not always learn their names but you attach his naming conventions at his level. He doesn't allow himself to be a sympathetic character but he's not an asshole just to be one, he just survives by understanding his limitations and emphasizing his strengths.

I'm already cutting a good picture of the first MC. Again, I'll labor to keep out spoilers for the ones looking to read it. It's worth the surprises.

The mercenary

Hair: dark

Eyes: dark

Distinguishing features? Four distinct scars

Unable to return to the city he was raised in, he is left with few choices in terms of survival and one almost gets him killed. Deciding mercenary work is the safer choice, he lives a dangerous life but one on his own terms. Not altruistic by nature, the discovery of an artifact leads him down a path that turns his unexceptional existence into one he never could have predicted.

The kid- Brat

Hair: ?? 

Eyes: ??

Distinguishing feature: androgyny

There are zero people that the mercenary trusts in Orendon, but Brat is the safest bet when the mercenary can't travel with the artifact. Brat is a street thief, their mother is a prostitute. The average pipsqueak kid who loves adventure but lacks courage, the mercenary only brings the kid into his mess because the kid is linked to the artifact. Despite their glaring differences, they are more compatible companions than either would ever admit.

The barmaid- Cherry

Hair: red

Eyes: blue

Distinguishing features: ??

Meets the mercenary when he gets blitzed in the bar she works at and accuses him of stealing from her. Discovering she is yet another link to his mystery, she tags along to find others like her. A generous yet shrewd woman, she is both fire and ice in nature but that flexibility makes her resourceful too. She doesn't balk at asking for help but is also capable of handling herself.

The socialite- Sunday

Hair: dark 

Eyes: dark

Distinguishing feature: vitiligo

A self-possessed woman, practical and adaptive, she doesn't bat an eye when her life takes a turn with the mercenary showing up. He calls her Sunday (he means Sundae) after the ice cream dessert because of the contrast of her skin. Unoffended since she can tell it isn't done in cruelty.

The living doll- Dolly

Hair: blonde

Eyes: blue

Distinguishing features: none

A nervous girl from a farming family and one that brings out people's protective instincts. Petite and youthful in appearance, her childlike personality makes people liken her to a doll. Joining this growing group, it is her first experience away from her family. She is curious and a bit naive, but still nervous about being away from home.

The giantess- Brute

Hair:

Eyes:

Distinguishing features: size,  blue tattoos

First seen working at a dock unloading crates. Despite her intimidating appearance, she has a generous sense of humor and a vulnerable side underneath it all. She is drawn to feminine women, everything she isn't, but until the group comes along, she lives a life of hard labor to blot out the complications of her past.

The mother- Reina

Hair:

Eyes:

Distinguishing features: mother

Toting around her children, she struggles to surpass the difficulties of being a single mother. Because she reminds the mercenary of a specific person, he gives her the actual name of that person. The only way to chill her warm personality is to threaten her children.

The guard captain- Amber

Hair:

Eyes: Amber

Distinguishing features: air of authority

A headstrong cautious woman who is driven by a sense of duty. When tragedy strikes, she leans on the discipline of her training rather than an emotional response.

The flower seller- Flower

Hair:black

Eyes:

Distinguishing features: 

A soft spoken sort, who is matter of fact but not blunt. 

The spy- Blayde

Hair:black

Eyes:

Distinguishing features:
Unlike her sister, she is brash, quick to act and sarcastic. Despite her rebellious nature, she is more virtuous than practical.

What's difficult about profiling these characters is that their appearances were relatively short. I have one regret and it's that I tried too hard to keep this entry in the series short. In truth, it could have been fleshed out like I'm am doing with UnSung, easily making UnNamed also stretch more comfortably into three standard length books. I didn't realize what this series needed until I shed the limits of querying it. In fact, I probably hurt it in trying to fulfill that.

Live and learn. Maybe the richness of the ideas in store for this series will inspire translations into other media. It's always possible that I'll want to revamp these stories for a comic format. If I truly felt it was a lost cause I would jump ship. The idea of doing UnNamed based short stories stems from that need to paint a bigger picture from the source material. I want to explore the mercenarys's past as well as the Maidens. Now moving forward, I will be bringing in the history of the Sentinels so that was meant to stay vague through UnNamed. UnHeard and UnVeiled will actually pull in a lot more of the ancient history I've hinted at, although UnSung has done a bit of that too.

One thing I am certain of is that epic stories are best served by doing away with a word count. Write the story, exactly what it needs to be-- worry about parsing it later.

I'm no GRRM either. By that, I mean I'm not looking to clog with filler (one hell of a storyteller but I'm not saying anything he hasn't heard a million times).. If you're familiar with Dragon Age, it's more like that. There aren't rosters of meaningless deaths upping the page count, but the massive undertaking of the past, present and future of an entire world. Cultures, mythologies, intentional characters. The fact of the matter is that it's almost impossible to avoid 'telling' in epic fantasy if you try to fit huge ideas into compact counts.

Again, live and learn. In any case, this is precisely why I want to do some spin-off stories. It's still a complete novel but I want to visit it more leisurely.

I think sometimes a writer just wants to keep picking at scabs. Sometimes you want to go deeper or splash on the surface a bit more. I do have a love of short stories because of King's Dark Tower series shirt, Sisters of Eluria. It led me to read them (although it's still my favorite). While I find his novels hit or miss, I think he writes brilliant short stories. Perhaps it's the inspired burst in its  brevity that makes it so engaging but it really suits his pacing and style best.

Why I Started Coloring with Orange

I've had this weird aversion to the color orange for as long as I can remember. It wasn't a strong feeling because if it had been, I might have been conscious of it. It seemed every year I was in school, the school would demand 'new' school supplies, which meant more colored pencils. We'd just dump the rest into the big box at home and never really look at them ever again.

At least until I was older. Sorting them out, it became immediately clear that the oranges were almost never sharpened, still with the vertical ridges of the original factory sharpening visible even. I knew by then that I often had a preference for dark or cool colors-- blues, greens, purples, but also deep reds and golden yellows/browns, but I was still steering clear of orange.

Again, not sure why. In 7th grade, one of my favorite outfits involved a sleeveless orange tank and a long purple zippered jacket. Orange with purple seemed to be the only exception. In fact, some of my favorite tropical flowers are orange and purple.

Visually, the complementary colors also don't speak to me. I like purple with orange, not yellow. Blue with red, not orange. Green with yellow, not red. I think the whole red and green thing was something I found obnoxious about Christmas unless it was more like a burgundy and forest green. It would have been nice to know why I had a visual stubbornness, but at the same time, people were always complimenting me on my very different color choices.

One of the things I possess is a very handy Color Layout book I got in college. Even though I manage to find some great color combinations I resonate with, I still tend to find the fundamental 'complements' a lot pickier in my shade preference tolerance. Remember the fad involving hot pink and chocolate brown? I could dig that combo and I'm also not a fan of hot-anything where colors are concerned. I still think a bubblegum pink or turquoise is absolutely amazing with a brown, although fuchsia and brown is a close third.

I didn't want to be color stubborn. I didn't want to be inflexible or even start to lean too hard on pieces where people liked the colors. I liked to note that for future use, but I still intended to be experimental, to find other people's color preferences outside of my own.

Orange was not an easy color for me to want to use though. I ended up making peace with a creamsicle orange. A really vibrant orange cone shade can even work as a single focal point in a composition. Sometimes I lean out of orange and end up closer to peach, but I still try to find places for orange. As an artist, I need to understand how I can make colors work. There are many people who ask me to do art and they love the color orange. It just feels like I'm copping out if I won't do it because I don't like orange.

Hey, I've done the same with fears. Although I'm not going to list them in a public forum, there are many that I've turned from phobias to just uncomfortable and inconvenient. To me, my aversion to orange wasn't something I wanted to become comfortable with though. I wanted the challenge of using it to be stronger than my feelings for it. How could I use it in a way that didn't ruin the visual for me?

Of course, you'll probably find some speculative psychology behind it, but it doesn't sound like a solution nor will it really enlighten you about me. There are a lot of things that I realize are potentially destructive unconscious habits that, once brought to light, I find it most important to go ahead and challenge them.

What about you? Are you comfortable in certain anti-productive preferences or habits? How would challenging them help you grow?

All right, blogging is fun, but time to jump over to writing. I got a nice little break from it yesterday when my dear friend Emily paid a visit, but I should put a little mileage into it today. I have some scheduled posts attacking topics like bigotry and what we attack writers for writing about coming up, just in case I get a little too involved to remember to blog. Handy little thing, that. Makes me seem a lot more present or frequent even when I'm pounding out a few posts then disappearing for a week or so. See you around! Hope you find some fun rabbit holes to explore!