Character Backgrounds and Fiction writing musings.
Is anyone interested in me posting more background work for my Vampire character? I had previously posted some of her background under the tag Jelisaveta here in my LJ, when I was still running the character in the group I built her for, but I hadn't had the right mindset to work with her again until recently. I dug up the notebook I'd started my rough draft of her background in, and I started typing up more of it, and expanding bits that were very much lacking previously. If anyone's interested in reading more of this stuff, please let me know.
I've also previously written about my skateboard courier superhero, Diamond Girl (tag: alara_lynn), but I haven't gotten in the right mind frame to work with her further yet. I suspect it might help to make another run through Snow Crash, since YT was such a heavy influence when building the character.
I also have more work I can do with Diziara, but what I've written for her has gotten so long that I need to finish the website I'm in the process of building for her journal before I can really start sharing that proper, though I have detoured into various "key" events in her life that aren't done in the journal style I've been mostly working with for her. The journal is mildly awkward, as I'm still figuring out how to effectively convey dialog and interaction in a manner that still reads like a journal. I'm usually more dialog heavy, but it's been an interesting challenge to make myself work without the dialog to convey the characters thoughts, emotions and personality. There is so much one can express about a character based upon their choice of words, and actions, that you have to figure out how to convey otherwise when you put everything into a first person journal perspective.
I also have my Serenity RPG character that I've got background working on right now. She's been kind of a challenge because I'm working with a less limited first person on her, and she did start out in Companion training, but I'm having difficulty finding source materials for what's involved in the Companion schooling process. I've been compensating for this so far by focusing on the events in her life that are outside of the Companion training, and glossing over the schooling itself in much the way someone would when they assume the person they're talking to either has a common frame of reference, or at least enough information to be spared the details. Writing dialog for the Browncoat vet she talks to in a dive bar has been fun, I love the colorful language chosen for people on the rim in the Firefly 'verse.
I have a lot of open writing projects currently, and I suppose I can make more of an effort to share more of it if I felt people were actually interested in reading what I had to write. Also, if I can ever figure out how to focus long enough to finish a story to my satisfaction, I would need beta readers before I started submitting it places to publish. First I need to get over the "can't finish anything" hurdle though. I think my problem is I go back and rework stuff too much before I've even got a complete plot line and story laid out. It's one thing to go back and clean up a story once the bulk of it is laid out, but it's another to go back and rework the beginning over and over again without even really making it to the middle.
That horrible Star Trek Mary Sue monstrosity I was waxing nostalgic about recently, that thing is a fabulous example of the rewriting the beginning before even making it to the middle. I had multiple sets of characters who I wrote in, then wrote out, then replaced and switched around. I have whole chunks where I was clearly rewriting while leaving the old mess under where I was rewriting to use as reference for the newer version. It's just a mess. Part of the reason the whole thing is better off forgotten.