Theresa Paolo and Courtney Pearson are hosting this blogfest. Here is the idea:
We've all had those manuscripts that we poured our heart into, fell in love with the characters and still think of them at random, but unfortunately had to shelf. Now it's time for a little spring cleaning. Take out those manuscripts and Dust It Off!
The third day, May 7th: Post what you learned from this WIP. You become a stronger, more rounded writer which each manuscript and we want to know what this particular work taught you.
I've been sharing my Nanowrimo 2009 WIP Draguman. This novel will always hold a special place in my heart for two reasons:
1. As the second completed novel, it proved that I could do this writing thing. That first novel wasn't an accident. After Draguman, I knew that I could sit down and write a novel if I wanted to because I'd done it twice.
2. It helped me understand the history of this world I had created. I knew going into Draguman that it would all be back story, but I like back story. I need to understand all the characters on multiple levels in order to write about them. As I went through the creation, education, presentation and rejection of these creatures from my mind, I began to understand their pain. It is that pain that motivated them to do all that they did.
The rest of this novel covers years on a planet named Demaria where they were exiled by the dragons. Here they suffered through slavery and learned how to give in to their anger and hurt. This propels them across the galaxy leaving pain and death in their wake until they once more return to Sendek. That's where Talia's story begins.
The problem with this novel? It made me feel too much sympathy for my antagonists. They aren't as mean and nasty as they should be, but hopefully my editor will help me there. ;)
Have you ever done that? Liked your antag so much you didn't want anyone else to hate them?
I have an antagonist that I sometimes love, and sometimes hate. Because of his backstory, he's a sympathetic character, but he's still an ass. Antagonists are tricky to write. I really like the ones the reader can sympathize with while still kind of hating them half the time.
ReplyDeleteI love my antagonists, haha. Some more than others. I have a tendency to make the majority of antagonists sympathetic, or at least, you get a lot of their backstory too and can decide for yourself. That said, even the ones I've written that are immoral and nasty are fun to write, though I would despise them in real-life. I never really mind if my 'readers' like or dislike them more than me, same with the protagonists, so long as it's not because I've had them break the logic of their personalities and stuff. I know I'm late to comment, but I loved reading your pitch and excerpt. It was a lot of fun, and would have hooked me.
ReplyDeleteI have an antagonist who is a very very bad person, but I love him and feel very sorry for him. I gave him a terrible back story.
ReplyDeleteAnd then I let him chase his dreams... Of course if you dreams are to crush the rulers of an empire under the heel of your boot, plenty of people will hate you. So I didn't have to worry about others liking him or not. He took care of that all on his own.
But I still really feel for him.
It hasn't happened to me yet, but it just might in a future story.
ReplyDeleteMy problem is not sympathy for my antagonists, but pity of putting my protagonist through so many hardships LOL
ReplyDeleteIt seems like you really care about this manuscript and should workk on it again!
Good luck with it!
Too many times I've liked my antagonist and obviously that can be a problem. Though I think having the reader being sympathetic toward the antagonist can give a story more depth.
ReplyDelete"That first novel wasn't an accident." I love this line. So true! It definitely wasn't. Thanks for hopping with us.
Awesome. And what's so great is that after you publish you can always go and release snippets of the "before" in novella style. Authors seem to be writing accompaniments to their works with Ebooks. =)
ReplyDeletesometimes they steal the spotlight and thats not nec a bad thing!
ReplyDelete