One of the biggest problems I’ve run into while trying to adapt my friends’ characters into the novel has been the struggle to know the characters well enough to do so. When we first began playing, each of them knew that I would be turning this adventure into a book. They just didn’t know when I was going to start doing that. Nicole took notes as best she could, but Matt hooked up a recording system so she could go back and get the details she wanted to ensure were preserved. As these notes piled up, I had plenty of content to begin writing, but I was still a bit apprehensive.
Currently, from that system, we have 1,818 pages worth of notes across three different Google Docs. Of those 1,818, I am currently working off of page 546, and the most recent book that I’ve released wrapped up on page 92. Also, in doing this, I realized that I haven’t written anything new for this series in almost two years. So I need to get on that, despite the fact that there are still about 6 books left to publish before I catch up to where I left off. I don’t want to Rothfuss or Martin this series.
But you can see just how much time I take when I’m putting these books together. It takes a lot of effort for me to truly make sure that I’m doing these characters justice, because I’m trying to do my friends justice as well. That’s the main driver to my methods. Is it possible that I’m going to keep writing these books, keep pushing them on people and never get anywhere with them? Yes, this is entirely possible.
However!
That doesn’t mean I get to be slipshod about how I write the characters. And so I took the time to get to know them, and at the beginning, would even demand that my friends read the chapters ahead of time and give me feedback to ensure that I was representing them well. Some were enthusiastic, some were laid back about it, but everyone helped me eventually get to a point where I could slip into their heads and think about how not only would the character play the scene, but how my friend would play their character in the scene.
What has become the problem since then, hasn’t been slipping into their heads for writing. The writing issue has been time, actually. But hopefully come the new year I’ll have a greater amount of time to sit and write than I have the past few years. No, the real issue has been publishing the books and realizing that the characters that you’re reading about, the characters I (should be) writing about, and the characters in front of me every other Wednesday night have become THREE DIFFERENT PEOPLE.
My mother always told me that you’re not the person you were five years ago, and you’re not the person you’ll be in five years. When I taught mythology to my students, and we discussed the gods of death, we would talk about how they’ve already experienced their own deaths. When they argued with me that they hadn’t, I asked to speak to their five year old selves. When none could produce that person, I said that they were dead, replaced with the self they are now. And then they began to realize, the self they were at that moment would die and be replaced with their post-high school self, and so on and so forth. I am currently experiencing that in real time as I attempt to get back into building the chapters that I was working on with my players.
The characters you’re reading about in the book are dead and gone. Reborn from the ashes of their mistakes and failures, radiant in the light of their successes, and greater for everything they’ve learned.
The characters I’m writing about are just the bright faced memories of those who have been scarred and battle hardened by a world that no longer shows the glory of combat, the thrill of victory, but has replaced that with the pain of loss in a world where victory would have been one where the battle was never fought.
And Wednesday nights brings together a group of people who are weighed down with the burdens of the world, playing characters who are burdened by the struggles of a world in the midst of violent change, at which they are just one moving piece among thousands, though their actions have just as much impact on the changes the world will be forced to endure as any great nations’.
It’s almost as though I’m watching through the eyes of the Triple Goddess of neopaganism. I’m the Maiden, preparing the tales of the heroes’ start, the mother crafting the next arc of the story, and the crone guiding them down the path that will one day be marked in legends. As the author who chose to write my stories this way, I have forced myself to experience the tale thrice, and ironically, much like Merlin, I need to experience it in reverse sometimes. And each time, I learn something new, am reminded of something I lost, or get the opportunity to understand both the characters and my friends a little better.
I don’t know if there was a takeaway that I wanted today’s blog to really focus on, or if it was just something that I wanted to kind of put out into the world for myself. Again, my blog here doesn’t really have much in the way of traffic, and as I get more settled into this school year, I will gain more opportunities to try and build up my own schedule and time to develop this idea of mine. As a side hustle, it really isn’t doing much for me, but as a means of my mental health, it’s working wonders while I wait for therapy to become an option again.
Though, I suppose, if there is anything to take from this, it is to realize that death is nothing to fear. You’ve done it before, you’ll do it again. Your friends have died and been reborn. Your family has too. If you ever think that the person you’re looking at isn’t the person you remember them being… you’re right. They’ve died, and either risen from the ashes or are still mourning the person they were before passing on. Celebrate their death as much as you celebrate their life, and do the same for yourself, because unless you celebrate the person you’ve been reborn as, you will just continue to mourn the person you were. To mourn the path that has been walked while failing to keep moving, just means you’re burning what little daylight you have left and won’t get as far.
Now, I have a few files that haven’t been touched since December of 2024 to look at. What do you have sitting on your back burner?
