All right...here we go with another Camp NaNoWriMo prep post. There are only a few more weeks until the insanity is upon us once more. As usual I am attempting to write 50,000 words in 30 days, though with Camp, it is easy to change the word count goal lower or higher, depending on the project you are working on.
I already mentioned that I'll be continuing work on my Project Death series. I can certainly admit that progress has been a little bit slower than I have wanted the past year, but I am trying to make up for that by sitting down and writing, even if it's only a paragraph or two a day. This series will be written and published, but I have to balance that desire to free the story into the world with the need to write the story properly. Rushing will only make the book a disappointment, to both myself and to the readers.
Anyway, that's not what I really want to discuss today. In this post, I want to talk a bit about what sort of character development I am working on in regards to Project Death: Redemption, the third book in the series.
In particular I want to discuss the big new character being introduced, a minor character from the first book who will playing a much larger role, and a fairly important character from both previous books who we learn a lot more about this time around. Each of their developments has been a bit different.
First we have the brand new character, who also happens to be the narrator for this third book. If you've paid attention to my talk about this series, you know that a different character takes the lead in each book. The first book was told by Tamesis, and the second by Thanos. This time around we are introduced to Julianne Mason, who commonly goes by the nickname Jules.
I think it will be quite refreshing to return to a female POV. Thanos was incredibly difficult, which somewhat explained pushing back his release date a few times. But the difficult part comes from Jules actually being a bit more removed from the whole situation with Resurrectors and Death. See, Jules is a human who has died, without being saved by a Resurrector or collected by a Reaper or the Angel of Death. This leaves her soul/spirit wandering the Earth. Perhaps luckily, Julianne does know of the existence of the Resurrectors, due to the stories she was told as a child. Unfortunately she quickly learns that she maybe should have paid more attention to those stories, because she doesn't remember much.
This means I kinda get to look at this world with new eyes. On the downside, I've been living in this world almost constantly for the past three years or so and that makes it a bit difficult to back away and give it that freshness. I'm hoping when I start writing that it will sort of flow.
Character-wise, Jules has changed quite a bit from when I first imagined her about eight years ago. Originally she was going to be a keep to yourself bookish type, but I realized that characterization would actually make her wandering period not as difficult because she would be used to being alone. Also, that would once again give me a character who is separated from her peers in some way. The challenge now becomes that Jules has evolved into sort of a popular self-centered girl. So as the story unfolds, she is going to have to redeem herself, and I think she will.
After all, dying and trying to survive when seemingly nobody can see or hear you might just give her some perspective.
Okay, next is the minor character who will be making a reappearance. I knew when I was starting to halfway plot this book in my mind that I wanted to have a Resurrector Jules could connect with. Originally it was going to be another new character, but as I re-read Project Death: Resurrection I realized that there was a character in there who I wanted to see redeem himself, and that was Damir. I wanted to see if he could become better, and develop. More than that, I wanted to see what else I could learn from him, because he only had a few scenes in the first book.
Who knows...maybe while writing, I'll start to have a book crush on Damir, much like I already do on Thanos.
Finally, the important character who we get to learn more about is Addie. When she jumped onto the page in the first book, I knew she had secrets and that she was totally manipulating Tamesis, but she refused to tell me why. Sometimes characters withhold information for so long that I wonder if the truth will ever come out. The second book revealed more about her role in the whole war between Resurrectors and Death, but I wondered if I would learn more about her personally. It turns out that the answer is yes, and what comes out in this third book should actually humanize her a bit.
Addie is seriously one of my favorite characters and getting to learn about her over the course of a few books is actually really cool for me. It shows what a complicated character she is, and actually makes it more of an interesting story.
So..while this wasn't as in-depth on character development as I originally thought, I think it gives you just an idea of the character chaos swarming around in my mind. Hopefully I'll have a lot more teasers and snippets ready after April.
See you next week, when I will discuss my Camp NaNoWriMo preparation in regards to the mythology of the Project Death universe.
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