Character Analysis

I'm currently going through the rather laborious process of making the characters for Immortal Lands actually work, and because something more than a name and physical description on a page. Some characters do this more easily than others for me. One character I made years ago I still occasionally write story snippets about, or mix into other settings (what exactly is it called when you write crossovers for your own characters?) While several characters I need for this story just refuse to come alive.

The three 'main' characters I have so far in the story are Dalia, Ilthia, and Marrick

Gaming, my fascination

I play computer games, tabletop games, some board games, you get the idea. I rarely ever play sports, the most I ever did was a few years of soccer, or playing ultimate frisbee in college. I enjoy being active, but I tend to get bored of it rather quickly, especially most sports. In fact, the driving motivation behind most of my activities is an effort to stave off boredom.

Thus, I game.
Because in a game I can experience things that I could never reasonably expect to do myself, and a goodly number of things that I would't actually want to do myself. (The thing about adventuring is that it has this unfortunate tendency to get one stabbed by pointy things repeatedly, which is not a very pleasant experience.) A game is an opportunity for a different life, in a different time, place, or world. I game for much the same reason I write really, because the stories in my head must come out.
There tends to be a lot of overlap between the two actually. I write things down which turn into game ideas, or I game and come up with ideas for tangential stories, or variations on that. Recently I've had two distinct fascinations, the first is the world of Besetting Shadows that I've mentioned before, and the other is what I'm calling Kung Fu University. I've recently gotten my hands on a copy of the excellent Legends of the Wulin system, and immediately started thinking about a game that I could run or play with it. After a week or so of minor puzzling on one of the back burners of my brain, I came up with this. In the middle of a modern metropolis, there is a very special school. To anyone not otherwise aware, it is a highly exclusive private college that is very particular about its applicants. But to the enlightened, it is the great refuge of true Kung Fu. The students develop their Chi and martial arts more than they study literature, but they still have to do that to keep up appearances. The great rule of the school is never to let an unenlightened individual see true martial arts. Within the walls of school grounds, high-powered martial arts duels fly, but outside, students must be careful who sees them doing what.

Whereas Besetting Shadows is a very distinctly dark fantasy setting, this setting will have a tendency towards a lighter tone. And while it certainly will have it's share of fantasy elements, the greater part of the setting--i.e. anywhere off campus--will be whatever modern day city the GM feels like setting the city in (I chose L.A. because it's easy to see one more college slipped in there.) So instead of having to invent everything that would be there, well, just pull up google maps and look at what is actually there.

So I'm going to start running this on Saturdays once I have enough players, and I'll probably post occasional updates about it as I go along. Also, I'll come up with a better name.

Yet Another One

It's ok though, this time I actually started on the right foot.
I come up with characters, worlds, magic systems-and sometimes even religious cults-all the time, but it isn't very often that I come up with a really good conflict. Conflict drives a plot forward after all, and if you can't get that cauldron of conflict really bubbling good, then the story will never be that interesting.

So yesterday I sat down, with no idea what I wanted to write about. So, I just started somewhere.

There is a girl, she's noble or rich, otherwise has led a sheltered and or pampered life.

Now she's carrying a bag up a mountain, she has an entourage with her.

They're headed for a mountain fortress, why...

Ah, the kingdom is under attack! What kingdom...

The elves, the elven homeland in fact. And oh yeah she's actually the Princess.

The young Princess, she isn't actually of age yet.

She reaches the fortress, and is followed shortly after by a message.

The kingdom has fallen to a suddenly powerful enemy, she is now the Queen, and has to save what little is left of her people.

Starting from there, I got five pages of rough draft yesterday, more notes scribbled down, and a whole lot more ideas bouncing in my head. It's infrequent that I get ideas for stories starting with conflict. Usually I have an interesting system or character that I want to be in a story, so I write one about it. The problem is that these stories tend to be uninteresting to anyone else, as I've basically written them for my own amusement. This one is a bit different though, in that I came up with a world conflict before I even knew what a single character would be, or really anything else about the world.

For now, I'm calling it Immortal Lands. The Immortal Lands are an actual place in the world, though what precisely is there, no one alive in the world will know. And to be entirely honest, I'm not sure myself, yet. I will sort that out in the course of writing the story, and it will feature very heavily in the plot, but I'm not going to push myself to sort it out now, as it doesn't really matter. If Immortal Lands became a series, no characters would actually set foot on them until at least book three, probably later.

I would actually like to write a series, and this world has the potential to be broad and interesting enough to actually hold my attention for long enough to do it too.

So, that post down there about my current projects? Yeah I'm ignoring most of those and working on this instead. I'll still be trying to put time into Besetting Shadows and Chronicles of the Prisoners, but no promises on how fast that will happen. We'll see how things go, but I'm fairly excited about Immortal Lands.

Grace and Peace,

-Matthew

Work... Why Work?

Really, why work?

Why was it declared that mankind will spend the bulk of his golden years performing a repetitive task that accomplishes him little, and that he generally dislikes--or openly loathes--so someday he can have what he actually wants.
This is bullshit of the highest degree in my opinion.

I write, because it is the only way I have found to express the hundreds of millions of thoughts that screech through my head every day; the only way I can keep my mind focused--by giving it an infinite canvas with which to paint upon.
Why work.
By work I do not mean holding a job to pay the bills, or doing something that earns you an honest wage, rather I mean the fixation on a career, on making it your life's primary focus and content. That ones career should be the most important feature of their lives, such that people define themselves by it, is unfathomable to me.
I am a lawyer... a salesman... an accountant... I am my job....
That is what I hear from people's lips, that they have become their career, their job, their work. They are no longer a person, they are simply a being that performs a task. It is that state which I detest so strongly. More than anything else, I am appalled by--and frankly, terrified of--becoming one of these drones. A man-shaped automaton whose purpose is to endlessly repeat his days of work until that magical day that he can 'retire' and spend the money he has been accumulating on things he actually wants, now that he is old and lacks the energy and drive to do much more than sit quietly and ponder what he has lost.
I have watched men a decade older than me that are trapped in this wheel, unable to break free of it and prayed in my heart of hearts, "oh God please don't let that be me."

Why work.
Money, money is the knee-jerk answer. You can't get money without work, and you can't live without it, so you must work. And this is a fair point to be sure, but why then does that become our life? Think about it, if you spend 40 hours a week earning money, to do... something... sometime... then what is the point of your money? When do you do things you enjoy? When do you get any benefit at all from your money? If money is our goal, if that is why we work, then clearly many many people are going about it all wrong. While money is certainly required to survive in any comfortable lifestyle, it is only valuable insofar as it actually allows you to have a lifestyle, not just an existence.
For that is what so many worker drones do... they exist.
They do not work so that they may enrich and enjoy their lives, they work to earn money to pay for their car that they drive to work in, their house that they eat and sleep in after work, and to do something on the weekend that lets them forget about their work for a while.
I would literally rather die.
-Matthew

PS. This rant brought to you by hours of frustrated thinking, brainstorming and talking about why I can't seem to get a job, hold it, and not hate my every waking moment. Your regularly scheduled writing posts will continue shortly.