A Unique Character Development Technique
Hi, all!
I tend to get tired of New Years Resolutions, reviews of the previous year, and holiday sales around mid December. So I hope you’ll forgive me a swerve off the beaten path for my final letter of the year.
I had a small writing “retreat” in mid December. I say “retreat” because actually it was my daughter who went away, not me. But being able to chill on the parenting needs for a while is enough to allow me to focus on my writing. The retreat went ok, and I’ve started plotting book 3 in the Second Sentinel’s series. I started doing that now, in case I needed to set anything up better in edits for book 2.
I had a post nominally planned about the retreat for this month’s letter.
But then I got sick. And my wife and daughter got sick. And her preschool was shut down for a covid exposure. And the toilet broke, and my cat is lost somewhere outside and I spent all last night wandering the neighborhood with a can of tuna and some loving friends.
I am very, very tired.
So, instead of crafting an insightful post about my writing process, I spent today re-watching Encanto over and over again (Have you watched that? If you like Secondhand Origin Stories you should add this supernatural intergenerational family tale to your to-watch list, and maybe email me about it afterwards to yell about it.) and doing something ridiculous I decided was worth sharing with you.
I am always my own work’s #1 fan. I have to be, as many times as I have to re-read everything to polish it to the degree I want. Which means that, even in this deliberately fallow period of rest and recovery, I felt the tug to play with my favorite fictional characters.
I have a lot of passive-processing activities that help me turn my stories and characters over and over in my brain, looking for fresh angles and particular priorities. Today, I created custom tea blends for my characters on Adagio.
It’s a hilariously self-indulgent game I play with myself. It’s not really merch or marketing- I certainly don’t make any money off it and would be shocked if anyone picked up my books because of the tea blends. Proceeds from the sales go to The Trevor Project, a crisis hotline for queer youth, which is nice, but that’s not why I do this.
I do it because I enjoy the puzzle. I try to figure out what about each of my characters is so essential to who they are that it has to be represented, even when I’m going this abstract and this pared down.
So, for example, Opal’s flavor is grounded with rich, balanced, earthy notes, but also lush fruit and delicate florals. Yael’s is bright and open fruity flavors and includes straight up sprinkles. Jamie’s is light and green, with a bite of ginger spice and an unexpected pop of strawberry. Issac’s is highly caffeinated, and almost bitter, with sweet cocoa and raspberry lurking under the surface.
And this isn’t the first time I’ve done this. In fact, while I have several flavors visible right now, there are other, secret flavors I haven’t made public because I’m developing them as part of developing several brand new characters you haven’t met yet. I’m not sure why my brain logs this under “spoiler” territory, but there you go. Maybe sometime I should reveal the flavors and have you all guess what you think the character is like?
So yes, I develop tea blends to help me understand the essentials of new characters. Who is sour or grassy or spicy or saccharine? What associations do I want for each character?
My favorite was when I was developing a tea for Martin- how do you translate a 25 story building with an embedded AI into a flavor, when they don’t eat, or have a humanoid body, or even smell things? I had to get philosophical.
Martin is a home. That’s how they define themself. They care about being a refuge, a sanctuary. So I focused on flavors and aromas that say “home” to me- warm spices, vanilla, and other comforting flavors. There, I’m converting character intentions to flavors.
My hope is that, in having to pare down, I force myself into a distilled understanding that can carry me through all the character development of 5 books.
I hope this amuses you. And if you happen to have quixotic way of processing your own creative endeavors, I pretty much never get tired of hearing about that kind of thing.
Wishing you a joyful and peaceful new year,
Lee Brontide
Thank you for joining me for another month of Shed Letters. If you know someone who you think would like to join us, please do send them an invitation to check out the archive or sign up here. And remember, that Secondhand Origin Stories is available for free as an ebook here, or in paperback form from your local independent book shop.