The Golden Girls, D&D, and The Newest Way I’m Refusing to Make Writing Solitary
Happy very belated New Year!
Firstly, YES! Our dear boy Tamino did make it home safe and sound, if chilly. He turned up 15 minutes till the new year, which seemed like an auspicious start to 2022. However, his adventure and homecoming have made him so needy we got a 2nd cat, because he doesn’t want to be alone at all ever. Pics of our new little sweetie at the end.
But mainly this month I wanted to tell you about the latest way I’ve found to refuse to view writing as a solitary profession.
You might remember that I’ve started outlining book 3 of the Second Sentinel books, as I edit book 2. I do this mainly so that I know if there are things I need to tweak in 2 in order to set up 3. It’s been really fun. And one of the things that came up in that planning was that I was going to need a set of 5 characters who all had a big shared history and well established dynamic, and who were deeply embedded in some of the larger communities and systems I’ve started to establish in the series.
The thing is that none of them seems likely to get a whole lot of page time, but it’s important that they be memorable and interesting to the readers. I need people to invest in them, with very little wordcount available. I need characters with really strong, clear, compelling concepts behind them. Concepts that I can describe briefly and hold a reader's attention.
I noticed the need for these 5 right around when Betty White died, and half my twitter timeline was rewatching Golden Girls. That sort of cross-pollinated in my brain. The 4 main characters of Golden Girls got a lot of screen time, but in the tradition of 80s/early 90s sitcoms, each one’s characterization was fairly simple in concept, to allow for the episodic format and splintered team writing setup. The concept for each character was simple, sketchable, and distilled.
The dynamics built between these simplified characters were the foundation that the whole show rested upon.
And then someone said that every good D&D party was really a recreation of The Golden Girls.
I’ve been known to rp but D&D was never my particular game, so I’m not going to try to evaluate that statement for beyond noting that it’s a hell of an image. Feel free to weigh in!
It got me thinking- a batch of 5 characters, developed all together as basic concepts, meant to synergize and play off each others. I’ve seen this before.
I emailed Ty and 4 of my best RP buddies, and asked them if we could get the gang together for one night, and create a solid batch of 5 characters out of the character-shaped holes in my outline. I knew they’ve all read book 1, so they were familiar with the worldbuilding, and I know they all know a thing or two about creating really fun characters to play with, because writing is play, for me.
Astonishingly, the stars aligned and my friends are awesome and we were able to meet the following Tuesday night, to develop a group that, in aggregate, I’m calling “The Graduates”.
One of my twitter mutuals even mocked up custom character creation sheets for us to work with!
This is when things got FUN.
We started with each character’s relationship to the institution they’ve graduated from. It wouldn’t actually have been my instinct to start there, but my old GM jumped in right away and they were right to do so, because having them each have different relationship to that institution gives me the most options for making use of those relationships as I develop the plot. Who is all in? Who's inner circle? Who’s phoning it in for their own reasons? Why?
That led naturally into my go-to starting point, which is the dynamics between the characters, which could now be built around how they all relate to the institution, since that’s an incredibly important force in all their lives. The groups internal hierarchies, alliances, and tensions flowed naturally from there, which again, lets me use less space on the page to describe what’s going on, because they’re intuitively connected. And it deepens the sense of the characters having this deep and storied history.
Next, we moved to their powers- all these characters are altered, so they needed powers that are in line with the worldbuilding I’ve established. They had to be distinct from each other, relate to the histories of the power lines, and play off each other in interesting ways. And, they needed to feel plausibly based in nature and the real world. This might sound weird, coming from someone who, entirely of their own volition, decided to write a pseudoscientific superhero series, but I really don’t like coming up with powers at all. So having a bunch of people with wildly different careers and knowledge-bases to help was fantastic. Particularly since things quickly took on the tone of trying to one-up each other with what we could get away with within the parameters given.
Finally, we moved on to appearances. I know, with this being prose, that I don’t need to put a ton of effort into making a visually interesting capsule of characters, but since I came from comics before I got into prose, and because I think very visually, I can’t resist. I want them to be well designed and look compelling together!
A few days later, when I was tired and fuzzy-brained from my covid booster (Yay! Finally!) I mocked up those basic character designs. These then go onto the 5ft cork board in the shed, so when I need a descriptor, or to see height differences for choreography purposes, I can glance up and look at them and pull from what I see. It’s kind of difficult to design a visually interesting cast entirely out of conventionally attractive white people, but I’m pleased with how it came out.
If I ever need a batch of characters all at once again I will definitely be repeating this process. It was fun. It worked spectacularly. And collaboration, even in a highly contained way like this, always always skyrockets my enthusiasm for the project. Outlining has never gone smoother, for me.
What about you? Do you play tabletop roleplay games? What does your character creation process look like? If you write, is it very different or similar to your character creation process for that?
Before I go, as promised, here’s our new cat, Scribble. Isn’t she stunning? She likes hanging out with me in the writing shed more than Tamino does, so expect ongoing pics of her. She is very good at cat-ing by honing in on exactly where I need her not to sit.
As always, if you've enjoyed this email, please feel free to share it with others. I want more penpals!
Till next time!
Lee Brontide