On the Nature of Immortals

Sorry about the lack of post yesterday. I've been a total slacker lately.

I've spent the past few days thinking about vampires. As one does. The thing about most vampires is that they are deceptively old. Sometimes a story will follow a fledgling vampire, but there's always some in the fictional world that are 100 or 300 or 5000 years old. That's just how it works. What else would be the point of being immortal? That brings up the issue of backstory. Because there is a lot of it.

So, my story involves vampires and apparently ice cream, but I have no idea about the plot or the characters. I've been trying to figure out just who my main characters might be. And when vampires are involved, that involves things like how long they've been a vampire, and what shenanigans they've gotten up to in that time.  That's potentially a lot of history. And you may or may not know how much I love history (It's a lot).

The thing that really stuck out in my head was the idea that a comedic and upbeat character should have a really tragic backstory. What that's going to mean exactly is still up in the air. There are several works in which potential vampires are offered the bite (or whatever) when they’re on the verge of death. Perhaps because no one else would be so desperate to live that they'd choose a life like this. This was the case for main characters in Being Human (both UK and US versions), and I think Twilight. So there's some built in tragedy right there.

I don't know. Usually I start with either a vague plot or a character idea, and right now I have neither. I know that me blogging about nothing is pretty boring, and I'd better step it up if I want to keep my readers interested.

All I really have at this point is some notes about vampires. Namely, that I want to avoid the whole "they're cold and dead" thing. They’re alive, more or less, with a very low body temperature and a low heart rate. But no one thinks it's weird if the guy who's been scooping ice cream all day has really cold hands. They’re not invincible, because that's boring, but I'm still working on what would kill them, and how easily.

Honestly, if anyone has any ideas about any of this, I'm open to suggestions.

See you Tuesday (I hope).