Conflicting Ideas

My villain character creation is by no means complete, but I think I have a good idea of what kind of a person she is. I understand her reasoning. The question that is now arising is what is she going to do about it? What actions is she going to take against the protagonist?

Now I know the relationship between the two of them. They were basically family once. Now everything's gone and broken. How far is she going to go? Does she want him miserable, or destroyed?

Where Do Space Babies Come From?

The quest for Elsbeth's backstory continues, and the other day, I asked myself, "Self, what did happen to the boy's father?" The boy of course being her son, who still doesn't have a name. I think I thought of something, but then forgot it immediately.

Anyway.

My initial thought, a month ago, was that family dynamics are just different in space. But then Tycho, the protagonist, had both parents and lost them both, collectively, together. Implying a typical family arrangement.

So the question returned. What happened to the boy's father? He can't be dead, because there's a limit on how much tragedy I'll dole out per person. Yes, even I have limits.

Staying on Task

Well, here we are again. And I'm woefully unprepared, as usual.

I keep coming up with all this other stuff for the space story. The protagonist has appeared, complete with a name for once, but I keep pushing all that aside. Because I have to finish Elsbeth. I have to make her a real person. This is what usually happens, and why I end up with shallow characters. I get distracted by shinier parts of the story, and abandon the boring details.

So here I am, wondering how Fomalhaut and Aldebaran¹ figure into this story, with this ship endlessly coasting among the stars, but I have to stay here and decide on my antagonist's political views. And religion. And what word or phrase she uses a lot.

I had one goal. Make one good, solid character. And my god, is that hard.

Family Comes First

So here I am, trying to complete Elsbeth as a character, trying to figure out all these stupid little details. But then I stepped away from all these questions and asked something that might actually matter: What kind of a mother was she?

I did a little backstory freewriting, and I learned some things. The most important of which was that the protagonist of this tale was orphaned at the age of 12, and since he was her son's best friend, Elsbeth took him in. He became like another son to her. And her boys always had each other's backs. Until they didn't.

It Took Everything to Get Me Here

I keep finding myself getting distracted from my task of creating a complete character. "What about the world-building?" I ask myself. "What about the soundtrack?" I mean really, what kind of music does a future space faring society listen to? Probably something electronic and computer generated. Which is unfortunate for me, as I have a longstanding hatred of electronic music. Except this, for some reason.

Anyway, I have all these questions I'm supposed to be answering for this character. Here's a few as an example:

• What are their biggest secrets?
• What makes them laugh out loud?
• What is their best childhood memory?
• Do they have a natural talent for something?

No Hourglasses in Zero G

I've started fitting out an extensive character sheet for Elsbeth Zogg, sci-fi villain. I'm not going to share all the answers here, because frankly, I don't want to. Describing characters makes me uncomfortable. Extensively describing them, even more so.

Now, I thought that this was just going to be an exercise in character creation, and a plot and everything would come later. World building and all that tiresome nonsense. But I realized something right off the bat when I started the character questionnaire. Something I need to think about in this story. Something I need to figure out.

How do you tell time in space?

For the Evulz: A Reason For Villainy

Remember last time when I said the bad guys can't just do it "for the evulz"? I stand by that. I mean, sure, you can have your Jokers who just want to watch the world burn, but usually there is some underlying reason.

So I started making a list. I'm sure I'll add to it as I go, but I'm off to a decent start. I'm trying to list all the reasons a villain might do his villainous things. Some of them may overlap. Things are rarely cut-and-dried, 100% one thing, so that's to be expected.

The list of why people do bad things, as it stands:

• Money/greed
• Love/lust
• Revenge
• Hatred (be it racism, prejudice, etc.)
• Loyalty (to a cause, leader, etc.)
• Grief/Loss
• Power