Friday, April 16, 2010

Brainstorming Day 3 - Character Generation

I actually didn't do all this today. I have a "dream story" brewing in the back of my head that I plan to work on next year. It's a high, swashbuckling adventure set in a fantasy world that has a lot of resemblance to eastern Europe during and just before WWI.

I decided to work on that today a little more. I've got a whole heck of a lot of world building to do, as I think the story may be a serial.

Cast of Characters:

Lady Paulina Trent-Wollsey-Beethingham - adventuress and interfering do-gooder.

Alex Mandrake - jilted swain and secret hero, as well as a daring photographer and map maker.

Lily Beeton - companion to Lady Pauline and master organizer and committed spinster.

Dr. Mason Filey - brilliant crackpot who wants to catch a Waelbeast, and who needs regular rescuing by Alex.

Waelbeasts - giant carnivorous roly-poly bugs.

Captain Akio Rozinshura - Charming, roguish but patriotic captain of the Awarshi regular army unit assigned to take care of Lady Pauline's charitable Civilian Aid Unit.

Commander Zuzo - gruff and short-tempered commander of the local Awarshi irregulars/partisans, sentimental goatherd, and the man who knows everything there is to know about Waelbeasts and the wilderness in which they roam.

The Awarshi - imagine displaced Bolsheviks with a really seriously bad case of being French. I mean seriously ... there is no tobacco in this universe, and yet every time I picture them, they're smoking.

(Now all I have to figure out is whether the bad guys are other Awarshis - since they tend to fight among themselves a lot - or aliens, or magic beings from another dimension, or something else. Also did the poor roly-poly bugs become monsters due to magic or pseudo-science?)

Yeah, I do have interesting dreams. Why do you ask?

2 comments:

Laura S. said...

Yikes, those waelbeasts sound adorably nasty! The roly-poly sounds adorable, but carnivorous sounds nasty. I'll be sure to keep close to that knowledgeable Commander Zuzo!

Your new idea sounds great!

The Daring Novelist said...

Hmmmm. I wasn't thinking about cuteness, but seeing as the badguys have engineered the critters to eat people, perhaps Dr. Filey could program them back to processing rotted wood....

(And yes, anybody smart sticks with Zuzo.)