Spinoff: What is your main character like?

Adrianne Benton

My main character is a mix between Little Orphan Annie, Nancy Drew, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, and Penelope from the Amanda Show on Nickelodion.

For those of you unfamiliar with Penelope, she was the ever-determined, braniac stalker of (and played by) Amanda Bynes. She was the original inspiration for my super-sleuth girl, Adrianne Benton, and Adrianne will always have that comical side to her personality as a result.

Though not an orphan, she was raised in wealth like Annie, and has formed a special connection with her father, the district attorney. Pining for his attention as a girl, she immersed herself in crime novels and pulp fiction. Her mother is a high-strung alcoholic whom she rejected as a role model early on.

By the time she's sixteen, she's taken so many fighting and weaponry classes that she's essentially a super-comando, with brains so sharp she aces out of high-school a year early and obtains a PI license.

She's more hard-boiled than Buffy or Nancy ever were. Having always had a penchant for rolling in the muck with the sleeze-balls, she's no stranger to the ugly truths of life. She also has an affinity for hard-core punk-rock.

Beneath the cynnicism, of course, there's a girl in there somewhere, and at seventeen, she falls prey to crushes on boys, and agonizes over the fact that she's a freak.

As far as the "Action Hero" aspect goes, I'm trying to capture that dynamic of the ruthless babysitter. Many of us remember that teenage girl who could capture the squirt gun and whip our butts before we ever knew what happened. That's what she's like on the scale of a city full of criminals.

MC

My main character is a military historian named Devon Carter, who has always dreamed about making history rather than writing it. He gets his chance when the legendary starship captain Trent Holden selects him as one of seven crewmen aboard the vaunted Ardent mission, a historical exploration voyage to document the past of the enigmatic Confederate Fringe Colonies.

Devon may be fresh out of the Navy's Lunar Academy, but he's the best at what he does because he's been studying Confederate history since the age of six and has always had an affinity for stories of the Fringe Colonies. He takes life seriously most of the time, but occassionally has time for fun and jokes. Though he longs for adventure, once he gets into the thick of things he tends to handle stress poorly.

When he learns that the access codes to an ancient superweapon were imbedded in his family's bloodlines by one of his paternal ancestors, he is both upset and excited: he knows on the one hand that he is not truly natural, that he has been tampered with, but on the other hand, he knows that he is unique and has a purpose. And he doesn't hesitate to follow the advice of the mysterious old woman who comes to him in dreams with prophetic messages about the destruction of Earth and her own homeworld.

Also, he's a natural at falling in with local cultures and picking up exotic languages. He only does this once, mind you, but he assimilated the speech and customs with more ease than most people would.

Gideon

My MC, first off, isn't from around these parts. In fact, he's not from Earth, at all. But, he's not from just some backwater planet. It's more like a different universe, or dimension.

He looks pretty human, on the surface. But he tends to avoid direct sunlight. No, no...he's not a vampire. He's...well....I guess it depends on your POV.

What he -does- might qualify him as an Angel. How he -looks- (when the energy from sunlight hits him), would scare the bejeezuz out of most people, and he looks pretty Demon-ish.

He's the "White Hat", as well as the MC. Although, even though he's the protaganoist, he's not always a real nice guy. In fact, he's pretty cold-blooded.

And while he is the protagonist...he's also a Serial Killer. But he has a valid reason. Maybe.

Calvin

He suffered brain damage in the same accident that killed his wife and child. The city is filled with memories too painful to live with, so he leaves everything he's ever known and moves to a small town. He was a public figure in the city, and doesn't want the pity of every stranger he meets. He just wants to molder away in his little town and die. He has shut down emotionally, becoming a thoroughly unlikable character to those few people who get to know him. He's unsure whether to blame his loss or his brain damage--or both--for his personality changes and emotional distance.

Naturally, events conspire to draw him out of his shell. He learns that a girl, the same age as his deceased daughter, is in great peril. The rest of the book involves his efforts to save her. While doing so, he must come to terms with reopening his heart to someone who may, in the end, suffer a similar fate as his daughter.


In other words, my main character faces all my own worst nightmares. He's a painful guy to write, but very easy to write convincingly.

The main character in my current work is of course entirely fictional and is a metaphysical entitity conveniently manifested in human form for the purpose of telling a story. I've isolated him, taken to the extremities of what might be believable and then abandoned him with only a voice - he's blind, paraplegic, entirely dependent upon others for his survival. I gave him a brilliant programmers mind and photographically rententive memory so others have to confront his disability and deformity to access his intelligence. I take him from being an outcast to being 'in love' and measure his perception and understanding of the world its peoples against the convention we understand and accept.

I've got a few in a few stories\WIP

Here are a few that I have on the go, some for my WIP and some for a short story (as described in the other thread):

1. A functional alcoholic, mid 30's photojournalist. He's been a party guy since University but still has a strong moral centre and retains some of his idealism (not a lot). He has had only moderate sucess in his field, but is haunted by his biggest failure - he had pictures of the Bosnian Serb massacre at [size=-1]Srebreniza, but the film was destroyed before he could get it out. He is haunted by the images that only he has seen and couldn't show. And now he's in Sudan covering the "peace" there, as a stringer for the National Geographic and a few newswires.

2. Kano Obote, a general from Ghana that was with Gen. Dallaire in Rawanda and is now the UN commander in Sudan. He is determined to end the troubles in Africa, by any means nescesary, starting in Southern Sudan. He is on the trail of the photohournalist.

3. God. God as he\she would appear when you die. Not the one in the Bible or the Quaran. Similar, yet different.

4. Robert Patterson, a fundementalist minister and well-known televangelist (figure it out ). He dies on stage during one of his revival shows and has to defend his life to God, as mentioned above. He has many missions and business dealings around the world to "discuss" while he does so.


Those are my main ones right now. I'm sure others will "appear" as I write.

Mike
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My MC, Gavin, is a Warrant Knight, which is sort of like a cross between a US Marshall and a mercenary. Five years ago, his pregnant wife and three year old daughter were murdered while he lay helpless on the floor. Now, Gavin the wounded soul just wants to do his job.

He never settles down for long, just keeps moving on, taking jobs that will keep him clothed and fed. He cares a lot about the people he's sworn to protect, and he'll rescue or help anyone, regardless of whether he earns "valour-gild" for his deed.

Gavin is descended from the last king's champion, whom everyone hails as a hero. Because of his own failure as a husband and father, Gavin has only contempt for his ancestor because the man had failed to save the king.

Although crude, Gavin has a good sense of humor, and he's a likable guy with a distinguished bearing that people notice when he walks into a room. His face is scarred from an encounter with a bear when he was twelve -- the bear which killed his dad.

Avery Logan

Avery is my main character in my WIP. She's an interesting paradox, because she's quite shy and insecure, and has a hard time dealing with people... at least, the living. On the other hand, she's a paranormal investigator who feels more at home talking to the dead. She and her sister Samantha lost their father in a plane crash as teenagers, and shortly after his death, they both began to notice his presence in their home. Now, two decades later, Avery and Sam have turned their ghost-hunting hobby into a successful enterprise. When Sam finds a run-down Southern mansion for sale, complete with ghosts of its own, Avery leaves her complacent job at a historical society, dumps her shallow loser boyfriend, and heads to the Lowcountry.

Avery is one of those women who really has no idea of the appeal she has to people. Everyone wants to hang out with her, but the most painful thing in the world for her is to be the center of attention... which has wreaked havoc on her love life. When she meets Nick Mason, who sees her for the person she really is, and not the person she sees in herself, things get a bit strange. As if falling for Nick doesnt' complicate Avery's life enough, she's got a ghost trying to send her messages from the beyond, a television producer who wants to invade her new home, and a family of snakes living under the front verandah.

My character is a victim of fate. He tries to maintain his dignity as much he can, but circumstances are usually out of his control. He's the sort of person people feel sorry for. He says very bland things but has a natural instinct to fight crime. The people around him all have very unique characteristics which rub off on him throughout the story.

The main character in my current WIP is a twelve year old girl who is a lot like my youngest daughter.

Torin is a complex character, shaped by the forces and friends in his life, capable of great tenderness, loyalty and love, and equally capable of great violence and contempt.

Daffyd is wealthy, powerful and kind, seeking the love of his life.

Gerri Reznik is learning about herself and is quite capable, bright and strong. I'm fond of Gerri.

Heck, I'm fond of them all.

The MC of my current project (Fantasy) is a young woman, 17 or so. She's unorthodox in every way; she fights, hunts, refuses to ride sidesaddle, and doesn't care much for dresses either. So her father tries to marry her off, but she's not going to stand for that either.
She's feisty, but there are some deep wounds in her soul; she's haunted by the death of her brother and the disturbing ways in which her father has changed.

black winged fighter said:

...She's unorthodox in every way; she fights, hunts, refuses to ride sidesaddle, ...

Click to expand...

My Civil Liberties and Human Rights Professor, Amy Bartholemew once said "If the world made sense, men would ride side-saddle".

I tend to agree.



Mike

Which main character? I have to stop starting these stories and then leaving them to start another and another. It's not that I've given up on them; it's just that they've been put on the shelf temporarily, as it were. I'll get back to them... one of these days. (Yeah, and the moon is made of cheese, Thekherham.)

But... the novel I'm editing now. Reading aloud, trying to catch the bad narrative, bad dialogue... bad everything, has a rather unusual character. He is part human, part horses (no, not a centaur, if that's what you're thinking). He is sixteen years old, goes to school (at least until he is expelled for fighting with another student). (I guess you can tell this is a fantasy... what a call a rural fantasy, because he lives on a horse farm.) He has hooves like a horse, a tail like a horse, and... ahem, another item that makes him look at fillies in a certain way. (I'll let you guess what that is.) O.k., o.k., I know what you're thinking, but the story is not about that. Yes, there is sexual content, but there is more to the story than that. The POV is first person, and it is told in diary form, beginning with his birthday on Feb. 29, and ending on July 10. The story is basically my MC trying to find out what happened to his niece who has disappeared (an alleged kidnapping). This being a 410,000+ novel of course means that a lot of other things happen to him... He has this tendency to digress to other matters.

Here is a good observation of my main character by another character:
"You are a cynical young man. You have a suspicious nature that tends to get you into trouble. You do not trust strangers and you find it difficult to make friends. Your friends, by the way, tend to be horses more often than human. You tend to speak before you think. You say things you don't mean. You have a death warrant upon you, but you have escaped because you are blessed with good luck. This good luck extends to your horses who have not been sick or injured since you were born. But your luck does have its limits because one of your stallions will die soon. You are proud of your equine features and at the same time almost afraid of them. You are struggling between your equine and your human nature. You have so many questions on your mind and you are seeking answers that are difficult to find. You do not care how you obtain these answers and in the process you will be hurting the ones you love."

Salinger has the family from which Franny and Zoey come from, Steinbeck has Cannary Row, Vonnegut. . . well, Vonnegut has lots of intermingling characters throughout his books. I have a version of this and would say that they are my main characters, though they are not always the lead of the stories they appear in. My "primary" characters are all based off one eccentric family known as the Cole's. Weren Cole, an alter ego of mine, is the smart yet odd uncle of the family and appears mostly in cameo sequences in other stories that I write. (Though I have just started one WIP that I believe he will dominate) Weren's nephew Carter has appeared in all the stories I have written over the last couple of years. I know his entire history backwards and forwards right up until the day of his death and how it happens.

I was wondering if anybody else around does this, or am I just an odd person from an eccentric family myself?

I do it to some extent. And I love it when characters from one novel appear again in another of the same author's novels. Like Stephen King's Flagg.

werencole said:

Salinger has the family from which Franny and Zoey come from, Steinbeck has Cannary Row, Vonnegut. . . well, Vonnegut has lots of intermingling characters throughout his books. I have a version of this and would say that they are my main characters, though they are not always the lead of the stories they appear in. My "primary" characters are all based off one eccentric family known as the Cole's. Weren Cole, an alter ego of mine, is the smart yet odd uncle of the family and appears mostly in cameo sequences in other stories that I write. (Though I have just started one WIP that I believe he will dominate) Weren's nephew Carter has appeared in all the stories I have written over the last couple of years. I know his entire history backwards and forwards right up until the day of his death and how it happens.

I was wondering if anybody else around does this, or am I just an odd person from an eccentric family myself?

Click to expand...

I intend to do this, but I'm still working on my first novel at the moment.

thus far, i have only three protagonists- i have mroe stories plotted out, but coming up with the characters is harder. well, i have some spare characters lying around not in stories, but they don't count.

One is an angel who rebels against his superior and attempts to conquer the world, bringing the friendly goodness of angelic rule to humans who would prefer to keep their own bungling kings. he is incredibly charismatic, self-confident, and powerful, but also arrogant and impulsive.

the second is his embittered lover, after his death. she was both a warrior and a sorcereress, but the end fo the first story stripped her of most of her power. she runs away to escape her growing suspicion that she may be in love with the previous protagonists enemy. then she ends up trying to save his kingdom....

finally, in a different universe, i have a young man who has trained for years to be his villages priest and hedge-mage, only to be told that he go off ot save the world (which is a lie, but that doesn't matter...) he's on a quest for vast magical power, but he's frigthtened of all but the simplest spells, and even more terrified of the things he'll be expected to do with is power once he gets it.

My main character wants to be good. He is conflicted between doing the right thing and doing what is best for the friends around him. He is not a very strong person. He idolizes his best friend to the point where he doesn't see any of the good in himself. Whatever qualities he has that do not mirror that of this best friend are qualities he feels are not worth having. He is struggling for his own voice, but he doesn't realize it.

Malory's Sir Tristram meets Maximus from Gladiator, but with a bigger sword, more armour, and a more confusing love life.