After I wrote yesterday’s post, I remembered how it is I get to know my characters. To be fair, these new people came to me with a fairly complete surface. I knew what they looked like, what their skills and talents were, where they came from. A lot of the basics.

But I still didn’t know how they would react in certain situations. So yesterday I wrote a couple of short stories, one from each of my MC’s perspectives. I like to find random prompts to do this with, because it gives me tiny details about the characters I might not recognize or think up otherwise.

For instance, now I know my female mc has a teddy bear she takes everywhere with her. Not to the grocery story or anything like that, but every time these two friends pick up and run from someone new, she grabs the bear as well.

And I know my male mc has half black/half blond hair. He’s letting a bad dye job grow out from the last time they ran.

I found something else out, too. It took me by surprise, because I had read that aspect of their friendship completely wrong.

And on the subject of not characters… I have to do a different kind of world building for this story than I have in the past. I’m not too bad at world building, mostly because my Sweetie thinks of all the details for me. But I’m horrible at working it into the story.

Or at least, I have been in the past. But in the past I’ve had to rearrange a lot of preconceived notions when I tell my stories. Like…I dunno…explaining that in my world, Lucifer never fell, he’s still an archangel.

And I think it’s easier to lay out a world from scratch, or one built on familiar aspects and into familiar aspects, than it is to twist the known into the unknown. For instance, altered history – I have no idea how people pull that off. It fascinates me. But it means rearranging preconceived notions instead of just building from scratch.

So I guess that’s my thought/musing for the day. Why is it easier for us to accept the unknown than to accept the rearrangement of the known?

If that makes sense.