Yzabel / August 15, 2012

This is no news for anyone who’s been following my dA page, but I realized that since at the time it was done, I hadn’t resurrected this blog yet, it might be of interest to post it here all the same. Even though it’s, as said, no news, it’s pretty much atemporal enough for this not to be a problem.

A few months ago, I was interviewed about my current work in progress “Was” in a dA group. Here it is:

1. How did you go about creating WAS? What or who inspired you?
It all started back in 2008, when I found an old story of mine about vampires in a modern urban setting, written back in high school. At first, I planned on rewriting it. However, as I began to sketch some new character designs, things got out of hand, so to say, and soon said characters and plot didn’t have anything to do at all with the ones that had inspired them.

In October 2009, I decided to write a story for NaNoWriMo. That was when I gave “Was” its title, and got to jot down what would become its primary plot threads: mages, ghosts, reincarnation matters, and being/becoming human. I mainly worked on character profiles, but I admit that until November 1st, I still didn’t have a proper antagonist. But that’s the beauty and interest of NaNoWriMo: it causes my creative mind to get all wired up and produce a lot more than the rest of the year, and so the story arcs themselves came to me pretty quickly. I didn’t finish it by the end of November, because it’s a complex story and rushing it in 50,000 words would just be silly, but it still provided me with a solid basis to work on.

Inspiration, as usual in my case, comes from many sources. Among the most important ones:
* The anime series “Baccano!” (EDIT: and, in retrospect, Kurt Vonnegut’s Slaughterhouse-Five), for its narrative technique.
* White Wolf’s “World of Darkness” games, especially Mage: the Ascension, Wraith: the Oblivion and Promethean: the Created. Also a bit of “Bleach” for the Heart-catchers (the spiritual hole in their chests).
* Silent Hill, that influenced (without my realizing it at first) my take on the Deadlands.
* My IRl friends ~rapunzelita and ~minamzi. We used to joke a lot during about our respective characters and stories, and quite a few elements of WAS  were born from jokes that I then pulled a “Sure, why not?” on.

2. Do you prefer writing or creating artwork for WAS?
I prefer writing, most of the time. Although my dA account is really not representative of that, words come to me much more easily than drawings, and I am also really at ease with a lot of the characters in WAS. They all have quirks and personalities that make them very pleasant to write. Ring is the uber-serious Mama Bear type. Marek is the awfully fun to write heroic sociopath. Ewan is my anti-wangst magnet. Lou is the ‘kid’ who’s looking for herself. Lyle, the cab driver, is desperately trying to understand what “being human” means, even though he’ll never be one of those humans he admires. Adrian’s shadow is constantly hovering above Ewan. And so on. WAS is a very characters-driven story. There are too many of them for me to describe exactly what makes them enjoyable to me, but they all provide me with fun and genuine pleasure to write.

It’s a difficult story to work on, though, due to the aforementioned narrative technique and the interweaving of several arcs. Another thing that makes it difficult is that, due to being originally for NaNoWriMo, it never had an A-to-Z planned plot. I know where I’m going with it, of course—but I haven’t planned it down precisely, chapter by chapter, because I know that although it’d help me write faster, it’d also kill part of the pleasure I derive from it. Also, sometimes, I feel myself overwhelmed by its complex chronology, and have to rewrite some parts. And so, there are moments when I leave the story aside to draw its characters, because it helps me focus again.

3. What made you choose Death as a theme of your series?
My very first ideas behind the story revolved about “past lives/reincarnation” and “now deceased characters still affecting the present story, through the events they triggered in the past” (hence the title). From this to the theme of Death and ghosts, there was only a thin border to cross. I also found it intriguing and interesting to tackle, because of the characters. Ring is a Witch dealing with spirits & ghosts, but also healing magic, and thus life. Lou is always dreaming about her past lives. Lyle isn’t alive, and would very much want to be. Marek is technically immortal, but his soul is utterly damaged. Ewan barely escaped death and total obliteration of his soul. Adrian is a Necromancer. In the end, all those characters have closer ties with Death than some of them would like to believe—and by exploring those ties, it also allows me to explore Death’s counterpart: the meaning and importance of Life and humanity. Those are important themes to me as a person.

4. Why is Echoes/Ewan your favourite character?
Among all the characters I’ve ever created, he’s the one who turned out the most surprising in terms of development. I hadn’t meant him to take so much importance at first; in hindsight, the fact that he’s actually the one whom Chapter 1 opens with was a kind of subconscious signal on my part that he wouldn’t shut up and remain in the background for long. When I thought I wouldn’t have much to write about him, and that he wouldn’t be more than the funny geek character with weird food habits, he turned to be much deeper and complex.

First of all, it’s quite refreshing to write from his point of view. He’s got a very non-sequitur way of thinking at times, and often remarks to himself in pretty geeky ways, ranging from quoting movie lines to hinting at TV Tropes or playing silly games on a fake Facebook account. He’s also a person who’s suffered a lot in his past, has been betrayed several times, yet deeply loves people in general, and wants to go on believing that life is worth it, and that no matter the risks, he’ll go on considering those he meet as worthy until proven otherwise. While there’s a strong potential for angst in him, he manages to thwart it and remain a positive person, even though it’s hard. Just for that, I love him.

One thing that definitely made him my favourite character was when I adapted him for a game of Mage: the Ascension, in 2011, because I needed to come up quickly with a concept for a session or two. Although Mage!Ewan is different in some aspects, and his story is developing differently, of course, actually playing his role allowed me to understand him even better. The mere couple of lines that was his background story got fleshed out, and even ended up birthing a few short stories (see “Misplaced”, on my dA account). Much more importantly, it also allowed me to unlock a whole part of the story I had sort of  driven myself into a corner with, and to introduce and develop the character of Adrian Bennett. The relationship between Ewan and Adrian hasn’t been much explored in WAS yet, because it’s something I’m introducing very gradually, but it is one that inspires me a lot, both beautiful and extremely tragic. I’m such a weakling for those. (Not to mention that they’re excellent inspiration for pr0n side stories.)

5. Can you let us know more about “Mother“?
Despite her role as main antagonist in the 2009 arc, “Mother” is, oddly enough, a character I hadn’t thought about until the very day I started writing, on November 1st. I can’t remember exactly how she came to be, because she is the result of very fast-paced thinking. The first idea behind her was “a ghost from the past”, but whose ghost, of course, I won’t reveal here.

“Mother” is an ambivalent character to me. She’s a monster, a spectre who devours other ghosts’ souls in order to go on existing. She’s ready to kill hundreds people in one go, just for the sake of creating enough souls to feed upon. She makes her ‘children’ suffer. She also wishes to breach the Thorn Wall, the barrier between the world of the living and that of the dead, to further her own purposes (and those are far from being only about feeding). Yet at the same time, she reproduces very human patterns at times, in surrounding herself with a ‘family’, for instance; at other times, her thought patterns can be utterly alien. It’s kind of like the old conundrum of “destroying the world”: to most people, it’d mean something terrible and terrifying, because they’d lose their loved ones and everything they hold dear, but others may find it a valid goal, in that it’d allow to rebuild something better on the ruins. Of course, I won’t put “Mother” in such tight boxes, but it’s the kind of thinking I keep in mind when I write about her.

6. Do you have any advice for anyone wanting to create a series of their own?
* Write for your own pleasure. Don’t write about this or that theme only because your friends want you to, because you think it’ll help you find a publisher more easily, because it’s the current trend, etc. Unless you like that theme too, of course. Write about something *you* like, otherwise you may just end up very unhappy about it, and your project will never reach completion.

* Don’t take yourself too seriously. The world of writing, online and offline, can be pretty harsh. You must learn quickly to take a step back, take rejection and criticism with philosophy, and not let anyone nor anything get at you. I’ve known quite an amount of people who thought they’d have it easy, but collapsed at the first speck of criticism. Believing in yourself is good; but taking yourself too seriously makes any blow seem much harder than it actually is. (And yes, you are allowed to make fun of my characters. I’m the first one to do that anyway.)

Paradoxically, this helped me improve my style and grammar: after writing, writing, writing without worrying about my novel being “perfect”, I noticed that paragraphs started flowing more easily, that I didn’t struggle as much to find the right words, and that, all in all, my first drafts were actually very readable, and not the horrors some people prophesized I’d spew if I went on “taking things so lightly”. Of course, reading a lot, both in French and English, and actually studying English literature, were also of much help. But I’m still convinced that actually writing with a light heart helped me improve more than spending time polishing the same sentence over and over again.

* Kick your “Muse” in the nuts at times. No, really. “Lack of inspiration” sometimes overlaps with “laziness” or “procrastination”, and it’s important to learn to differentiate both. If things are really not looking up, I don’t force myself too much; but if I find myself, say, browsing aimlessly on dA or reading forums instead of writing even though I’ve got ideas running in my head, then it’s a clear sign the Muse needs to get off the couch and start sweating.

(The actual interview was originally posted here.)