Well, crap.

[agilebrit]

You know, I just realized that I've given the human character in this story no redeeming qualities whatsoever. You sympathize with the shoulder demon more than you do the human. Ideally, you want this dude to change his ways instead of burning in Hell, if I'm telling the story right.

I should give the guy a cat or something, a creature he loves and cares for. Because, yeah, he's one-note at this point and I need to fix that--preferably before I hand off what I have to my Writing Buddy.

I guess it's a sign of my growing maturity as a writer that I'm catching these things before I'm done with my first draft. Yay?

Comments

[hannahsarah.livejournal.com]

Good catch!

Remember, Hitler was a vegetarian, a painter, and founded Germany's first Humane Society for animals. Without power, he'd have just been "a tragically misunderstood artist. Kind of a loner, a very quiet neighbor, seemed like a nice guy ..." just like any other serial killer.

[agilebrit.livejournal.com]

Pretty much!

Fortunately for the world, this guy isn't going to grow up to be Hitler.

[baron-waste.livejournal.com]

Well, he may be a “one-note” for a reason.


In London there is a man who screams when the church bells ring. He lives all alone with his streaked cat in Gray’s Inn, and people call him harmlessly mad. His room is filled with books of the tamest and most puerile kind, and hour after hour he tries to lose himself in their feeble pages. All he seeks from life is not to think. For some reason thought is very horrible to him, and anything which stirs the imagination he flees as a plague. He is very thin and grey and wrinkled, but there are those who declare he is not nearly so old as he looks. Fear has its grisly claws upon him, and a sound will make him start with staring eyes and sweat-beaded forehead… For that the man always watched and listened no one could doubt. He watched and listened with his mind more than with his eyes and ears, and strove every moment to drown something in his ceaseless poring over gay, insipid novels. And when the church bells rang he would stop his ears and scream, and the grey cat that dwelt with him would howl in unison till the last peal died reverberantly away…

H P Lovecraft, “The Descendant”

[agilebrit.livejournal.com]

No, see, that right there good and evocative writing. My guy is one-note because of bad writing. Which I will fix in edits, because the fact that he has a cat is now a plot point instead of just a Random!Kitty. He uses it to lure a little girl to her doom.

...oh, God, now I sound like a supervillain. I need to wrap this thing up and start the next one.