April writing meme – Day 11

[erastes]

Who is your favorite character to write? Least favorite?

Another clue that these questions were originally made for fanfic, as few writers continue to write about their characters.  I certainly don’t.

Favourite: I think most people would expect me to say that Fleury from “Standish” was my favourite to write, but that’s not actually true. Usually my favourite to write is what I’m writing now, because (as I described in yesterday’s post) I’m getting to know strangers and getting to like them. Fleury was a lot of fun to write, it’s true. He has a bubbling surface to his character, and a great deal of charm - but he has that particular darkness and depression that many Irishmen have—plus he’s quite violent in a cold manner, so while I love him dearly, I’m well aware of his quite serious faults. He’s proving hard to write in his sequel right now, because he’s moping, and it’s hard to get him back into a light hearted mood. I’d never thought of this before, but he reminds me a great deal of a man I was seeing in Ireland (although without the murderous quality) he did have a lot of the other traits: the charm, the eloquence, and the depression -  even the blind violence that were almost blackouts. Oops. Sorry, Tony – I seriously hadn’t thought of that until today.

But if I have to be honest, my heart belongs most to Geoffrey Chaloner from “Hard & Fast” because he came to me entirely fully formed while I was just sitting in a pub. I luckily had a few sheets of paper with me and instead of going to my evening class I sat and scribbled and scribbled for two hours and Geoffrey just flowed onto the page. The introduction to Hard and Fast is exactly (other than for punctuation edits) as it was written that night, his voice coming from God knows where and the humour coming from God knows where too, as I haven’t managed that level of gentle satire since. I also really enjoy writing secondary characters, such as Mordecai, Gideon’s upwardly mobile assistant in “Frost Fair”, and Goertz, who is a surly, protective batman, in my current WIP: “The Muffled Drum.”

Least Favourite: I know at least one of my readers who will disagree with me, but it’s Alvisi from “Standish”  - He’s a dreadful creature, who destroys people’s lives for sport – and is entirely unrepentant about it.  He sees Rafe as an easy target, and within no time at all, he’s snared him into a one-sided dependent relationship—but it’s not about Rafe, Alvisi’s target is (and I don’t know if people actually noticed this) Ambrose, who is already damaged by another, and by taking Rafe’s sexual attention aware from Ambrose at a time when he was actually recovering, ensuring that he would drive Ambrose away was far more piquant to Alvisi than merely having an affair with a man already in a relationship.

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Comments

[crawling-angel.livejournal.com]

Alvisi>>> I must have been having a smart day. I 'got' what he was doing. 'I don't really want him but you're not going to have him either'. Guess it was cuz I knew someone like that a while ago...

[erastes.livejournal.com]

Well done you! I don't think I actually noticed it as I was starting that story line - but the more I explored Alvisi and poked into his motivations for doing anything, and looked at some of the other things he had done, it seemed obvious that Ambrose was his target, which is why he followed him to London, which by then it was to make Rafe pay, rather than Ambrose. He's a sick sick puppy. I should write his earlier life at some point, just to exorcise him. That'll be an interesting challenge - to write a book about a truly monstrous man.

[nagasvoice.livejournal.com]

Alvisi is a subtle piece of work, too. Of course several things could have created him, but my stereotypic theory would be that he was a smart kid in a resoundingly dumb and boring environment and he had a natural talent for picking wings off flies, or somebody pretty nasty had their way with him (possibly an older sibling?) or both. Or possibly he had terrifying chaotic situations alternating with dead boring irregularly and without warning. Poor Ambrose--pulling his wings is about what torturing poor Ambrose at one remove really is, merely idle amusement to keep in practice for Alvisi. One gets the sense he keeps several complicated plots going all the time, on the edge of a dangerous failure, or he doesn't enjoy it.

[erastes.livejournal.com]

I see him like that too. Poor little rich kid in a huge palazzo. Ignored entirely by a mother he adores. Finding things to torture, and then slowly, things to blackmail, servants to proposition (because they wouldn't TELL...) and so on - I dare say that he was accumulating - or wahtever the term is for serial killers. I don't doubt he would have started to murder eventually.

[kittymay.livejournal.com]

Yes. Do it at once, please. I used to write books when I was about 10 and staple sheets of A4 together. You need to do that for me...maybe draw some pictures of the hot scenes.

In actual fact, I would love to hear about Alvisi losing his virginity. In a sick way, because I'm a sick puppy too. But in a good way.

[kittymay.livejournal.com]

Oh, and what you say above...I find these characters intriguing. Alvisi reminds me of one of the three main characters and the main antagonist in the novel I am writing extremely slowly between degree/social stuff...

[lee-rowan.livejournal.com]

Alvisi had a lot in common with my villain Adrian in Ransom--sociopath from a privileged background with an itch to manipulate and hurt people. I wouldn't want to see any more of the bastard. There are too many of him walking around today.

It's good to know he was not your favorite brainchild!