It’s been a long time since I’ve published a blog. This is partly because I’ve been working feverishly on Book 3 of Legend of the Sword Bearer. These things don’t happen overnight, you know. I also don’t want to give away any spoilers. It’s hard writing and drawing a graphic novel series because I have a plot, with a beginning, middle, and end, and sometimes I get those confused.
I like to compare it to the TV show Doctor Who. If you’ve never seen Doctor Who, the Doctor is a time-traveler, who’s been at it for a very long time. He sometimes gets the order of events mixed up, especially when it concerns other time-travelers. Sometimes he’ll meet another time-traveler and start talking about events that have not yet taken place. That’s often how I feel with my audience. It’s been hard to keep track of what I’ve already published and what I haven’t. Sometimes I want to write a blog post about something and I think “wait, I haven’t introduced that character yet.” It’ll be easier when I publish Book 3 because I’ll have introduced almost all the characters by then. Speaking of which, introducing a character is a pretty important function for an author. If you’re an author, you’ve probably known the character for years. You know their likes, dislikes, their form of dress; your audience doesn’t know that information. You have assumptions about your character which your audience doesn’t have. You have to decide how you’re going to tell them. You can’t give them too much information, or they get bogged down. You can’t give them too little or they’ll simply lose interest. Many times, I might even say most times, it’s good to keep a character mysterious. Readers like a good mystery most of the time. It helps build suspense. It’s usually best to reveal that information over time, so your audience gets to know the character. However, if you’re like me, sometimes characters pop out of the ether, and I’m finding out this information as I’m writing it. Sometimes I’m just as surprised as the audience! I must say, I almost prefer that; it’s more exciting to me as an author to have a brand new character that I know almost nothing about.
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Let’s talk about personalities. I didn’t use to be a believer in the Myers-Briggs personality types. I honestly thought they were just alphabet soup that meant nothing. People can’t be shoved into boxes with letters painted on the outside. It was my mother who talked me into taking the test. I found out that I’m an ENFP; one of the features of that personality type is we don’t like to put people in boxes, and therefore mistrust personality tests. What I came to realize is that while people are individuals, Myers-Briggs types can be very helpful in understanding why people are the way they are. The Myers-Briggs types can also help with writing a character.
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AuthorI'm Ian Wilson; an eccentric comic artist, just telling a story.
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