Hi friendly readers!
Welcome to a series called the Atro-City Analysis, where I dissect my own book and tell you what I did really think of when putting words to the page, and what was done the way it was on purpose. I'm totally familiar with analysing books in school and hearing classmates say 'well the author didn't actually think of ALL of that', and to an extent, sure, some things can be a coincidence. However, as an author myself, there's a surprising (and random) number of things I DO think of- some of which I don't ever expect anyone to know unless I tell them, so here's a shameless post about some of the things I actually did think of.
If this is the first time you're coming across this series of mine, feel free to have a look at my other book blogs tagged with the label Atro-City on the right of the page, or via this link: https://mischiefweavers.blogspot.com/search/label/Atro-City where you can see other analysis's I've done, or even head to the tag Book Blog to see what I'm reading at the moment.
This iteration I'll be talking about The Human Nature, and how it lead to me adding certain scenarios into my work deliberately…
1) Lizzie gets sick
Pretty early on in the novel, I introduce the friendly readers to Lizzie, a poor disliked girl in the town of Victon (which was also named deliberately, I'll get to that in another post perhaps), who has tremendous bad luck finding out more about her missing family and making friends whose parents approve of her. When she embarks on her adventure of the novel, within the first 25 pages Lizzie has managed to get sick whilst on the run and sleeping under the stars…which…no shock right?
This was a plot point I added deliberately because in years of reading books, it frustrated me that many of the main characters and hero's existed on a level that you could never hope to mimic. It was that classic thing where as a kid I'd want to imagine I was the one who could be the super hero, but first I had to get around not being Chosen (enter Kayla Stevenson in my novel, who was created to deliberately undermine that), and then I had to try and live up to those impossibly immortal expectations of the main characters…well when I decided to write my books I thought No More!! I was going to make my main characters as normal and as regular as I could possibly be so that the next kid reading a story and wanting to make a difference in the world could see that you didn't have to be born with any sort of powers to turn into a hero, you could take your regular old human nature and just use it for good.
2) There is no chosen one
Linking to this lack of heroic quality, I also deliberately made sure there was no Chosen One. Don't get me wrong, I absolutely love the fantasy hero books of the early 2000's and I still love a good fantasy novel today, and I remember many of those classic adventures fondly for fuelling my imagination and love of books as a child, but as much as I love them (and still have the posters…) I can admit there were elements that frustrated me.
As a young author and teen reader, I used to get frustrated with the idea that the hero was just born to be a hero…that there was some inherent quality you either had or you didn't and if you didn't…no saving the world for you! It used to make me feel like there was no way I could possibly live up to that, when all I had was normal, non magic, regular human-ness, so when I designed my own story and its main characters, I completely threw this idea of just being chosen out of the window.
I've zero'd in on her character for a whole host of individual decisions I made in another post, but Kayla Stevenson is a prime example here. She did not want to be a hero, did not volunteer to be a hero, and did not get enthralled into the world of mystery in which she was thrust. She was sarcastic and cynical, and just a girl trying to get some work done so she could go back home and sit on the sofa…end of.
Even with my other characters, whether subconsciously or deliberate I can't remember, but I maintain the lack of Chosen One'ness resolutely. Lizzie was just an imaginative child trying to find her family, and Lily was just part of a club. Lily was even arguably the most cowardly character in the whole novel, but she ended up a hero because as much as she was scared to fight on the frontline, she also refused to succumb to the bad side, and kept up quiet resistance in her own little way.
3) When you fight to survive, there are no rules
This one was a decisive and sure thing that I added into my book because I was tired of yelling at other characters for not doing this, and figured if I couldn't make them listen…I'd create my own characters who did. This particular device is mostly present in a scene with one of my characters and some rather unsavoury individuals which I won't spoil however I can describe the particular action that I'm talking about. In this scene, the main character is in a spot of trouble and has to fight their way out of it, and does so by taking every opportunity to kick, scratch, buck away…you name it. In the end, they escape by kicking a rather intimidating man in a sensitive area, which I included deliberately because one thing I never used to understand in books and movies was why did they ever fight by any rules?
I get that when you're learning a self defence, there is etiquette and a certain way you spar, that makes sense because it's for safety, but when you're in a life or death situation, and fighting outside of those rules can mean your survival…why doesn't the main character? I think when your only other option is to be captured, or killed, it's a more realistic depiction of desperation and human nature to make the character in question fight as questionably and as messily as they can in that moment, because I think that's what someone would do to survive. So yeah, I had one of my characters monologue back at the villain, then kick them between the legs and run whilst they were on the floor…because I figured they're desperate, and in a point of their journey where not throwing that punch or kick is the difference between the bad guy winning and the good guy dying.
So yeah, those were some key nitty and gritty bits of humanity I wanted to get across in my novels. Things that real, mortal, messy people do that I was frustrated I never saw elsewhere. What do you think?
Till next time!
Ani.
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