Stories

Since I was really small, I've been doing stories in my head. Now that I'm older, I still do stories in my head  (and sometimes with Sorella). I know it sounds a bit dorky, but it's really rather fun. Lately I've been going back to old stories that I completely ruined by kidnapping the characters and running away from the plot and reworking them.

When I get really excited about a story, I share them with Charna. In my experience, there's very little that can compare to the feeling of telling someone a story you've created and having them actually be interested. Charna sat and listened to me for about two and half hours tonight as I shared what I was working on with rapt attention. Not only did she offer ideas, but she also inspired me to start a whole file of character information, family trees, and general knowledge relating to the world.

As corny as it sounds, the story I'm reworking is a vampire one. No, it has nothing to do with Twilight (and it makes me a bit queasy to know I just mentioned that horrible series in the Arcana Files). If it draws from any already created vampire series, it would be Vampire Knight (almost a little too closely in one particular plot line).

My favorite part of writing a story is making the characters. I love flushing out their personalities and then putting them in situations. In some cases, characters happen organically. For example, in this particular story, there are two women, Cornelia and Marion, and I think they might be closet lesbians. I don't know what happened; because I skipped around throughout the story, I don't even have a scene for them meeting or even interacting much, and yet all of a sudden their relationship is much closer than friends (but not quite lovers). It was weird.

When I make characters, they become very real for me. In the stories I create with Sorella, it's almost as if the characters are very close friends we haven't seen in ages. We go to the mall and look at clothes and say, "Wow, that vest is so Remy" or "Aid would wear that". It's really fantastic, considering we haven't worked with those characters in a good three or four months.

I think what I find most interesting, however, is that I still find this story worth working with even though I have a definite ending planned out. Usually, once I know the end, the story dies for me; I don't see the point of filing in the blanks if I know the final result. Maybe the difference is that I'm not creating, but rather twisting, embellishing. I'm still very in love with this story.

This story almost makes me want to write it all down, but we know where that leads. Maybe once I have all my character files, world comments, and plot outlines created, I might do so. I might even share it with you. You never know. Whimsy might be able to get a NaNoWriMo out of me yet ;)

What kind of stories do YOU make up?

Wander safely,
Arc.