A score to settle
…
A writer has to be all people, and, sometimes that can be a difficult remit.
To start with, I know what it’s like to travel, stay, and work in remote, sometimes primitive, locations. Getting there is sometimes a laborious task, battling the weather, the people, and the authorities.
It can be scary at best and terrifying at worst.
And it can be lonely with tenuous links to those back home.
Now, supplant that with the fact you are in that place on false pretenses. You now have to channel all of the above and find a degree of both bravado and confidence, which most times, in reality, you don’t have.
Easy, you say, to write about, because you’re not really there, so you can be whatever you want, do whatever you want.
The problem is, it still has to be believable.
So we’re starting with a character that has a job to do, preferably to be on his own so he doesn’t have to be responsible for anyone he’s working with and can use any or all means available to get the job done.
Still not a difficult portrayal.
Quite often there’s no need to complicate the character by adding a background life, which might mean that he has a wife, which is unlikely if he is an agent provocateur, a girlfriend, which is also unlikely, because as a lover, he doesn’t need the distraction or the problem of keeping secrets, which, because of his job, would be a necessity.
But…
Time to add a complication.
His boss sends an assistant, or partner, one that he’s not told about.
And is a woman.
Suddenly his dynamic changes completely, and we need to have some character analysis, like his attitude to partners, and attitude towards women.
The problem is, how the reader is going to perceive this characterization, and that’s where the job becomes harder because on one hand, you want him to be the epitome of the new age man, and on the other, the hard-nosed agent that has no time for building relationships, and particularly because that person is female.
It’s going to be an interesting dynamic, and now that I have thought about, enough to write this, I can see some elements of his character will need to change.
Needless to say, she is going to be a strong female character, so more about her tomorrow.
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Today’s word count: 1,587 words, for the running total of 5,751.
Thrills, Spills, and just a dash of Romance 