Hates Dirt, Can't Sing
Meet the Character #1: Midnight
In honor of the release of Killing Demons (dark fantasy! letters! dragons!) this month, I’m sharing some of my original notes on the characters in the story. This project has been a long time in the making and it’s fun to look back at where it began!
All writers love paper notes, right? ;)
Midnight is already pseudo-famous as the “demon” in “A Demon Alone,” this Substack’s title. But though she’s been “helping” to run this blog for a year or more, she’s actually been in my mind much longer. The notes above were written probably six years ago, at least.
Killing Demons—Midnight’s story, though six years ago, it didn’t have that title—features a lot of different characters, and they all think that they are the “main” character. That’s the nature of an epistolary (i.e. told through letters, transcripts, and ephemera) story. So when I started out, I made a little sheet like this for twelve of them!
If you can read it, you’ll find a lot of character-creation classics, like the character’s fears, wants, cans, can’ts, and physical details. There are also some fun details like:
not religious, but superstitious
taken in by rogue’s wife and raised in the family business
loves well-cooked kabobs
How many of these details made it into the book, you may wonder? Well, you’ll just have to read it and find out.