Well, it’s been a quiet week here at Magnuson Studios, so let’s skip the boring bullet-pointed “here’s what I did!” list in favor of one interesting thing I can talk about in a little more depth.
On Tuesday I found a link to a Mary Sue Litmus test, and ran it on Khulad and Roost (figuring they’d be the most likely to cross into Mary Sue territory). They both scored very low, 11 and 14 points respectively (which doesn't mean I can lower my guard, of course ;) )
While taking the litmus test, I found some cool ideas that I’d like to incorporate into the characters. For instance, on Khu’s run I noticed these two questions:
“If your character is all or partially non-human, does xe react in very non-human ways or in ways more appropriate to xir species?” and ”Does your character act in odd and/or awkward ways that other people find strange and confusing rather than endearing, and these people aren't called or portrayed as foolish/stupid because of it?”
Khulad should definitely have picked up some more draconic reactions and “gestures” after being in their care for so long. Despite the dragons’ ability to speak and some of their very human understandings of things, they do have some more animalistic practices and responses; some of their behaviors are probably comparable to a wolf pack (note to self, project for next week…)
In particular I was thinking that Khu ought to growl at the dragons sometimes, just something he learned because the dragons have some wolfy aspects to their society - but his growl’s not going to be very animalistic, it’ll be very human and sort of weird to Casey and Roost and Peter in that sort of ‘I feel embarrassed for you’ kind of way.
Having been in similarly embarrassing situations - from both ends - this should be both a breeze and blush-inducing to write. I’m so looking forward to it!
For Roost, I found a much simpler but important-to-remember question: “If your character has a short temper, sharp wit, snarky attitude, or is otherwise prone to verbal assaults, are the tongue-lashings and/or snarkings xe gives other characters always deserved and/or justified?” I admit, sometimes I lean toward characters reigning their tempers in around their friends, despite the fact that they ought to lose control of it at least once in a while. Something I’m working on, though.
Barely more than a week left until NaNoWriMo! =D So much left to do organization and plotwise, but I’m really itching to just start writing the story already and see what happens!
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