Blog survey for writers: 10. What are some really weird situations your characters have been in?

Sometimes, when I was younger I had a habit of making situations really weird by mixing comedic elements with serious scenes. The problem was that I didn't really know how to do it skillfully yet. This was especially evident in my impro comic with my friend, because we both had this habit.

There was a time in the comic when Viola and Keller were participating in a singing contest their school held (which was weird on its own right because the prize was an actual recording contract...) and while Viola was watching Keller's performance, thinking how good she was, she saw a faint image of angel wings behind Keller. And then suddenly, surprise: Time stopped! And for some reason Viola was the only one whose time didn't stop. And she saw an image of a moon looming above her, and it started talking to Viola, saying that it was Keller's "sign" and had come to warn her.

Um... Some supernatural power, huh? Couldn't even come to the right person at the right time.

This was from my friend's pen, but I made this whole thing even weirder. Because I made the sign reappear when the girls were flying towards the cursed mountain in some freaky big soap bubbles. (Unexplained, of course.) And the sign told Keller that she had only two weeks left to live as a human if the girls didn't hurry up and complete their mission in that time!

Yeah, I had probably started to feel self-conscious about how little the characters actually did for their magical mission, so I wanted to speed things up. It sure worked, but looking back to it the scene with Keller floating in a bubble listening to her death sentence from a moon is pretty weird.


But it's not like my stories haven't been weird since then.

In my university years' writing project "Ashland" the characters were visiting a neighbour town when they passed by a haunted house, and heard the ghost claimed to be someone they knew very well, and who shouldn't have been anywhere nearby, so that was pretty weird.

Once one of them had to dance with another character and spin her around until she fainted, because she was possessed by a weird demon.

I've also drawn a good amount of character meme based situations for these characters for fun, and many of those are pretty weird and funny. Maybe not so much if you don't know the characters, but oh well, I'll share some of them anyway...

I drew these, because I like trolling on my characters' personalities and there isn't always enough room for that when you're telling a "serious" story.

Anyway, this is what I had on top of my mind, so let's leave it at this.

Blog survey for writers: 9. How do you get ideas for your characters?

My process of creating characters is very much unconscious, but they are usually one of the first ideas I have for a story's world. I'm conscious of someone being there, that I'm looking at this new paracosm through the eyes of someone specific, an individual. If you know about MBTI and cognitive functions, it has been said that for INFJs the creative process is often unconscious and that's why they feel almost like they aren't responsible for what they create.

Well, that happens to be exactly the case for me. I don't feel like I'm doing anything to create my characters. One day they just are there. It's like they already exist, they catch my interest. Some theme, or incident, or something made my mind wander where they already were and that's why I could find them.

It's almost like meeting a person in this reality. What I know first might be things like their name, their looks, the general air about them, their biggest obsession or how they treat other people. Something like that. To know more, I have to get to know them, either by perceiving, interacting, or listening them tell me.

Fictional characters are like that too. I have to write their story to get to know them in a level as deep as I desire to.

The characters are my window to their world and their story. While I learn about their world and story through their eyes, I also learn about them according to the world around them. When the story has been in my mind for a long time, I usually have a good idea about my character's reactions and opinions about things, but even so, to know what the character is going to do in a specific situation, I always have to write it. It's not uncommon for my character to make a completely different decision in their story, from what I thought they would, because I couldn't yet see all the variables that affected the character's decision in the specific scenario that I ended up writing.

So, as you can probably guess I'm one big discovery writer. I try to outline sometimes, with big projects, but I can't help it, it never turns out like the outline! It's just impossible to know exactly what the characters are going to do before the story actually gets there!

So, in short my characters seem to come to me out of nowhere, and they get fleshed out in writing only.

However, I'm not that unconscious of my internal processes anymore, that I would believe the characters actually come out of nowhere. I guess it would be more accurate to say that by brain synthesizes them from all the knowledge I have gathered about human mind, behavior, personality etc. Knowing this, I still feel like they are more than the sum of their parts.

I guess how I think that differs from some other styles of creating a character, is that I still don't consciously create them. I don't make lists of their interests or characteristics, or family backgrounds, I let those things come to me in the story. I don't plan their role in the story from beginning to end, I let that unfold before me. I also don't get my ideas from any specific source, like a person I know. I don't base the characters on anyone.

(Well, I have, a couple of times, when I was requested to do so, but even then, deep down, I never thought that the character was that person, just similar to them in some major aspects, so the character ended up being their own person anyway and having characteristics the inspiration didn't have and making decisions they never would have. I think it would be very hard for me the recreate someone entirely, because my mind just isn't wired that way. Fictional characters are as unique to me as "real" people.)

Even though there are no specific sources where my character would spring from, there definitely are specific thoughts or ideas that come to my head, and because I was thinking them, these characters specifically came to me, and not some other characters. Let's take an obvious example: I never would've written an explicitly asexual character if I hadn't discovered asexuality. That's pretty straightforward. But how I think the characters come to me, is a process of more subtle and smaller thoughts and ideas.

In the end, it's a web. It's impossible to say, whether the character is like this because the story needed them to be that way for me to be able to tell it, or if the story is that way, because the character couldn't have made any other choices because of who they are. Everything is connected to everything. It's a whole, more than the answer of a math equation. The character, and the story.

Sometimes, of course, I can pin point that "I probably ended up writing a character who had this trait because I had seen or heard this thing." But that's not the norm. Most often I couldn't tell which came first, the egg or the chicken. I think the human brain is capable of so much more than A-> B -> C kind of thinking. I think it's more often that all these things that are enough for the character to be a person, just come to me at the same time. Or that this thing and that thing that resonated with an outside thing were already in me, and they together resulted in a character, so it's impossible to say which one was the main reason, or there first, or the last nail.

I'm rambling.

Let's look at some characters.

This is Gemma. She only came to me in one sentence, one encounter with one of the main characters. She was not pleasant at all, and I wasn't that interested in her in the beginning, but then it became apparent to me why she acted the way she did and how her life story had led her to that point, and she became one of the dearest faces to me in that world.

This is Sierra. She started out as a sick girl I didn't really know because she spent most of the time sleeping. But when she got better she became an important part of the story, and her story is everything but finished, so I continue to learn new things about her personality. 

These are Cherry and Forrest. I needed a detective who would be unable to solve the crime, and a detective who could, and these two came to me. Their individual strengths and weakness determined how the mystery unfolded.

This is Ririn. She's the character who was actually based on someone, but soon enough started to live her own life and oh my, did her and her friends adventures become a long story.

Derek is one of the characters that I can't say I like, but for some reason he insists on appearing in the story, over and over again. What can I do.

Hart is one of my most beloved characters. He's in a story with multiple viewpoint characters but he's sort of my default viewpoint, and I love looking at the other characters through his warm, fatherly, if often misguided eyes.

I guess what I'm saying is I discover characters in different points of the story and my initial thoughts about them may not always be right or fair to them. But I'll always get to know them more when I write more.

I love that they keep surprising me.

Blog survey for writers: 8. What's your favorite genre to write? To read?

So, I guess I'm back from a year's hiatus. I didn't plan it, and I have no other excuse than I didn't feel like blogging. My last year of university was eventful, sometimes a little too much so, and my attention was everywhere else but this blog. But, I have graduated now, with a master's degree in theology. Maybe I will write a couple of blog posts about last year, to finally process what has happened, but this time I'm starting with something simple and totally inside my comfort zone.

So, continuing my old survey:

My favorite genre to write and read falls somewhere in the realm of speculative fiction. It's fantasy-esque, SF-esque, historical-esque, mystery-esque, and preferably more like an exploration of characters and relationships, often a little lighter on the plot side (not always) than a fast paced and action packed thriller. I enjoy freedom and room for interpretation with things like time and place, but am meticulous with characterization and interaction.

I guess I could just call it fantasy, but that would be misleading. Because I'm not necessarily into it for the things most often associated with the fantasy genre. Sure, I sometimes enjoy world building, but I prefer to let it a bit more (sometimes a lot more) loose than most fantasy does. And I love magic, but my attention is more in coming up with everyday uses of it, small and handy stuff, than epic world shaking spells. That being said, I do go against these preferences from time to time.

I guess my genre could be called something like "elaborate fairy tale". Haha. Since I don't know if there is an actual word for the subgenre I mostly write in. I would guess no, since I don't think I find books like mine sitting on every other corner. Or maybe I am always looking from the wrong places. I would like to read more stories from this narrow category... In that aspect I'm pretty simple. I like to read what I like to write.

Here's a picture from my most fantasy-loyal story, to describe what most of my stories are like. The character is the only clearly defined thing, and the focus of the story. Everything else is the background, symbolic, up for interpretation and even surrealistic.

If you have any books in mind that sound like this, would you please be kind enough to point me in their direction? Thank you!

Blog survey for writers: 7. Music

7. Do you listen to music while you write? What kind? Are there any songs you like to relate/apply to your characters?

I don't think I could listen to any songs that have lyrics while I'm writing, and usually I concentrate better when I'm not listening to anything at all, but I have occasionally listened to instrumental music. Only when I'm really deep, like so inside the scene, that anything external will just become a part of it. Then I can listen to instrumental music that fits the mood. And only with really intense scenes. Like a werewolf hunt.

I definitely do associate songs with my (and other people's!) characters all the time everywhere. I don't think I can naturally listen to a song without a viewpoint of a fictional character. Yep. That's how hopeless I am. Of course I can make the songs about something else if I want but I have to make a conscious choice to do that. And why would I do that, when this is just how I get the most out of music? Fictional angles happen naturally. For every song, there's just definitely going to be a fictional character who could sing it, and I don't have to do anything to find them, just listen to music and they will come.

I've even made a game out of this, that I sometimes play with my roommate. It's the best when you find songs that you know are meant to mean something entirely different but all the same it makes complete sense from the point of view of your character. Most words just have a completely different meaning. I'm a very metaphorical person, but for some reason it makes me grin extra wide when something that is supposed to be metaphorical in the song, becomes literal through a character's eyes.

Out of my characters I've only really introduced ”Four Colours” in this blog, so I'll list some songs I associate with them.

The general feel-good song for the whole thing:

Viola songs:

Keller songs:

Sini songs:

Jasmin songs:

Ater:

Alex:

There's some. :D

Blog survey for writers: 6. Where, when and with what

6. Where are you most comfortable writing? At what time of day? Computer or good ol' pen and paper?

Short answer: In my room, at night, on my laptop.

Long answer: I don't think my comfortableness has anything specific to do with my room, I just need a place where I can focus. And it's not usually a place with other people there, because they would get my attention way too much. Sometimes, when I'm already in a great flow I can block out pretty much any sensory information and write anywhere but not on an average day. People are far too interesting.

Specifically, I usually write on my bed rather than the desk.

Sometimes I do get fed up with my room though, and that's when I go to the library. I can usually find a quiet enough corner there and when I'm not in the writing mood exactly, going somewhere specifically to write, helps me get over the difficulties.

One of my favourite spots.

I write any time of the day I can, but it's true most of my writing and the best of my writing has probably always been done at night. That's when I usually feel my best in general. My natural waking hours seem to be something like from 12 am to 3 am, whenever I don't have school. Morning is probably the least likely time for me to write, but I remember a few times I've miraculously gotten up early and started writing, and then it's been great. But it's really rare. When I don't have school and I get immersed in writing I write pretty much all the time, barely eat or sleep, untill I'm done with what I want to finish (but that usually lasts max three days).

I write on a computer because it's easier to edit on it. It took me a lot of time to get used to it, though. I prefered pen and a notebook untill my first year of high school when I decided I couldn't keep it that way forever. Now I'm fully in tune with the computer.

Blog survey for writers: 5. Youngest and oldest characters

5. By age, who is your youngest character? Oldest? How about ”youngest” and ”oldest” in terms of when you created them?

I have a few characters I've written about before they were born so one of them has to be the youngest but I'm not sure how to decide that. So, meet one of them, Lila.

She's the one on the left. I don't want to say much about her since I have high hopes she'll end up between covers some day. But let's just say she's a strong mage with peculiar magic and a spicy personality.

The oldest one is just as hard to know, since I have a few characters who've lived multiple lives (and there could be more of them than just the ones they remember).

If I count together the known lives, then my oldest character is Deimos from Four Colours, I guess. I don't know his age precisely but it's somewhere between 450-530 years.

 
 

If I'm only allowed to count the age achived during one life then the oldest is Nene, a half giant I wrote a short story about. She's 423 by the end of the story.

My newest character then, would be Ia. I know next to nothing about her, except that she's the neighbour of my newest protagonist Jaro, and I have a vague idea about her role in the story but I haven't actually even mentioned her in it yet. I think she'll show me more soon, though.

And it's impossible to know who was actually my first character, so I'll go with the oldest that I still write about. And, they're actually all the Four Colours, since they were created at the same time.

Blog survey for writers: 4. Your first story

4. Tell us about one of your first stories/characters!

I don't remember what my first story ever was. Actually, I'm not even sure what counts as a first, and I have trouble deciding between the few that could be ”one of the first”, so I will write about the first ”novel” that I finished, since this question seems vague enough. I've never let anyone read it, and I'm not planning to, but it might be pretty hilarious to analyze now.

It's called Linnea of Senjova and it's a ballet story. It totally rips off from Ballet for Drina by Jean Estoril (=Mabel Esther Allan). Those were my favourite ballet books when I was a pre-teen (kind of still are) and I must have read them all five times before elementary school ended. Since then, I have started many ballet stories, at some point I probably wrote about nothing else, but Linnea was the first long one I finished, at the end of middle school.

It's probably a pretty boring story for anyone who is not interested in ballet. I fell in love with ballet when I was, like, five, and never fell out. So the story reads like that. You know, sometimes you come across stories that can make a boring subject really relatable, it seems like it's written for anyone, even though it's about an obsession the characters have that the reader might not. This is not that kind of story. It's just something that I, as a Betty Bunhead, wrote for myself.

Here's Linnea, with the silly notes I always made for every character at the age I wrote this...

So um... Linnea is the stereotypical protagonist. The young girl who suffers from incurable ballet fever, shows high reluctance to do anything that doesn't involve ballet, and is ridiculously career oriented at age eleven. That's probably the most ridiculous thing about this story. Completely unrealistic number of eleven-year-olds who know they want nothing more than to be a dancer, and are so willing to take risks and make sacrifices for it. Eh... actually the characters are way too mature for their age in many other ways too. I probably should've at least made them middle schoolers but hey I blame Drina (who's story starts when she's ten). :D

So it's a story about a bunch of bunheads. Friends, bullies, rivals. The uphill battle of trying to fit ballet together with school, relationships and free time. The joy and pain of knowing what you want at a young age. The everyday classes, the performances, auditions.

Linnea's friend Rosa.

Of course, Linnea is one of the most talented dancers in her age group and on top of that she has The Something no one can quite explain (=Protagonist Powers) but what always makes her stand out from the rest. Basically it's the perfect combination of everything from technique to charisma. It's what everyone is always looking for in ballet stories, so of course I had to write about that ideal. Plus I didn't want to write about a relatable character. I didn't want to write about someone who had weak ankles, stiff heels, and too long toes. I wanted to write about someone inspiring, and yes, at that age, it was someone ideal. Not a Mary Sue exactly, but someone who could actually meet the inhuman requirements to become a ballet dancer. I guess this is the aspect that makes Linnea the most like Drina.

Other than that, I mostly ripped off the atmosphere from Drina, (It's clearly more British than Finnish, for example...) not so much the plot. It's kind of surprizing to me now, but Linnea's story is way less sensationalistic. There are no dead parents who were secret ballet celebrities without their off-spring knowing about it. No one has to do ballet in secret from their parents. No one is a favourite to some celebrity. No one does anything ”bigger” than getting in to a good ballet school. The biggest injuries are twisted ankles. The biggest show case is a small folk festival in Estonia. What causes the most drama is that Linnea and her ”Draco Malfoy” are in the same class at school.

Linnea's rival Netta.

The story does include a huge number of genre clichés, though, and some of them multiple times, such as:

• Someone getting injured right before a show
• Accidentally running into your celebrity hero during a weak moment and getting inspired
• The bully is the biggest challenger of the main character
• The bully has an untalented minion who only follows the bully for status
• The main character having to choose between two talents while the choice is freakishly obvious all the time
• Deliberately being late in order to give your role to a hardworking understudy
• The main character's family situation getting between them and their dream
• The Important People accidentally seeing the main character at the right moment
• The big slump after the perfect performance since ”nothing can ever be as perfect”
• The best friend is ultimately the second best

The story is pretty down to earth with those clichés too... but they are there.

Even though this story is pretty horrible, it's kind of nice to see I wasn't such a different kind of writer back then. Just a lot worse. It's still about the same things I like to write about now. It's about everyday life, relationships, and personal growth. I like to find the ”magic” in the ordinary, wander in the web of relationships, and go through the highs and lows with a character trying to achive their dream.

Some of my favourite things to write in Linnea were:

• Classroom scenes. Probably the least interesting for anyone who's not into ballet but I really liked to spent time describing the mundane barre work and just how everyone is doing in class in general. Describing it from the point of view of different characters is fun, I liked to switch between the students and the teachers.
• The performances. I'm a sucker for ”stage magic”. I don't know if I could describe it at all, but it's always there. Everything is just a little bit more magical on stage, or behind the stage, in the middle of the costumes, the stage smoke, the dark corners, and storages...
• When something clicks in a character's brain and their dancing is taken to a new level, or they solve a major problem in one area of dancing.
• Psychological loops. I'm not sure why they are so satisfying to write. Maybe because the answer to them is always so simple, and when the character gets out of the loop, it's like enlightenment to them? Like when Linnea thought she was falling behind because everything felt so hard, but the truth was her physical awareness had become more detailed and everyone else thought she was improving.
• Linnea skating with her neighbour Kim (also a ballet dancer) and how they developed their own unorthodox ice ballet for fun. (Neither had ever really taken skating lessons.) And how skating together all their chilhood helped them when they started doing pas de deux in ballet class.
• Whenever Linnea went to a quiet place with no one around, like a forest, and started dancing just for herself.
• When Linnea and her friend Rosa practiced together in Rosa's little ”studio” and got lost into coreographing with classic dance music.

Things I'm not proud of:

• Linnea being so morally superior to her bully, Netta. She's too proud to show anger in front of Netta, and she feels like she's winning if she treats Netta well, when Netta treats her badly, but I haven't written that clearly enough. It just reads like Linnea is always right.
• Kim being so mature about his crush on Linnea. I mean he's barely 13 at the time, but he never blushes in front of her, never acts weird, he seems to be at complete peace about keeping it a secret all the time. I'm not saying he can't be mature, it's just that he seems to control his feelings a bit too well. He should be allowed to be at least a little bit more awkward about it.
• The way I erased the possibility of competition between Rosa and Linnea. They were best friends, so apparently I didn't want them to compete. It's made clear indirectly that Linnea would win in the end because Rosa isn't as artistic on stage, but everytime there's a role they both want, or some kind of evaluation, there's an exuse why the other can't do it, or isn't at their best. Like when Linnea twisted her ankle right before they were both auditioning for a solo, and then Rosa was inspired to get it for both of them. They never succeed at each other's expence.
• Rosa and her crush Jori. It's the weakest relationship in the story and their dating seems shallow. I probably wasn't that interested in Jori as a character, and so their relationship didn't become much more than something to give Rosa a distraction from dancing.
• Too many lucky coincidences. For everyone. Like Kim and Linnea getting to talk to their favourite dancer just because he happened to be passing through their town, and walk by the lake they were skating at, and notice they must be dancers and drop to say hi.
• Netta the bully never does anything selfless. I guess it's understandable since she's only shown through the eyes of Linnea, Kim and Rosa, who hate her, but even so, there should be times when they'd see Netta might not be all bad.

Okay, it was pretty interesting for me to look back at this. There's things I like under the trash and it certainly was fun to write at the time. I'd still like to write a ballet story in the same style with some significant improvements. But I guess that's not one of my priorities at the moment, so I'll see about that.

Blog survey for writers: 3. Names

3. How do you come up with names--for characters, and for places if you're writing about fictional places?

With characters, they often come out of nowhere, just like the characters themselves. It's like they already exist. At least when it matters, I should say. I don't think I've ever come up with, at least, a main character without already knowing their name. They just sound right and I don't really have to think about them. (Except a couple of times when I've had to change the name because of a too strong association. Argh, that's REALLY hard for me. It feels like I'm beating my mind up.)

Examples of characters who were ”born” with their name:

Ririn and Evangelica from "Ashland".

Dina from "Anem".

Then, sometimes I do have to decide names for less essential characters. And I always have to do it with places. They never seem obvious to me and if someone looked close enough, I bet they could tell that I find naming places the least interesting.

I don't have an actual plan for this. Well, I don't have much of a plan with anything regarding writing. I go with the flow. But here are some ways the names come to me:

1. Wait. Just wait long enough and a name will pop up. Once it does, it's usually the right one. Possibly several but the choice never seems hard for me. I named a character "Leco", because he just sounded like a Leco, and that's how it usually goes.

2. Let whatever names you remember come to your mind and a bell will ring once it sounds good. If it's a fantasy story, just alter it a bit to fit the universe. I like to use names that have a familiar sound. I named a character "Nia" and it came from "Nea" (which is a popular name in Finland).

3. Look around, find text, and start switching the syllables around. If it doesn't work, start changing letters. At some point, something will sound like a name. Once I named a castle "Labelend" because there was "Yellow Label Tea" on my table.

That's pretty much all there is to it.

Blog survey for writers: 2. Gender

2. What gender do you prefer to have as a protagonist? If you have no preference, what gender do you most often have as a protagonist?

No preference. I don't think I've ever counted this either. So, let's see. I guess I'll count the protagonists from all the projects that currently seem to have a future. Most of them are still in progress, or I'm rewriting them. Not counting short stories.

Male:

• Valter Forrest, originally from a silly school play called Case Casanova, then recreated as a detective novel with fantasy elements. On hiatus, because I decided in high school that I wasn't mature enough to write it the way I wanted it to be. I was definitely right, but the characters in it are dear to me, and I think that in a few years I could write it again.
  
  
• Roux, from a draft currently titled Warlock. It's a very surrealistic story about love in a world where life and death work quite differently than in ours.

• Elias, from a speculative story called Locks, for now. He's a high school teacher who comes across a group of students who seem to have formed some kind of a cult.
  
  
• Jaro, my first asexual protagonist from a story I've working titled Closet. Set in modern world with no speculative elements (rare for me). It's about the everyday life and relationships of a few high school kids. Most of them are LGBT+ in one way or another.

Valter Forrest and his rival/partner Cherry.

Female:

• Sessa, from a middle grade kind of novel with a title I'm not sure how to translate well. It's a linguistic reference to the Finnish name for Sleeping Beauty. It's about a girl who attends a magical ballet school. I wrote this in high school and it's crap but I want to write it again.

• Dina, and Semira from Anem, the only dystopian and the only religion themed story I've ever written. They live in a medieval-esque village overruled by religious elite.

• Viola, from the first title, Villa Viola, in what I've planned to be a series (I haven't started writing the others yet though), based on an exchange comic I drew with my friend as a kid. Set in a world where people go about their lives based on strong intuition, which Viola has trouble relating to.
  
  
• Lilea, from another magical school story, also called Lilea, since I discovered that Lucky Islands was a bad name. (Don't worry, it's not like Harry Potter.) The students learn magic through music and Lilea is not very interested in her instrument.
  
  
  
  

Dina, having a weak moment. Overly dramatic, I know...

Non-binary:

• Yene, from a scifi novella Miss Anti-luck about a bunch of people sent to do community service in an alternate universe.
  
  
• Felix, from my only historical story ever, called Mimina Optimus Maximus. It's about a roman theather troupe and originally written with a girl called Mimina as the protagonist, but later I felt like it was better from Felix's viewpoint.

Mixed:

• Then there's my massive fantasy project currently named Ashland, with three female protagonists Sofie (though she's really gender apathetic), Evangelica and Ririn, and one male protagonist Hart, in its newest version. Before rewriting, I had written two novels in this series with so many viewpoint characters it was really hard to draw the line between protagonists and supporting characters, so I don't really know how to count them.

• Jade and Oliver, from an exchange story of the same name (this time, written) with the same friend I drew the exchange comic with. Written in the middle of Twilight hype. We wanted to write... a somewhat different kind of paranormal romance. All the ideas weren't half bad, so I have the permission to rewrite this story as well.
  
  

Sofie, Evangelica and Ririn.

So, it looks pretty even for male and female. A few more female protagonists but like I said, there's no preference related reason behind it, so I guess it's just random. Everyone just pops up in my head the way they do.

Blog survey for writers: 1. Your favourite project

I found this survey when this inspiring person posted a video about it. I got exited, so I guess this blog will be all about too much information about my writing for a while. :D I don't feel like trying to answer briefly, so today I only take the first question:

1. Tell us about your favorite writing project/universe that you've worked with and why.

Oh my. The hard questions first I guess.

Okay, if I absolutely had to choose, like if I was allowed to write in only one universe for the rest of my life... It would be a comic called ”Four Colours”. Or rather, what started as a comic that I drew with one of my oldest friends from the end of elementary school until high school. Since then the story has actually developed multiple universes in my head and I have my friend's permission to recreate it in book from. Currently it's not an active project but it's in my mind a lot.

Obviously, the comic isn't very good, at least from the perspective of someone who is serious about writing. I mean we started it when we were 12, had no script, and exchanged a few pages of our stream-of-consciousness doodling at a time (though the ”few pages” turned into a few dozen pages in a couple of years, especially for me). The other always continued where the other stopped, without any hint about how we had thought the story would develop, so it has taken many, many, weird, unexpected turns of events which makes the overall plot convoluted at best. It's heavily influenced by the Italian comic called W.i.t.c.h., both the story and the drawing style, for both of us. For my friend I guess Digimon was the other series her art was most influenced by. And from my part there's borderline plagiarism (picture-wise) from certain shoujo mangas I had just found as my inspiration and sometimes wanted to use for reference to get certain poses anatomically right.

Even so, this was the story that inspired me the most through my teenage years and it was by far the longest of my stories at the time. (Over 500 comic pages when it went on hiatus in 2010.) It was while drawing this comic that I first experienced I was in perfect flow with the story, like there was no pen and paper between my inner world and its expression. The first time I stayed up an entire night drawing, was with this comic too. (40 pages in 14 hours or so.) It was also the first time I got to experience someone really loving what I came up with, and excitedly waiting for me to draw more. All of these are feelings that nothing can compare to.

Also, I don't think I can do anything like this ever again. I mean, I'm interested in writing with a partner but I don't think there's any chance I could do it like this anymore. I take my characters far too seriously for it: I couldn't create a story by taking turns anymore. I would have to know that we agree about everything regarding the characters and the plot. This of course, takes away the surprise element, which I loved when I drew this comic with my friend, but nowadays I just take writing too seriously to do it the way we did. (The exception would be if we decided to continue with my friend for fun. We've already spent so many years drawing these characters that I think we both have a clear enough sense of who they are.)

Ahem, what is this comic really about then? As you might have guessed, (if you know anything about W.i.t.c.h) it's about a group of girls with magical powers. It's mostly set in our modern world.

Meet the Four Colours:

Their names mean their signature colours (with slight variation, in Finnish) with a fail. We thought there was a colour called ”jasmine red” at the time. Turns out there isn't. Oh well. (This mistake inspired a short story were the colour ”jasmine red” is created but unfortunately I never finished it.) Originally, Sini and Keller were my designs, and Viola and Jasmin were my friend's, but for a long time it has felt like they're all equally from both's pen.

The girls have pretty nonsensical colour related powers and outfits. They also have their signature symbols. They yell a lot of nonsense when they use their magical abilities. None of it was planned to function effectively, it's basically all there to support the image we wanted to(?) create for them as characters.

The colours we chose for them didn't go the most stereotypical way, though. Blue is often associated with wisdom, understanding and some kind of otherworldliness. Our Miss Blue is rather head-strong, somewhat simple-minded, and really down to earth. Purple is usually somewhat mysterious, borderline dark, maybe even poisonous, but our ”Viola” is the jester of the group, the most energetic, wild and ”innocent” by nature. I think that's usually what yellow represents, but our yellow character, Keller, is the gentle and sort of motherly empath of the cast. Red is often the colour of power and leadership, and though there isn't clearly anyone with the most dominant personality, if I had to choose, it still probably wouldn't be Jasmin. She's a pretty sensitive and introverted character, who generally avoids conflict, even if she's inflexible at times.

The premise of the story was that these four girls got a mission from a supernatural being, to save a small village by a mountain, tormented by a magical illness. The girls were to fight their way to the mountain, guarded by evil forces, and reach the top of it, where they would unite their magical powers and clear the village from the illness.

(Yes, this is actually what twelve-year-old kids think is a great plot!) No, it is never explained why there's an illness in the village. No, it's never explained why only the power of these girls can save it. The girls don't even wonder about it. Nor do they give any second thought to whether they should do something like this or not, of course they're all in for putting their lives in danger! (I think this might have something to do with the W.i.t.c.h. influences. It is shown over and over again in W.i.t.c.h. that the chosen ones just can't escape their fate, so maybe we just accepted it so we didn't need to raise the question, haha.)

This, and brief character profiles, were all the planning we did. Then we just started drawing. And oh boy, didn't it get out of hand. Kind of in a good way, from the eyes of someone who loves the story despite its shortcomings.

I think the most endearing thing about this comic is how reluctant both, me and my friend, were to actually move the plot forward and focus on the whole ”fighting evil on a mountain” part of the story. We were clearly more interested in exploring the characters' everyday lives and relationships. The comic is full of magicless everyday side plots, regarding everything from shopping to romance, school concerts to hobbies, parties to family drama. Sure, it's enough that the characters go to the mountain when they feel like ”it's the right time”. It isn't very often, it seems.

Eventually, they do manage to clear the village from the illness. Their next mission is brought on by one of them, Keller, who has turned out to be an angel born on earth, among six other angels she knew in the alternate universe where the angels of this story live. So, Four Colours are up to find those other six, to save them from the fury of a really mysteeeerious guy named Deimos, who's a foster parent to Keller's childhood friend Ater who happens to have a neat amulet which can help find the remaining angels. (Yes.) It sounds really bad like this, but later it is revealed that Deimos is actually one of the seven angels and the explanation why he thinks the other angels have betrayed him and why Ater has this convenient amulet sounds pretty convincing for a 15-year-old me.

After Deimos is redeemed, no new mission is introduced, and the story focuses on the characters everyday lives, before it goes on hiatus.

That's it in a nutshell. I'm not really a fan of nutshell, and I think I'm pretty bad at writing it too, so what I want to do now, is to focus on more detailed aspects of the comic and put parts of it on display.

BEHOLD,

Four Colours: The Weird, Silly and Reoccuring Stuff

• amazing anatomy
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
• it's always raining for no reason
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
• ripping off shoujo manga
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
• the ”evil” takes many half-assed and unexplained forms
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
• it's totally normal for an elementary school to host a singing contest with an actual recording contract as the prize
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
• This pet hawk is never mentioned or seen again after its first appearance
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
• they actually had a hot tub inside a bus
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
• generic villains are generic
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
• angels have elf ears
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
• infodump
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
• a mandatory Digimon haired boy
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
• children are the most perceptive creatures
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
• oh hello Sauron
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
• confessions are always interrupted
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
• characters just can't do without symbols
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
• when you travel by magic... the landing always sucks
  
  
  
  
  
   
• when the stakes are highest, everyone meets in a void
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
• It's okay for the villain to explain their plan... if the characters point the cliché out first
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
• no perspective whatsoever
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
• the running gag of a character who takes everything literally
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
• romantic moments get faded into a joke (my personal sin)
  
  
  
  
  
• the conscience
  
  
  
  
  

Okay, now that I've mocked our precious child enough, let's have some

Moments I Honestly Like:

• The girls don't lose faith when they think one of them is dead
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
• Keller was assigned Viola's guardian angel before being born on earth (only a few months after Viola)
  
  
  
  
  
• Viola meets the human Keller the first time as a kid and thinks her voice sounds familiar
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
• Deimos can't ignore frozen roses, because they remind him of his beloved Radja
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
• Radja is determined to save Deimos and his villain role cracks
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
• The angels are reunited (and off to save Deimos and Radja)
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
• Viola remembers Keller's voice (I know that's completely unrealistic since she was like max four months old but hey magic)
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
• Keller and Viola are left by their band mates and they form a new one that includes all Four Colours
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
• We drew some pages taking turns every panel and it worked surprisingly well
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
• Ater, Deimos, Radja and her little sister Zenja move in together
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
• Sini and Keller regain trust in a dream world
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
• Josh can put it simply enough for Deimos to regain some sanity
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
• Viola wakes up characteristically ungracefully after thinking she just vanished from existence
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
• Keller and Ater bond on the balcony
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
• Alex breaks up with Jasmin undramatically and realistically
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
• Ater and Josh forget for a moment that they aren't on good terms
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
• Viola confesses her love to Alex who shares her feelings
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
• Ater and Alex bond
  
  
  
  
  

Um, why exactly is this my favourite project then?

I admit that some of it has to do with nostalgia. But even more has to do with the characters. I think the characters are great, and that's why they take up a significant portion of space in my head. I wasn't a great writer when I drew this comic, so the story sucks in many ways, but my idea of it doesn't suck. How it should actually go inspires me. How the characters actually are, everything that isn't in the comic already but is a significant part of who I think the characters are, inspires me. How everything will unfold, if I give them a different starting point somewhere else, inspires me. There are themes and concepts in their life that intrigue me. Some of it is (implied) in the story in someways, but not nearly as deep as there would be to tell about it.

I want to see where those themes will take these characters. They are so close to me, they're like thought patterns. And if I let my thoughts on their path, it just doesn't end. They're endless. I could write anything about them and never lose interest. They've been with me constantly longer than any other of my characters. It doesn't matter what kind of story it is, if it's theirs, I'm at home. I guess that's why I would choose them.