Codename: Edgy: It is my great pleasure to introduce...

I've been thinking about introducing characters a lot recently. Having finished the pages threatened out of my by one of my outer demons, I'm now faced with an interesting toughie. The chapter I submitted to the group this last time had tolerable gimongous alterations done to it, which have set the novel on a new and, I think, pretty good track. And, as an effect, chapter two needs to be rewritten--then chaps three plus need to actually be written, but...yeah, anyway. The toughie is interesting because chapter two needs a lot less rewriting than chapter one needed. Chapter two was actually there first, and since its original form--which was sort of a vanilla read--it's been in a shape, essentially, which quite pleases me. The tone has been darkened, bad dreams added and so on, but the arc and thread and all haven't changed a lot.

Now that I've changed my intentions from series of short stories to novel, it's freed up my meander instinct quite a lot. I'm still trying to keep things brief and edgy, but I have, because it's a novel, the freedom to have long introductions and things in the middle. And consequently, one character in a draft of chapter three had an introduction several scenes, some five pages perhaps, long. Maybe more. Maybe ten pages. I don't know. I could have waxed eloquent. It was a fun bunch of scenes to write. It's strange, though, but pretty cool, considering that character is less intriguing to me than a character who features prominently in chapter two, who hasn't got much of an introduction.

Chapter two character is meant to be frightening. For his/her introduction, I pretty much want to depict paranoia with the character absent from the scene or scenes. A boding style of fing. A general sort of boding, just an unsettlement.

I look forward to trying it. Though I'm unsure how to start. It's a little bit difficult for me to think of ways to just spontaneously bring about a feeling of unrest. I can conjure in my mind visuals of how the scene or scenes would begin if it or they were in a movie. Which only helps me to a point. Although.... Hmm...

So my goal for tomorrow/this coming week: bode. Thoroughly scare the bejeezus out of the group of folks being scared by chapter two character, keep them on edge and paranoid, then go BOO! at them....

Huh, put like that, it doesn't sound so hard.