My Favorite Character (That I Created)

I originally started this post as part of the previous one, listing off many of my character descriptions from past drafts and matching them with AI images. I realized that this character and story is too special. It's had a long history. I've had many drafts done and the project has evolved so much that it warrants its own post.

There is one project I keep coming back to now and then over the past 20 years. It bubbles to mind often because of the merits (or lack thereof) of the main character. She is a pop star in a dystopian city, in an age where most of the world has flooded from climate change and society has become oppressed by sinister corporate and government powers. The story goes that this character--Mary--will discover that she is genetically engineered and is not a real person. When the city's mayor tries to forcibly marry her, she resists and finds a way to fight back--going so far as rallying a major rebellion against the city and fighting for the poor and downtrodden. It's intended to be a pulpy, action-packed biopunk experience. At the center of it all, Mary is built up to be sexy, sassy, and tough. She has a lot of attitude that often lands her in trouble, leading to unpredictable events (and plenty of funny banter). As I contemplate rewriting the old draft, however, I also plan to put more effort into building an arc: as a pop star, she would start off as conceited, hedonistic, and materialist--the story will naturally humble her, bringing out the stronger qualities of resilience, gratitude, and maybe even some wisdom. On even further reflection, I also realize her arc should incorporate an artistic struggle--she is a musician who becomes a freedom fighter, which is a little ridiculous. It'd be much more creditable to put the focus on music--her commercial music as bland, mass-produced noise, but when she becomes an outsider, she learns the artistic value of music and starts to find her own unique voice.

Originally inspired by Ripley from the Alien movies (especially the fourth movie, where she was a literal clone), this was originally just going to be a weird thriller of some kind, but it evolved into something more involving. At this point, the story falls in line with dystopian sci-fi franchises I love, such as Alita: Battle Angel, the Dark Angel TV series, maybe a hint of Bubblegum Crisis. I often look up to Mary as a composite of Ripley, Sarah Connor from the Terminator movies, Aeon Flux, and the Bride from Kill Bill--all hardened survivors who endure much trauma and loss before finding a fighting spirit. Heck, there might even be a hint of Barb Wire in there. However, recent drafts may also factor in the characteristics of real-life divas like Madonna, Britney Spears, or Lady Gaga.

Going back to the oldest draft I have, I started to find some kind of stride by incorporating a city setting. The first attempt at a draft (dated 2004) looked like this:

Mary took a shower and had a light breakfast. She took some hormonal medicine, prescribed to her ever since she was a teenager. Without it, she would be bombarded with uncontrollable impulses of lust and desire.

She groomed herself in front of the mirror meticulously, and regarded herself. She was twenty-seven years old, but still looked to be twenty-four. She had long black hair that came down to the small of her back. Her eyes were bright blue, and she had long thin eyebrows arched over them. She was slim, but strong. Above all, she was highly attractive.

The problematic patterns of my older writing stand out poorly here: very simple descriptions that tell more and show less. Explicitly describing her age is goofy here, especially since she's described as looking three years younger than she is, but a three-year difference is not really that noticeable on anybody. This description stems from her looking into a mirror--this is a trope that's overused and I'm a bit ashamed to have used it here. Worst of all though is the last line--she was highly attractive. The adjective is useless, but the sentence overall is pure telling--the description itself should have done all the work to show us how she's "beautiful." It also doesn't help that this opening is as boring as they come--the story begins with Mary literally waking up and going through her whole "slice of life." She's not a pop diva in this draft either--she's a dockworker.

One attempted draft (dated 2005) started the story off in a totally different place--it appeared to start at the end, with Mary captured and brought before her creator, with the intention to jump back to the beginning in the next chapter and tell everything up to that point. This is a technique I like and it can work in some stories--it could even work with this one. Over time though, I felt that a better hook can be found by simply starting from the beginning.

In this draft, Mary is introduced this way:

The guards forced the prisoner to sit down in front of a black desk; she glowered at David with wicked blue eyes.  At the age of twenty seven, she was remarkably gorgeous; her black hair was soft and shiny, her figure was slim but extraordinarily curvy, and her face was long but supple.  Even with the bruises and cuts she had on her face and arms, she was still beautiful.

It's maybe a little exploitative to start off with Mary in this powerless and injured state. Sadly though, my writing style was still at its weakest, still hinging on too many weak descriptors, weak adjectives, and vague terms. Neither of these drafts went far because I didn't know where I was going with them.

I had another draft around the same timeframe that started this story off in yet another direction--with Mary being experimented on in a genetics lab. However, the description I used for Mary is the same text as the above--I merely recycled it from the older draft.

Finally, in 2012 I had a complete draft finished, and this is where I made the defining choices to start Mary off as a pop star. Her initial appearance in the first chapter has no description to start with--it kicks off with her singing in a concert, with just a couple of scattered details (with a passing line like "she pranced giddily around the stage, whipping her golden hair and spraying her sweat into the audience"). Only after the concert did I jot down the following description:

Without answering, Mary slammed the door in Lester’s face, before sitting down in front of the mirror and undressing. The water she poured on herself during the show made her blonde hair uneven, but it maintained its most basic shape and sheen. The makeup on her face had worn off, revealing the pores of her face. Otherwise, she was every bit as desirable and exotic of a woman as ever existed. Draped down her shoulder blades, her hair was long and soft. Her face was narrow, with soft cheeks and a moderate-sized nose. Her eyes were dark, with a seductive gleam, and were further accentuated by her moderate-sized eye-brows. Her lips were luscious and full. Her body was slim, curvy, and her breasts were well-endowed. She had always known that she was perfectly beautiful; the crowd’s obsession affirmed her conceit, for she knew that they agreed and desired her.

Despite everything, this writing leaves much to be desired. It is still very on-the-nose, tells more and shows less. It still uses the mirror cliche--sorta. 

Obviously, I made the choice to turn this character into a blonde. However, when she endures a procedure that changes her DNA, her hair will turn to black, like in these previous images. The changes in appearance is meant to reflect her change from a naive pop star to a jaded freedom fighter. I find that changes like this can add a certain dynamic to the story that I don't often see--characters don't have to remain the same throughout the whole story, they can grow old and change their appearances on purpose. This can be a natural consequence of time, or caused by the story's events. In my rewriting plans, I intend to also have this character go through breast reduction surgery--it would be her way of combatting the objectivation she otherwise faces throughout the story (and, in itself this would be a theme worth exploring in context of mass media).

In this day and age, a character changing gender or body type would also not be unheard of. There is dramatic potential in these kinds of developments. The film Predestination, and the original Heinlein story its based on, is one example of a story that hinges on these types of changes. As I contemplate potential sequels for this story, the possibility exists that clones of Mary could have different genders.

Same character, different looks.

Later drafts I've attempted had the opening scene changed a bit, and Mary's initial description appears like this (coinciding with her manager's description too).

It wouldn’t have been the first or last time Mary would have to deal with overzealous fans, but if anything happened now it wouldn’t all be her fault. Crossing her arms, she glared at her manager. Sweat glistened off his round forehead, while his bulbous body hustled from the control booth towards her. He flapped his meaty hand, gesturing for her to follow him. “Mary, we got to go now!”

She flicked her head towards the stage, and thick strands of wet golden hair bounced off her shoulders. Her eyes—the shape and color of almonds—remained locked on the fat idiot before her. “Don’t you hear all that, Lester? The show’s got to go on.”

It's a greater attempt to sprinkle the details around instead of dumping them all in one place. Also a bigger emphasis on the verbs and showing details in action. I think the dialogue and subtle gestures go a longer way in describing Mary than most of the previous paragraphs I've penned over the years. There's even a little bit of Mary's signature sass leaking into the narrative prose, which is ideal.

In the redraft, after Mary endures genetic conditioning and brainwashing (which is every bit as creepy and unnerving as it sounds), her altered appearance is described in these paragraphs:

A pair of guards presented Mary with a green spidersilk dress and matching shoes—they glimmered under the fluorescent lights like liquid jade. They opened a door for her, and she changed into it in private. The uniform she was in was so plain—why was she wearing it in the first place? It wasn’t like she was a prisoner, was she?

When she was ready, she exited the office and was escorted to an elevator. It sped upwards, and she was taken to a make-up room where some ladies applied make-up, blush, eyeliner, eyeshadow, and lipstick to her. They applied gel to her hair and combed it until it became a glistening, straight black curtain down her back. With a spray of perfume, she smelled of jasmine.

Seeing herself in a mirror, she beheld someone that couldn’t possibly be her. Voluptuous, beautiful, and clean. A body fitting for a superstar. Somehow, the perfect body didn’t look right to her. It looked like a doll, and she wished it was different. The body, too thin. The breasts, too big. Her lips, too puffy.

The make-up people told her it was time to meet her future husband. Something about the words made her nauseous. Angry, even. She hadn’t even met him, but she already knew something about him was sleazy, and this arrangement was a fraud.

If this comes across as unsettling and creepy...it's supposed to be. This is a messed-up situation where Mary is transformed into an artificial, unnatural caricature for somebody else's pleasure. This is the crux of the conflict in the end--Mary will reject her place as an artificial idol and strive to become a real human being. 

Some of these descriptors I'm actually more proud of. It helps that it's filtered more thoroughly through Mary's own POV, so we have greater insight on her introspection and attitudes, which does change the way she describes herself. To have her observe--and even dislike--her image is one of the big building blocks to this part of the story.

I attempted a rewrite around 2021, starting the story off in yet another point in the timeline, but I didn't really bother to provide a description of Mary at all. Aside from the fact that she was blonde and quite irate to have been kidnapped by Orcco's freedom fighters.

On my latest rewrite, dated 2022, I went back to starting the story off with a concert (I find that I've had a devil of a time figuring out where to start this story, but duh, it should start at the beginning, and this is the beginning). In this draft, it incorporates some elements from many previous attempts.

Sweat covered her whole body, cementing her white dress against her skin. It had the effect of revealing the curves of her bust and hips, her largest and most coveted features. For ninety minutes, the crowd experienced the extent of her talents and watched her voluptuous body swaying, bouncing, jumping to the rhythm. They ran the gamut of all her most popular songs.

Her eyes—the shape and color of almonds—spied on her manager, Lester. His arms were crossed across his chest, resting on his bulbous stomach. The expression on his red, flabby, sweaty face told her exactly what he expected, which was to take a bow and exit for the night. Then, her car would whisk her to the after-party in Olympia. Even though it’d offer a cornucopia of pleasures, it never measured up to the thrill she of the stage, where the spotlight was focused solely on her.

She pivoted towards the stage, and thick strands of wet golden hair bounced off her shoulders. Walking towards the stage, she faced the [crowd] with her arms outstretched. Shouts coalesced into a continuous roar.

Probably could use some touch-ups of some kind, but this represents the best of my abilities at the moment. I tend to put the focus on a couple of areas: keeping things moving with physical action, and leveraging narrative voice. Hopefully you can read this with Mary's attitudes reflected in the prose, which will provide more insight on her character (even in third person). There are other priorities that are layered into the text, such as putting some focus on the tension with Lester, and hinting at a place called Olympia, which is a part of the world-building. Ultimately, I think it reads a little less like cringe, and I certainly hope it reads a little more like substance.

I still have plans to take a crack at yet another redraft of this story. I stopped my last attempt when I realized the whole story could take a completely different direction. The antagonist could die in the first quarter of the story (but come back to life through cloning). The powers that be would try to clone a new version of Mary when she takes to the streets--in the original draft, Mary found her clone and killed it (because symbolism!). But maybe it'd be more interesting if her clone was left alive to take Mary's place. But then, it could be a whole new book to show the clone's perspective, experiencing harassment from a seeming doppelganger, only to find that Mary is an older, hardened version of herself. And what the heck, the two could team up like the two Arnolds in The Sixth Day. Why not?

There are actually a myriad of other issues that plagued my older drafts and have kept me from pushing this as a publishable product. It simply isn't ready just yet. The plot could be better, and worst of all, the writing style was pretty weak in my older days. I am working to bring the writing, plotting, and characterization up to par to best realize this story in the best way. There is a potentially cool experience in this project, and work will continue to refine it until it's the best it can be.