The True Test of Friendship; A Character Spotlight
I've only done a few of these so far, so I thought it might be time for another. Creating an interesting and believable world is only part of what makes a compelling book. The characters are probably the most important element because they drive the story. If you don't care about the characters or what happens to them, you're probably not going to care about the rest of it either.
Today I'd like to introduce Alaric from Into the Shadow Wood. Though he is a close friend of Einar's, his name did not appear in Journey to Aviad, so no, you didn't miss him. He was a brand new creation just for my novella about Einar's quest.
Alaric is one of those characters (like Einar) who caught me by surprise as I was writing him. I immediately realized that he had a sense of humor--sometimes a bad one, but a sense of humor nonetheless! In a way, he and Einar are opposites. The swordsman vs. the archer, the jokester vs. the serious and contemplative man, the headstrong warrior vs. the thinker. Yet they they have a strong bond of friendship rooted in their fierce loyalty to the Circle, and to the commander who leads them.
In the novella, I had to push both men, and their friendship, to the breaking point. What becomes of a jokester when there's nothing left to laugh about? What becomes of a thinking man when he no longer knows if his thoughts are real...or if they are even his own? What becomes of a friendship when you can't trust yourself, let alone the other person? I won't tell you how it ends...you'll have to read that for yourself. But I will say that even though I had no idea who Alaric was going to be when I started writing, by the time I had finished he had become one of my favorites, and quite real to me. I can only hope that he will connect with all of you as well.
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