The Language of Worlds Link-Up #1
My snippet for today wasn’t going to work (turns out I know the random story even worse than I realized. That’s going to need to be fixed), but I saw this link-up yesterday from a couple of bloggers I follow and decided it would be fun to join in. (Snippet Sunday will be back next week, I promise.) The image below links to the original post, where you can also join in if you’d like. :)
Without further ado, here are the questions.
1. Introduce your character and her story!
Nissa is a thief from Roenor who’s really unfamiliar with any sort of affection or real love, so when she meets Prince Detren and he actually cares about her she’s totally lost and ends up pushing him away rather than letting him love her like a friend is supposed to. Her whole arc is her trying to prove that she doesn’t need anyone and then realizing she actually does and finally coming to her senses.
2. What does she look for in a friend? Consciously or subconsciously?
This is actually a tricky one to answer for her. Because she doesn’t want to look for friends, and she kind of hates friends who are actually good friends because she hates not knowing how love works, so I guess… she kind of looks for friends who will do what she expects and leave her after a while, and friends who distract her from her lack of relationship knowledge by just doing thrill-seeking-type stuff with her rather than just hanging out. Like… climbing clock towers and nearly falling off.
3. If she could study any foreign language, what would it be?
And here we come to a massive flaw in my worldbuilding for this world… there are no language barriers. Well… technically the elves have their own language and the Morressir have a variation on elvish, but they don’t really show up much and overall everyone speaks “common.” And Nissa’s pretty content with that. XP
4. Which person from the Bible would she be besties with? Why?
Um… I don’t know. No one coming to mind is really anyone I can see her becoming friends with. Maybe Jonah? Since he’s running from things the same way she is?
5. If she were to visit you for a week, what would you do together?
This would be a very, very bad idea. A very bad idea. I don’t have the stress tolerance at this point to deal with her being stubborn and rebellious and if I met her I’d try to talk sense into her and things would just end very badly. (Also she’d try to convince me to do something really dangerous and I might actually say yes depending on the exact danger level. Like, if she wanted me to climb onto the roof with her I probably would because I’ve always been curious what the view is like from up there, and our roof is fairly flat. But she’d also probably try to convince me to do much dumber stuff and overall this would just not go well at all.)
6. What is her ideal future?
Consciously or subconsciously? Consciously she’d like to get pretty high up the chain of command with The Dragons (a criminal organization in Roenor) so she’s important and doesn’t need anyone ever again, but subconsciously she’d really like to be friends with Detren again and repair that relationship and have things go back to the way they were before {SPOILERS}.
7. If she were to spend a weekend alone, what sort of pastimes would she pursue?
Dangerous stunts. She’d actually get really lonely on a weekend alone, because she’s actually really extroverted, so she’d kind of go crazy after a while and do more and more dangerous stuff. I don’t think she’d get herself killed, but there’s no guarantee she wouldn’t come back severely injured. (And then annoyed that she can’t do anything with her injury.)
8. If you could send your character a care package, what would be in it?
I’m hopping on the bandwagon and starting with a Bible, because she really needs one of those. Also coffee, shiny jewelry, and a letter trying to convince her to start hanging out with Detren again.
9. Is there a song that describes your character’s journey?
*shoves five-hour-long story playlist into a corner and looks it over* Just hers? I feel like New Romantics by Taylor Swift describes her well, but I don’t know if it really describes her journey. Maybe Get It Right by Diplo.
10. What is your character’s place in the story (hero, antihero, villain, sidekick, etc.)?
Antihero, I believe.
Hi there! Just wanted to say your character sounds really interesting, and the link-up looks pretty cool as well. :)
Thank you! :)
Oooooh, nice character!
Is she your MC? (Sounds like she is, or if not, then you’ve developed her really well.) Cool to hear about it, and hope that the world building continues to expand to include linguistics!
She is. I’ve interviewed her, as well, if you want to learn more about her: https://rmarcher.com/2017/08/character-interview-nissa-quail/
I don’t plan on doing a lot more with this particular world (whether writing in it or developing it in general) – just the current trilogy and maybe some novellas connected to this story – but I do now know where I need to improve on other worldbuilding projects and I plan on using language barriers more, particularly in the desert fantasy world I’m building. :)