This is the first time I’ve written a story where the main character – as in the character I write about the most etc – has had a happy childhood. There are no skeletons in the closet, no awful memories from long-forgotten incidents arising, nothing. She just had a lovely, happy childhood in a lovely place with a happy family, plenty of family friends surrounding her to look out for her and it’s made her the person she is when I’m writing her. Well, it makes her who she is when she finds her feet and stops being such a *****, which she’s being at the moment, but being at the Academy has changed her a little so she’s struggling to find her feet.
The rest of the characters around her have pretty tumultuous pasts – well, some of them do. Others had happy childhoods, and others had quite normal ones – up and down but nothing out of the ordinary. I’m so used to writing stories where every character has a past, and something terrible has happened to them, and whilst it’s all well and good and makes life interesting, the brooding character with a troubled past is only interesting for so long – both to read about and to write about – so I felt like writing on a blank canvas, if you will. This is a character whose upbringing has left her quite a normal, well-rounded individual – so I’m starting afresh, I’m not having to look back and think “Hmm, would she really do this bearing in mind what’s happened to her?”.
There’s a lot of variety in my characters this time around, and I’m starting to properly develop them, which is making it a lot easier to write. One of the big themes so far has been how the Academy has changed people, based very much on how university seems to have changed people in just the short time we’ve been there, and having that right at the start of the trilogy has really helped me to get some developed, 3D characters who will only develop more and more as the novels go on.
the life of a moomin 