Weekend Writer Chat
Who is your favorite OC? What makes them special to you?
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Tenley Tych. She’s kind of the real main character of my series, at least the first two novels, even though she doesn’t get as much screen time (or page time or whatever), but as I’m rewriting the first novel I wrote and throughout the second I want to delve more into her upbringing and how she’s gotten to be how she is in her very young life.
The short version though, without spoiling too much, is that Tenley’s mother was a horrible, horrible person, and when she wasn’t passed out drunk she was making Ten do all the chores and beating her on a daily basis, although she called it training. Obviously something bad had happened in her life, and Tenley got all of the backlash from it. Ten never did find out why – all she ever got from her mother when asked her past were cryptic responses. The fact is though that Tenley and her mom only had eachother, and Ten learnt early on that she would have to be the responsible one. She is aware through various media what a ‘normal’ mother-daughter relationship should, and wants that, part of her thinking that if she proves herself maybe her mother would love her. She never gets a chance to after her mother is murdered. So she does the next best thing and gets revenge, although it ends up draining her physically and emotionally. Then she met Jennifer and things are kind of okay for her now.
Even though she’s a young character, she is perhaps the most complex emotionally. She loves her mother, but also hates her. She has anger, but a surprising amount of control and only really lashes out against people who have wronged her. She has a surprising amount of empathy, both because she had to be good at reading her mothers feelings and various needs and wants, and because she engaged in various types of escapism from reading to playing make believe.
She’s also my niece’s favourite character, because she can kick ass.
None of this though is actually why I enjoy writing her, as that’s all her past. It’s that she’s perpetually grumpy, nad because of her age, and the fact most people are a bit scared of her, she can say and do pretty much whatever she wants and of course most of the time she gets away with it.
Ahhh her backstory sounds so painful ;___; poor thing. What do you mean by real main character? Like she’s not the PoV character?
On the surface Jennifer Airhart is the main character as she’s the one usually doing all the investigating and figuring stuff out. But in the first two novels I’m writing most of the plot and action revolves around Tenley – in the first story it’s her quest for revenge that leads the other characters to discover the truth, and the main antagonist in the second is also closely tied to her.
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