September 2023 - Companionable
Sam: "Just so we're clear, Mr. Frodo isn't going anywhere without me!" Elrond: "No, indeed. It is hardly possible to separate you, even if he is invited to a secret council and you are not!"Excerpt from Lord of the Rings - The Fellowship of the Ring -It wasn't easy to dig up a suitable quote that describes what we experienced last month. Every hero needs at least one companion to move forward and not give up. What a nice idea for a challenge.
My review of the month
Ok, somehow I suspected there might be a character challenge after some previous WA streams had similar topics. So in late August I started reading more about personality types and developed an Enneagram to map all of my characters. If you think this leads to cliched characters, I have to tell you that I already had a rough idea of what characteristics each character should have.
It's human nature to think in boxes!
Badges won
Additionally, I was accepted into the Seven Tomes chapter on September 23rd. Thank you for your trust and I am really looking forward to working with the Anvilities.
However, I found it extremely interesting how the world of the Internet squeezes many characters from world literature or popcorn cinema into such boxes and what personality types are hidden behind Harry Potter, Gandalf and Co.
Visualizing and assigning the people in my story helped me to find out even more about the individual characters. Of course, you don't have to and shouldn't use everything from the box that describes the individual type. But I found it extremely helpful to know which types get along well and which relationships could lead to conflicts.
I'm curious to see whether my initial classification will hold up during my writing process or whether I'll swap out one or two characters.
For those who are not yet familiar with Enneagrams, what do the abbreviations mean?
E - Extrovert vs. I - Introvert / S - Sensation vs. N - Intuition
T - Thinking vs. F - Feeling / J - Judging vs. P - Perceiving
T - Thinking vs. F - Feeling / J - Judging vs. P - Perceiving
My challenge participation:
During the summer camp, I began to primarily select prompts that would better connect my two worlds and that would form the first foundations of my backstory. Now it's time to shift my focus to writing articles that better advance the goal of the novel, something I hadn't really had in mind before. This challenge came in handy for me. So far there has only been one non-humanoid species that will play a role in the novel. I also only introduced the human characters briefly in an overview article.
So for my challenge participation I chose Wendelin Ambrosius zu Bücherfelde, who I had already scribbled in a notebook over ten years ago. There was a rough idea of how and what he should be. But I didn't know much about his species or his personality profile. In addition, the question arose as to how do you begin to correctly describe a character.
First I thought about the species that evolved from a simple bookworm to a small book dragon during the full revision of my first sketch. Then I wrote his backstory and did a little interview with him. Et voila!
My favorite community articles:
As always, the community didn't disappoint and once again they all wrote many great articles on the topic of “Treasured Companions”. Feel free to correct me if I didn't count correctly: I counted six articles about cats, five about dogs, four each about dragons and machine-technology-based companions, and of course there were plenty of humanoid and other animal companions. I would be happy if you shared your favorite community article in the comments.
Valryn Landino from Satrium was definitely one of my favorite humanoid companions in this challenge.
The friendship between Valryn and his best friend feels so incredibly real and completely believable. Both of them go through thick and thin to make the world of Lothrea a better one. Really worth reading!
Do you like cats? Me too! Nimin's JemJem is the secret star of a television series in the Rosepetal universe that you immediately fall in love with and want to cuddle.
Nimin describes with ease the extremely exciting life for a cat and you immediately feel the close connection that exists between JemJem and her owner. So if you are looking for an entertaining read with little anecdotes about a lovable pet, then you definitely shouldn't miss this article!
Many great articles I had read so far from Onomad's "Shadowfire" were about mythical creatures and legends. But with NickNack, which consists of old scrap from a lost civilization, Onomad has shown a completely different and interesting side of his world. Although it is a machine equipped with many things as you would expect from a bot, it appears to have feelings, consciousness, memories and what I find most interesting, it is a follower of a religion. A great character that I would also like to become friends with.
Thank you so much for the feature. <3 After the competition is over I plan on adding the rest of the backstory to her article, was forced to cherry pick and condense it a little to not hit the 2k limit. Valryn and Nick Nack are great picks, I really enjoyed them too. I don't think I've read about the ennegram map before but if it helps you that's just awesome! I dislike the take that certain methods of character building would automatically make them cliché. And that cliché inherently is something bad. I'm on the opposite end and the most cringe-inducing thing I know - it cropped up a lot in online RPG - is seeing someone who obviously go above and beyond to make their character the most unique snowflake of them all. I like when characters feel nuanced and believable in the context of their narrative. But really homing in on a trope or stereotype can turn out amazing too if done with purpose - and best part is that doing so won't prevent one from still making them feel nuanced and believable. As for recommendations... Of the ones I've put on my reading list I'd say Mr. Hench Man, Levje and Foid the Kobold stood out the most.
It was a great pleasure to present JemJem here. I would really like to find out more about her and look forward to the expanded article. Thank you for your feedback on the Enneagram and the Kliche archetypes. I totally agree with you that it's actually much more interesting to have a character that doesn't fit into a box. I also don't think many great writers intentionally chose specific archetypes for their characters, the media did. I had a certain idea of the characteristics of my characters beforehand, too. But this system exists and is used by many psychologists or large employers with question tests. I was amazed at what my result was in the end and a lot of my type really applies to me. But that's how it is with your own zodiac sign and perhaps zodiac signs can somehow be pressed into the Enneagram ;-). Also thanks for sharing your favorite articles and yes, those were great articles too.