In the SUNDERED books, what made the Light/Dark dualities powerful for you when you were writing them?
This is probably going to be a more rambling answer than I'd ideally like. I was interested in the concept of redemption when I was younger. I think my first attempt at a novel -- and many of my attempts before I reached the advanced age of thirteen, and no there's nothing at all in those books that's worth retrieving and they're never going to see the light of day because I already have hundreds of ways of humiliating myself in public, actually drew on Christian mythology. Given that we were not church goers, this probably seems a bit odd -- but maybe not; I read a lot of mythology when I was young.
To me, it wasn't that different from fairy tales. Okay, that was this post's digression.
I read a lot, and of course, as one does when one is young, retained only the things that were of interest to me. Possibly because one of the only real ways to show remorse in the Japanese myths and legends I read was to kill yourself, the idea of redemption really enthralled me.
But writing about the things that might lead you to require redemption also repelled me. Go figure. The reason that Stefanos wasn't human was because it added a layer of motivation to his actions that had nothing to do with humanity, and that was easier at the time for me. I would probably make different choices, now, but at the time I needed to at least not loathe the characters I was writing about, and someone who was essentially in thrall to his nature, as opposed to someone who has an open slate of obvious choices (i.e. an adult human), worked on that level.
Light and Dark were black and white. Forces in opposition. They defined lives, certainly, and defined the shape of the war; they defined loss. Two things had to be real, to give the ending its shape: one, the sense of loss and the pervasive sense of grief, and two, the desire to transcend that. You have to have something to transcend. It's not redemption if you haven't been living in the dark. So... I didn't want Stefanos to be misunderstood or miscast; I wanted him to be exactly what he was, which would more or less be evil.
And after that... there had to be something appealing about him, after all; there had to be something that he was drawn to, as well, some crack in the armour of eternal boredom.
And thank you, by the way, for being so willing to field questions--about publishing, about contracts, about romance novel placement, about so many things of interest.
Actually, I love answering questions -- when I have something the remotely resembles an answer <wry g>.
![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
branchandroot
no subject
Date: 2004-11-30 11:20 pm (UTC)This is probably going to be a more rambling answer than I'd ideally like. I was interested in the concept of redemption when I was younger. I think my first attempt at a novel -- and many of my attempts before I reached the advanced age of thirteen, and no there's nothing at all in those books that's worth retrieving and they're never going to see the light of day because I already have hundreds of ways of humiliating myself in public, actually drew on Christian mythology. Given that we were not church goers, this probably seems a bit odd -- but maybe not; I read a lot of mythology when I was young.
To me, it wasn't that different from fairy tales. Okay, that was this post's digression.
I read a lot, and of course, as one does when one is young, retained only the things that were of interest to me. Possibly because one of the only real ways to show remorse in the Japanese myths and legends I read was to kill yourself, the idea of redemption really enthralled me.
But writing about the things that might lead you to require redemption also repelled me. Go figure. The reason that Stefanos wasn't human was because it added a layer of motivation to his actions that had nothing to do with humanity, and that was easier at the time for me. I would probably make different choices, now, but at the time I needed to at least not loathe the characters I was writing about, and someone who was essentially in thrall to his nature, as opposed to someone who has an open slate of obvious choices (i.e. an adult human), worked on that level.
Light and Dark were black and white. Forces in opposition. They defined lives, certainly, and defined the shape of the war; they defined loss. Two things had to be real, to give the ending its shape: one, the sense of loss and the pervasive sense of grief, and two, the desire to transcend that. You have to have something to transcend. It's not redemption if you haven't been living in the dark. So... I didn't want Stefanos to be misunderstood or miscast; I wanted him to be exactly what he was, which would more or less be evil.
And after that... there had to be something appealing about him, after all; there had to be something that he was drawn to, as well, some crack in the armour of eternal boredom.
And thank you, by the way, for being so willing to field questions--about publishing, about contracts, about romance novel placement, about so many things of interest.
Actually, I love answering questions -- when I have something the remotely resembles an answer <wry g>.