Cris de Borja

Day 10 → What are some really weird sit­u­a­tions your char­ac­ters have been in?

What’s weird, in fantasy? When I think of weird situations, I think of sitcom slapstick… and because of that I’m having difficulty answering this question.

Marin finds a graveyard with actual ghosts, but which is weirder, the haunting or the large plot of marijuana growing in the woods behind the graveyard?

Jouet gets transformed into a giant owl. In her world, that’s not as strange as falling in love with a mortal man.

Meyer has to depend on a cat to act as translator for a dragon (because dragons don’t talk to humans, but cats are OK). The cat in question, Riddle, has lived nine actual lives. Meyer is Jouet’s brother-in-law and is a parallel universe incarnation of Jouet’s deceased lover.

Lolo has two guardian angels living with her that take the bodies of stuffed animals (plushies, not taxidermy) when they aren’t in angel form. The unicorn, Louie, was the guardian angel of Lolo’s past life. Buttercup, a little cow, is Lolo’s guardian angel. The angels’ plushies are dolls I had when I was little.

I like magic. When the world is magic, it gets weird all over.

#email posting

Day 09 → How do you get ideas for your char­ac­ters? Describe the process of cre­at­ing them.

Central characters usually come first, telling me their stories. I have a basic idea of who they are. Then their role as antagonist or protagonist develops as I come to understand who else is in their immediate world. As I start to write about them, either in story creation or in free writing, I will start to bring in the "what if" elements that change details. Sometimes those details change the whole story.

My characters come from dreams, or variations on a character in someone else’s canon. For example, I mentioned earlier that Jouet began as a plot device in fanfiction. She needed to have elements that inspired a magic creation in canon timeline, so I knew she had long hair and long life (literally the first things I knew about her). Therefore, she became an immortal faerie, and that among fae hair was a status marker.

That she is confident, hot-tempered, and vengeful don’t feel like created (imposed) elements. Her personality, details of her looks, were just there. I’m quite sure that my subconscious mind works on characters and stories, which is why I have "story dreams" that are like little movies, and why a character comes on stage so close to complete. Ask me any simple question (what kind of pizza? sleeps in socks?) about any character of mine, and I will know without over thinking.

Side and supporting characters need more shaping, more active character creation, because they are storytelling elements as well as people. That’s how we tell our own stories about events, memories, our encounters. We explain relationships, or give some aspect of the person who was involved in the story we are telling.

As I start actually writing the story, I’ll be inspired to add layers to all the characters. I might hear some dialog that I think fits or even see an outfit that suits a character. Then there is the Bechdel test; if I’m not passing it, then roles get shuffled. Along the same lines, I am OK with updating character design to add diversity and create representation. It’s too easy to write bland characters when they are all the same age, same racial background, same economic background, same regional background, physically "able," and neurologically typical. Real people aren’t any kind of standard issue, so why would characters be?

#email posting

Day 08 → What’s your favorite genre to write? To read?

My favorite to write is fantasy: character-focused stories set in worlds full of dragons, faeries, talking cats, and highly intelligent, capable people.

My favorite to read… well, I enjoy well written non-fiction about object-things better than almost anything else, but that’s a rare bird. Speculative fiction is my go-to for non-fiction.

#email posting

Day 07 → Do you lis­ten to music while you write? What kind? How do you relate music to your writing?

I need a quiet environment to write. Except when driving, I don’t use music as a background. I like the mood it sets to have music on, and when music is on I will be listening or singing along. While driving it helps me stay focused on the road, but while writing, music (with or without vocals) or a lot of sound is breaks my concentration. I need to be able to hear the words in my head as I write, like a narration over the scene, as well as the dialog.

Songs are a big source of inspiration, however. I’ll hear something and it will fit a mood so well that the song becomes a prompt for a scene or moment I want in the story. Sometimes it’s the backbone of a story: Dido’s "Hunter" became a story about vampires, and Metric’s "Stadium Love" is inseparable in my mind from Stadium/"The Reward of It All." Live’s "All Over You" and Jem’s "Falling for You" are (to me) the opening and closing credit themes for my anime inspired magic girl serial.

#email posting

Day 06 → W__ are you most com­fort­able writ­ing? Use the 5 W’s.

Who: If I’m not careful, all my main characters will be intelligent, introspective introverts in emotional pain who are in a situation of unrequited or otherwise unhappy love.

What: Supernatural! Cross-genre! My comfort zone is urban fantasy, which easily blurs around the edges into horror and mystery.

When: Lately, I really like near-past. History within my lifetime, as nostalgic period pieces. Even in fantasy, I like to tell a story as if it happened somewhere between "once upon a time" and "when I was your age."

Where: West coast USA with the serial numbers shaved off. Fantasy worlds with weather like the Pacific Northwest, and speculative settings riffing off Los Angeles, CA.

Why: Certain themes come up in my writing all the time. While I don’t set out to tell a story to make a point, I do have strong feelings about how the world should be, and I can make a story that resolves along those values. I love a redemption story. I love stories of discovery, with characters who go from a narrow focus to a larger one. I like to write about people who feel broken finding a place where they fit.

That said, I think one of the best things for creativity is to write outside my comfort zone. Visual artists use references, so I like to challenge myself to look closely at stories I don’t like and opinions out of alignment with my own. I feel that I can learn a lot from what didn’t work for me.

#email posting

Day 05→ By age, who are your youngest /oldest char­ac­ters?

This question stings a little, because it makes me realize that I avoid writing about children as much as I avoid actual children. Yikes.

My youngest character is Cisco from EA, a ten year old, with the next up in age being Farha, who is twelve.

My oldest are the immortals, with faerie Jouet taking the top spot again because she is included in stories set at points across multiple centuries, putting her at 500+ years. I am only counting Louie the angel’s years in physical form, which puts him in second place as 90. The more reasonably aged Kiyomi Sugiyama is in her 80s.

(Everyone else falls into a 15-50 age range.)

Day 04→ Your first stories/characters

Most other writers say, when asked about when they began writing, that they started in childhood. While I have been a reader for so long that I can’t recall my experience of learning to read, I didn’t write down the stories in my head until age twelve or so.

In fact, I didn’t start with stories. I started with filk. Filk is when you take a tune and apply it to new lyrics (often with humorous intent). I didn’t know it was filk when I wrote new lyrics to Christmas songs, such as this Halloween version of "Jingle Bells."

(I recall nearly all of it.)

Dashing through the air

on a gray old witch’s broom

"Hey you over there,

Give this witch some room!"

The moon is on the rise,

see the shadows play,

(something something) skies,

cackling all the way!

Hey!

Eye of newt, hair of cat,

add a touch of slime,

bat’s eyebrow, tongue of cow,

rosemary and thyme!

Mosquito’s warts, lizard tail,

"Would you like to try some?" (hard stress on "you")

(something something, something something)

"Yum yum yum yum yum!"

Ahem.

As far as stories, the two earliest ones I can think of where both because of dreams. The first one was about anthropomorphic mice. It was not completed. I was heavily influenced by the Miss Bianca adventure stories, as well as animated films like The Last Unicorn and The Secret of NIMH. The other story was about a ghost and doomed love; I wrote that one out when I was around 13, later sharing it with close friends.

Then, for a long time, I wrote poetry, with prose as a rare expression. In 2003, my discovery of fanfiction as a thing that exists restarted my exercises in short story, and since then I’ve been working toward the longer format of novels.

Day 03 → How do you come up with character names?

The character’s common name is one of the first things, usually, that I know. It may get refined to have a better meaning, work well with a surname, or be more distinct from the other characters.

Several of my characters are fae, and my faeries have a true name that would be rude to use in public, so they are called by a use name, like a nickname. Jouet’s name came from the sound and the association with Perrier Jouet champagne, for her sparkling, effervescent personality. When I developed my ideas for how faerie names are used, I had to create or alter her full name, her sister’s name, and her family names so that they worked with that worldbuilding. More fun for me!

Also, I collect interesting names to use later.

And that’s typical. I have a name, then need to shape it a little to work better in the story, and/or the shaping of it tells me more about the character. Marin Quinn, my amateur sleuth from my Eagle Crest Mysteries, gave me her name with no special effort after I met someone with that uncommon sounds-like-Karen first name.

Sometimes, however, I just need a name, and I don’t think it through very well. For "A Theft of Teapots," in late drafts a character referred to a witness by name, but I didn’t have a name ready. I somewhat thoughtlessly used two last names of people I knew: Walter Hall. Then I completely forgot I had done so. Lucky for me, both Mr. Walter and Mr. Hall thought their cameos were great!

#email posting

Day 02 → How many char­ac­ters do you have? Do you pre­fer males or females?

Dozens. I have no shortage of ideas, and with ideas often come new cast members. Thank God I do overlap my worlds, and therefore, characters. For me, stories come from the characters. Plot develops from their lives and interactions.

I don’t set out to write characters’ identities. Sometimes, I do "gender bend" or "race bend" a character from their original image; the essence of the character remains. If I have too many similar types I may look at one and think, what if that one was older? Or a tween boy? Or had this appearance to the other characters?

I tend toward characters that female, and there’s been a default to them being cisgendered. At this time, I only have one main character that’s trans; that’s just how she came to me as I was writing out the idea. I have a central, supporting character that is… bigender? I’m not quite sure if Jany is bigender or nonbinary.

I’d like to discover more trans, non-binary, bigender, and varied characters.

#email posting

Day 01 → Your favorite writ­ing project/universe that you’ve worked with.

Over time, I’ve been connecting my worlds into a personal-work universe. It didn’t start out that way, but it’s fun to think about, y’know? When the inspiration comes from a similar source or even one sprouts another, or when I realize how similar a couple of characters from different worlds are, I start to create in-world reasons for it.

By far my largest story world, because of this, is the world of Jouet Isobel, the faerie. She came into being as an original character in a fanfiction, a plot device quite frankly. Then, as characters sometimes do, she made sure I knew enough about her to want to write her story. Or, rather, stories: multiple works in progress are connected to Jouet. (Unless otherwise noted, these are all works in progress.)

She became the villain in Key. Then because NaNoWriMo, Key (and related short stories) got a prequel (New City Limits), around J’s sister Lily. Jouet and Lily are the main characters of Stadium, from which "The Reward of It All" (Fae Love – Elm Books) comes.

Jouet’s universe crosses from modern times to 17th century, from the Pacific Northwest United States to Faerie. She’s not a plot device anymore. She’s not always a main character. But because it’s a big world with a big cast, it’s a big playground.

#email posting