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emptymanuscript · 4 years

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One way to REname a character with internal story logic

I want to talk a moment about Zephyr.

Not the wind.

My character.

(He wishes he was this tough) Not even really the person but his NAME itself, Zephyr, and how it changed.

One of the things I don’t mention too much just to avoid trouble is how extremely different Knights of Day is now compared to how it was originally. At its early height, Knights of Day peaked at 4 authors. The goal was in no way to publish or publicize any of it. It wasn’t even really meant to be any sort of cohesive story. Or even to consist of cohesive stories rather than “adventures” for fun. I’m not even sure I can tell you WHAT it was. It wasn’t quite a piece of fiction, it wasn’t quite a table top rpg, it wasn’t quite rp’ing. It was just its own behemoth of a thing that included all of those. Compared to 1 book and 1 book in progress now.

Case in point: Fun Adventure #3 was ~

Kinda John Edward but real & real evil

Set up: Most Mediums are terrible people who fake their powers to rip victims off when they’re at their most emotionally vulnerable. Because when you’ve just irrevocably lost one of the most important people in your life you’ll pay anything or do anything for the even the illusion of getting them back.

What if: Imagine someone who can really do everything they say they can do… but they’re still a terrible predator trying to take advantage of people when they’re at their most emotionally vulnerable - they just have more power to make it even worse.

Mission: Save young suddenly widowed mega-rich heiress Helena Lawson from real Medium but still conniving con-man Kenton Dean. Because the greedy, racist, no goo Ted Lawson doesn’t want Kenton Dean to get the money instead of himself. And Ted is willing to pay exorbitantly to make sure it doesn’t. So James and Zeferrello are tasked with finding any reason to separate Helena and Kenton.

Twist: Yeah, Kenton Dean CAN summon and control the dead but it’s so much worse than that. He can summon and control the GOD of the dead. Assuming, of course, that all of this isn’t the god of the dead actually controlling Kenton Dean for its own purposes.

Which Became The Hidden and the Maiden. But instead of a climactic conflict between James, Zephyr, Kenton Dean, and Kherty-Aken decided by force, force of will, and clever use of all magic available inside the seat of Kenton Dean’s power, his theater, “Kinda John Edward but real & real evil” ended with a mildly tense chat between James and Zefferello versus Kherty Aken just kinda hanging out, tensely, next to an ambulance. James points out that Kenton Dean has reprogrammed Kherty Aken like a computer to just believe all this BS. Kherty Aken realizes, Oh Shi-! he’s right, and flys away. Next day, paper says Kenton Dean is dead. So the general idea is there but just not at all the same when you look close.

As an aside, this is by the way why most writing teachers dismiss ‘ideas’ as the least important element of story telling. One version of this ‘idea’ I stuff under a rug and pretend doesn’t exist. The other I sell in paperback for $10 a pop. If the fundamental idea hasn’t changed really, why the vast difference in price? Because of the execution. And if execution is more than infinitely greater in effect 0 -> 10 why bother putting that much effort into the idea when, even if you only go to 5 through execution, that will have more effect than any idea will. I am not 100% convinced by this line of reasoning but it’s not meritless either. A bad idea well written will just get more in the marketplace of ideas than a good idea poorly written. A bad idea badly written is doomed. A good idea well written may or may not do as well as the mediocrity. So, I disagree that it is of zero importance but I do think it is certainly not the most important element for 3/4’s of all story types. Ok, that’s another post, enough asides.

The real thing I’m actually thinking about is the Zefferello to Zephyr change. Zefferello was Zephyr’s original name. The author who created the original character said specifically her thoughts were that she had never had any character under any situation whose name started with Z. So she wanted a Z character and she plucked the rest out of thin air because. And because it didn’t matter, that was cool enough. So he was Zefferello for the first few years of life. No particular reason why. Never mind that nothing in any back round of anything anywhere would give Zefferello as a name.

It was only as I was moving from the first to the second draft of The Hidden and the Maiden that it was really bothering me about this Korean-American dude with the abusive Super Whitey Mega Rich father, the utterly absent and possibly dead Korean Trophy Wife mother, and the abusive DID having ghost but still white mother. Why would any of them give him that name?

Well, the father might do it just to torture his son throughout life. He’s that kind of asshole. As little as he is in it, I actually think of Zephyr’s father as the Antagonist for Knights of Day because he is just pure dagnasty evil because he likes it. He may not appear most on the page or wield the most power - partially because he’s just not my favorite kind of villain, at all, his side-kicks is way more my speed - but there’s no denying he does the most damage. BUT, the father is also very image conscious. Part of what he likes is doing terrible things while other people praise him for it. For making people suffer but having no one believe them because he is such a paragon of virtue. One of his side kicks actually got James to just start punching him toward the end because he kept talking about what a saint Zephyr’s father was and all the haters just didn’t understand what a wonderful person he was and how hard he worked when he never had to to improve the life of others. If I recall correctly James literally held a knife on the guy and pointing to Zephyr: ‘you had to fucking know what that motherfucker was doing to him! You evil lying sack of fucking shit!’ So… torture wasn’t going to work for a reason.

So I’m looking for any great people in history with the name Zefferello. Nope. Nada. Is it by some miracle a Korean name that Eun Ae Gwon might have given him? Nope. No dice. And slowly all eyes turn to JJ. JJ is nuts. There’s no getting around it. But I’m rarely happy with that as an explanation. Especially with JJ because most of what she does that SEEMS nuts, isn’t. The fundamental rule I made for JJ fairly early on is that she is ALWAYS up to something. She is playing every angle. She is working every leverage. She is a survivor in a way that most people will never be. She’s dead and she is still playing to win. So she will do things that appear unreasonable at point A in time in order to increase her odds of getting what she wants in point B in time.

And I’m looking at that name. That ello. That’s sounds latinate to me. And masculine. I already knew Zefferello’s real name at this point, and it had a Jr. at the end and I started wondering if maybe, just maybe, JJ gave Zefferello a different Jr. name. A name for the father that she wished Zefferello had. Instead of the one he did. He’s hers, and what better to claim a baby she would never hold than to rename him into a family that she wanted to exist but never did. That’s very JJ.

At which point I’m reviewing JJ’s history. It’s sparse-ish at that time. But I know when she got pregnant and I know more or less what happened to her from that point until she died. And there’s nothing in there to hint at a Zefferello Sr. But… there were already some hints about there maybe being a Zefferella. And of course that’s not a name either. But fiddle with the spelling and drop the “el” sound and you do get a Greek female name: Zephyra \

And that was the lightning bolt of inspiration and change. That JJ’s second and last love of her life was a fellow prostitute named Zephyra, and IF JJ could rewrite reality to be anything she wanted then her son would also be Zephyra’s - that they would be the family unit and the other would be the ghostly illusion. And with Zephyra as a real name, I also had a male equivalent: Zephyr. Sounds similar but much more plausible that he might somehow obtain it. Plus, with the idea of Zephyra, his name also becomes a key to unlocking tons of emotion and backstory.

And you’ll know it’s important the second that this repressed little guy walking around giving out the name of Zephyr Wayne, shamefully cringe-admits that his legal name is Peter Bailey Jr. That that exists at all says that there is a story to find down in there and that it isn’t a simple one.

So that’s one to rewrite a name based on the internal logic of a story. Zephyr’s name was researched and found but never picked out of a name directory. It was back-engineered to tell the story I wanted to tell and avoid the random story I didn’t. By following the logic that might lead to a name like his, I was able to find the one I thought was right for him.

And, since the original Cup Bearer was one of the winds, that also worked to my advantage… though it is generally considered the wrong wind. Oy. Which I’ll probably just end up deleting because Zephyr’s name is better for a story hook than anything I made with Thulebelore being the General of the Western Winds.

If you actually got here. Wow. Thank you. If you ever want to solicit writing advice, dropping a question in my ask prompts me better than whatever happens to occur randomly to my head. So, you know, that’s there.

#Knights of Day #Zephyr #The Hidden and the Maiden #Writing advice #writeblr #writeblogging #unsolicited advice

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