So this ended up being harder for me than I'd originally anticipated, partially because I went out of town for the weekend and had to double up on homework earlier in the week as consequence. Working hard also fried my brain, because I came down with a genuine sense of writer's block near the end there.
I learned something I probably really knew all along this week: characters cannot be properly developed in isolation. Well, a writer can try it, but what results is a horrifying Sweet Valley-like disaster of boring, unbelievable exposition. Because I am me and I am long-winded, it was harder than I thought it would be creating a character in isolation, and I found myself hyperaware of how I was spending too much time developing the background characters who were just supposed to be props so the character I wanted to create could shine.
I have been dreaming up Jun Fei or a boy like him for a long time, so I was surprised when Chris came out as the most real, well-rounded, original character. Little Lillian was a struggle for me, because the overwhelming number of my protagonists are male and the last time I wrote a child prodigy he was male, but I went for it anyway. This week was a great experience, though, and drove home the reason that conflict creates a story, because an amazing character won't carry a story if he or she is alone; the characters in his world had better be interesting too.
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