#sigmeta

Afterglow Extras #2

Afterglow Extras #1

Hi! Thank you. I’m no expert but I’ve definitely improved a lot over recent years. I’d love to share a few strategies that would probably help anyone at any level. 

Speak your dialogue aloud. Seriously. Even if you’re just muttering it quietly or speaking in your mind’s voice. Watch for natural pauses, emphasis, and rhythm. Stay as faithful as you can to the voice of the character you’re writing. It’s kind of like acting out a mini skit, if you think about it. 

Continuing from that last part: voice. Really study what makes your characters’ voices unique. They may have different vocabulary tendencies, contraction usage, and sentence pacing. Some characters swear more than others, and some characters have phrases they repeat often, like real people do. 

Distill it as much as you can. It’s so easy to lose your character’s voice when it’s diluted with superfluous words. I mean, editing down extra fluff is more of a universal strategy, but it really makes a difference in dialogue too.

Now that Tevos was on the cusp of her eighth century of life, the concept of novelty had become an artifact of youth. Set against the sheer multitude of unique events she had ever bore witness to, the vibrancy of change and newness dimmed, and excitement could now only be derived from the ever-narrowing gaps of nuance. Eventually, they would close altogether and life would sink into a futile cycle of inevitability.

This, she thought, was what it felt to be old. This was the burden of the matriarch; not the physical dotage that plagued other species, but an existential fatigue at the predictable course of nature. A matriarch’s wisdom was simply her ability to wield history and its patterns in service of herself, rather than be a helpless servant to it.

It was a grim diagnosis, certainly (…)

The purpose of introducing this new background conflict re: something of a ‘midlife crisis’ as Tevos finds herself wedged between the matron and matriarch stages of her life, is to set a framework for her relationship with Aria. While Tevos is suspicious that Aria only likes her because she wants someone powerful emotionally attached to her, the legitimacy of Tevos’s emotional investment can also be questioned by supposing that Aria is just something new and exciting that makes her feel young again.

Thanks! Although, I actually kind of agree with giving her a few extra powers (to a certain extent) because asari councilor is not only acting as “high ambassador” for the asari, but she is also responsible for policy making in Citadel Space as a whole (laws that govern multiple races/regions). I think it requires an appreciable degree of personal judgement. For example, what if the asari had bad blood with another race and wanted to politically bully them? Does she go along with the mob? Or does she, as a councilor, also have a responsibility to properly and ethically govern other peoples? 

And she’s also involved in a lot of classified operations that the public has zero idea about. She can’t always be expected to consider the desires of people who don’t even know about X. In situations like these, she has to take personal initiative. Her people must simply trust her to act in their best interest (which may not always be apparent on the surface).

But I really do agree that her highest responsibility is conveying the will of the asari, at the end of the day, and her people will hold her accountable for it (or they’ll vote her out next term, presumably). I think the asari councilor must act very cautiously and calculate when and where to go against the current, but I do think it’s her right to do so as an elected (and not appointed) official.

For Tevos I currently have her life timeline being: student > some kind of law clerk > well-known member of high society and active participant in policy debates > councilor. It may be enough, when the asari councilor position is concerned, to just be a visible, respected voice and figure (money and connections help, which she has plenty of).

I have also rewritten Irissa a little as being more of a rival, but there’s no bad blood between them, and ultimately they’re still on the same side even if their opinions differ on certain issues. Irissa was an understudy of the previous councilor and received her endorsement, which made Tevos’s path to victory a little difficult, but ultimately their platform was a little too controversial and the public sided with Tevos’s more traditional, centrist leanings.