Wow

I updated Jayden's page, but I feel like it's very shallow, now. After some great conversations (Zach, definitely meaning you here, if you read this), I really need to think about my story and its message and the universe it's contained in and only like a million other things. Opening this blog and the ideas slowly being placed in it have helped me with my story so much! I just wish I had more to show you guys so you can see what I mean.

I'll get on that. Tomorrow. Haha.

Yup

So I didn't do much of anything done today, at least blog-wise. I cleaned my kitchen and living room, though! But that's not helpful in this case, lol. All I have to say is that I updated Jayden's page with one section and changed a bit of Kai's page so I describe a little of each relationship he has with each crew member. Uhm, other than that, I didn't do anything. I had a great time at a friend's birthday and I thought my sister was going to send me her ideas on Jayden, but whatever. I'll do more tomorrow! Or at least try. Bare with me through my laziness. :p

Progress

I've been really trying to get some progress going on my story since it felt weird that I didn't even have all of my characters or even a name for the ship! Well, I've got at least the basics down for now, but I'm willing to change details if something better comes along or it just doesn't work. Scarlett's ship shall be known as Chasing Dawn and shall have a total of 9 crew members aging from Kai at the youngest, 18, to Mara at 40 (though humans have longer life spans now with 60 being about middle-aged). I need to think of their back stories now so that I can fill out their character sheets, like what I've done with Scarlett and Devon, but not as long or detailed. Part of my update today is that I have mostly completely Kai's page, but his is the only one I've done.

I also rearranged my pages a bit, making a general one for Characters and then having a link to each of their sheets which are being hosted on Google Docs. Every character gets their own document which can have comments on them in case anyone wants to help make them better and whatnot.

Those two character spotlights from the other day were created through my laziness because I didn't think of much to update this blog with, but now I've at least got a name and a position for each character. I'm so proud, haha. But there is always work to be done, so I'm hoping to finish the crew's pages and start figuring out the entire plot to this book so I can write 2 more snippets during Spring Break. Gotta keep up with my To Do list!

Here is my updated character list:

Scarlett Rayne Harper

• Captain

• Pilot/Part time engineer

• Trying to find mother

• Loves adventure/challenges/stealing 

Devon Marx

• Becomes resident scientist/medic

• Trying to hide from agency

• Made in test-tube/has regenerative DNA

• Doesn't have his own memories

Kai Sasaki

• Communications

• Scarlett saved him from run-down space station

• Knows that Scarlett is looking for mother, scans communications all the time for information

• Very young, 18, first crew member saved by Scarlett

Javier Mendez

• Weapons master in charge of protection of crew

• Loves his guns

• Short, little bit Spanish

• Decided to join Scarlett when his boss' ship was attacked by her

Jayden Gray

• Ship defense, in charge of mounted guns and other ship weapons/defense mechanisms

• Came with the ship, won in a drinking contest by Scarlett

• Young and possessive of Scarlett

• Smooth and dangerous

Filipo Malala

• Cook and quartermaster

• In charge of knowing supplies, smuggled goods

• Samoan, loves food, basically a teddy bear

• Fat

Tau Zolo

• Mercenary

• South African descent, dark as night

• Quiet, silent hunter

• Short, buzzed hair with scars on head and face

Dmitri

• Full time engineer/mechanic, percussive maintenance specialist

• Russian archetype, slight Russian accent

• Older, drinks all the time

• Crazy, shows up randomly

Mara Cooperr

• Full time medic/physician

• Spends most of her time doing her own research

• Blunt, to the point

• Older, perhaps a bit of a mother figure

Accents are Hard

Today, I spent some time trying to learn Russian and Australian accents, to help me get a little better understanding on how my characters speak. Plus it was fun. But I want to know Australian well so I can incorporate it into Scarlett's speech. Which reminds me, I have to add some writing into my first snippet because I forgot to add that Scarlett's intuition ability kicks in when she sees Devon. Kind of most of the reason she decides to step in and save him...

Anyway, I've found that the Russian accent is soooo much fun to mess around with. This video is hilarious and part of the reason I like randomly speaking with that accent. A video that I watched gave me a sentence to practice my Russian on: "Here is my cat, my cat ate my dog, my dog is dead." It's oddly a lot of fun to say. But I actually find Russian much easier than Australian because I mix Australian with British and sometimes I can't figure out how they'd say some things. Just need more practice. :)


I'm still working on my other characters, just not very quickly. I don't know why, they're just secondary characters, but I should just make them up and get it over with, haha. I have four more left and have a few details about them already. Just gotta type 'em out. Perhaps tomorrow. :D

Character Spotlight: Dmitri

I asked Jesse for an idea for one of my characters and he said that my mechanic needs to be Russian. I loved the idea and came up with Dmitri, no last name, the stereotypical Russian drunk mechanic. Probably uses percussive maintenance more than necessary but somehow makes everything run and he absolutely has to have at least a slight Russian accent. I want him to be hilariously strange and just do whatever he wants because that's just what he does.

And yup, that's all I got for now. Four more characters to go. :)