After Terakiel conjures a fire at the foot of the planar stone, he passes out from the weariness of travel combined with the exertion of channeling those unfamiliar forces. I'm suddenly remembering that there are two separate instances where Terakiel passes out next to the stone. The other time, he touches the stone and it gets extremely hot--so hot in fact that it seems to completely suck the temperature from the surrounding area. When he wakes up, he finds Aisen, who has seemingly materialized from nothing. He has come from the Exod, a plane of existence that bridges areas from the physical plane together. I haven't explained a lot about this world yet--and I'm not sure if I'll decide to or not.
I had a vague idea of what I wanted Aisen to be when I introduced him initially, but I feel I've sort of lost the plot since then. He feels flat to me. He doesn't have very many identifying characteristics to speak of. I wanted him to be a sort of middle-of-the-road character who is very logical and optimistic, but he doesn't feel flawed enough. That is not to say he's perfect, but he's boring. Nothing jumps out at me about him. I haven't had much fun writing for him because I don't feel like he'd react to any situation in a compelling way.
I'm a fan of complex characters, but I think in this particular instance I might want to investigate painting in broader strokes. I should work on characters that have well defined character traits and then flesh them out from there. They might appear simple and easy to read on the surface but like most people in our everyday lives, it's seldom that simple. At the same time, I can't turn Terakiel into a predictable cliche--and for that matter, I can't do that for Terakiel either.
The only thing Terakiel really has going for him right now is the fact that he's very conflicted about what he's done. I think on the whole he's a good person, but he's done something very bad. He can rationalize away his crime by calling it an accident, but he knows that on some level he wanted to do it. I think that's an interesting nugget to build from to develop a character. It's a character building moment. Aisen doesn't really have that. I mean--he's been plucked from the Exod, but none of that matters when we know so little about his backstory. We know a lot about Terakiel. We know about his hometown, a little about his upbringing, and a lot of his internal monologue. We just don't have that wealth of information on Aisen.
I think one of the biggest problems I have with the story is not seeing enough detail while I write. I can write about events and thoughts and dialogue all day, but when it comes to really visualizing the environment and the characters I tend to draw a blank. I need to really figure that one out. I think it would be good for me to literally draw these characters and get a better idea of what they look like--what they're wearing, distinctive facial features, that kind of thing. I don't have nearly enough defining characteristics for these characters.
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