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@jared-williams

You had to stop the scene there?? lol.

I felt the same way as I wrote it, but then I counted the words and…yeah, we won’t talk about that. xD

Wren baffled me a bit more than Talia, I think. At first, I thought port bar that her father owned, grew up working around sailors and the restaurant – but the well-traveled part got me befuddled. She seems seasoned and well acquainted with the region and the people therein – well loved, but came across as naive to the world outside her hamlet and the regulars that ported therein… (which is why the well-traveled bit is even more confusing).

Yeah, I was worried the whole ‘I’m helping serve at my father’s inn’ might be confusing. I tried to sprinkle in ship, cosmopolitan, and bartering references to help show she and her parents are merchants who travel by boat often. Her father–Lenray–also owns real estate, in particular that inn they were working at. I specifically didn’t have her think ‘I’m a merchant’s daughter’ in introspection or even even mention it anywhere because I wanted to see if readers would guess that without me telling. It appears I kinda failed.

@rose-colored-fancy

I’m going to guess Talia is the other woman in the second piece, the one with the loose hair.

Correct.

Something happened to her and she’s so bitter and hurt. This isn’t recent either, she’s been living with this for a long time. She completely blocks off all feelings to protect herself. She doesn’t necessarily think herself better than the world, but she feels alienated from it. She isolates herself to protect herself from whatever hurt her.

Minus a few nuances, that is almost entirely correct. Success! xD

This struck me as interesting. Is she one of your Jewish characters, or did she just witness it? It could be either.

Her Jewish origins were exactly what I was trying to get across in a non-telling way. She is an ex-Jewess, but her memories and thoughts are still quite grounded in the way she grew up.

Wren’s father travels often for business, and she has accompanied him often. So, she’s well-traveled.

Precisely. They are a merchant family (who own an inn).

She makes me smile, she’s so cheerful and happy. I think she’s had a fairly good childhood, without any massive tragedies. In fact, she’s had a fairly sheltered existence, as evidenced from this:

Spot on. This may or may not be a glimpse of her flaw/misbelief/fear.

I must say, you really nailed character voice in both of them. Their attitudes were everywhere, from descriptions and actions to word choice. Great job!

Thanks, I appreciate that!

I do have an issue. I can’t decide whether to do characters from one of the latter books of Gilded Blood or the two protagonists from Murder of Swans. Everyone here pretty much knows my Gilded Blood characters, but I don’t have the other two’s lies figured out well yet, though they already have some voice. I could also do Mejt from the Pirate novel but I don’t have a well-developed second character to write, and writing two characters from two worlds could be confusing…  Any advice?

I would recommend you choose two characters that aren’t well known here or that you are still developing. It’s fine if you don’t have the flaw/lie figured out, there is still normal life, background, personality, education, and culture you can show through character voice.

I’m doing about the same thing. That’s the first piece of writing I’ve ever composed from Wren’s PoV. In fact, I’ve never even written her in any scene at all until now–due to the fact that she is a new character. I was using this to work out her character voice and develop how she will sound on page.