Hanging in our home we have one family crest from Kai's Grandmother's side and for my family I have at least seen things from my Mother's side. In my searching I learned about names in mine and Kai's family:
Abbott family motto- I stand for God and country
Stratton family motto- I strive to rise again
Mckinstry family motto- I am ready
MacCleod family motto- Hold Fast
Those were fun to look up. I also got to make my House Sigl from Game of Thrones- which of course was super fun.
I find the hardest part of writing is that I am shaping a world I want to make sense. I could dream up all kinds of impossible of things. My story already includes some impossible fantastical leaps. So as I write and create this world that I see, a mix of things familiar and foreign come into play. How does this world of destruction come together? People always rebuild and make new and take old things and make new things. I want this place to be as vivid on the page as it is in my head. So I sit and write: "What do they believe in? What are their Gods?" "What are governments like? Who rules and creates infrastructure." These pieces that make the world more real, in my head some of these things I perceive so clearly but don't always have the words, other things I haven't fully made.
I find the most difficult parts are infrastructure and the supporters in a government structure. Rulers are easy to make, it is the people beneath them; The hangers on, the people who rule behind the throne, the people who manipulate- what are their roles and how do they fit in? They are the harder folks to create, at least for me. Often, the changers of History are not those great men with crowns on their heads, they just bear the name. So I am constantly writing little notes and planning.
I'm also writing and thinking about truths I can uncover. What things to we think are ideal that never are, what disillusionment can I create in the story. For both the character and the reader. I write motivations and how I can humanize all the characters in the story, which I find comes hardest to hero's and villains. I don't want my hero's so pure that they are perfect. I don't want my villains so evil that we don't sympathize with them. Between these figures of good and evil in a story, exist people who may play for both sides, who may play for the side of angels but act with evil. The possibilities for complex peoples are endless.
This story I started just to better my writing is becoming more and more a world that I am enjoying and finding more and more things about it that I want to put to the page.
The biggest and most helpful thing I have ever heard- for life and for writing is this:
"Everyone is the hero of their own story."
So when I write I think of my villains as the hero's of their story. When I think of my "side-kicks" they are the hero's of their own story. The manipulators are the hero's of their story. While we all have our own sets of motivations, most characters still need the ability to sleep at night. Some, even the most evil sociopaths character's have their reasons. So I make character pages of who they are and what makes them human.
Then I think about life and relationships and we are all the same. We are all the hero's of our own story. Even the people we dislike. So I write and plan these people and in order to make them people I have to remember even the people I dislike are as complex as these characters.
This project has helped make me a better person and better writer. I'm grateful for that.