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 Posted: Mon Mar 23, 2009 10:03 am
So I have this elf girl in my story, named Jorani. She's a bit of a spoiled brat, being she's only a couple of centuries old, and she's the happy accident of the ANCIENT king and queen of the mist elves, who thought they were done having children about 3000 years ago. So she's kind of ignored and patronized in the elf society, because no one really knows what to do with her. Anyway, she wants to accompany my two male heroes as they save a dragon from a well-coordinated goblin attack.
Besides the whole sexual tension issue, Jorani is ANNOYING!!! Half the time, she's a sage, understanding, mystically sterotypical elf. The other half she's a 16 year old valley-girl with turquoise skin. Her character needs a total overhaul, but I can't seem to get past the character traits that I've already written.
The heart of the paradox is that as irritating as Jorani can be, she's useful in helping me explain the methods and quirks of my main characters and the world they live in. She's an easy way to turn narration into dialoge, which is more interesting to read and write. So I kinda want to keep her in, especially since later on in my story the main goblin character is going to need her assistance.
PLEASE HELP: What would make a good and interesting female elf lead?
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Posted: Tue Mar 24, 2009 4:12 pm
Well, to each their own I say. I am not sure I can help out a lot but I can sure tell you how I've written some of my elven characters like, take this one I was writing about in one of my fantasy worlds.
The world has 2 different races of elf. One of them have bonded with plants while the other has bonded with animals. Both races look after their kin as if they were part of their own. My female character is one with the animals and she is usually caring and nurturing, just like a mother would. She dislikes fighting above anything else but she will fight if necessary to defend an animal (or a loved one) even though she would not fight to save her own life. What made her really interesting is that even though she's really young, she can act so grown up sometimes. Don't get me wrong, it's not like she's gonna be a party pooper, she can have fun like the best of them but it's not something she's gonna be doing all the time. She can be serious too!
Maybe this won't help you much but I first try to move the story along and then I add/remove things to the characters as I see fit. You know? That's how I do it at least... mrgreen
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Posted: Thu Mar 26, 2009 9:10 am
I've already written her into the story, but I don't like the way she interacts with other characters. She slows everything down and whines a lot. She is good at taking care of people after they get wounded, but other than someone to explain everything to, and thus explain it to my readers, she's pretty useless. stare
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Posted: Thu Mar 26, 2009 11:37 am
That doesn't have to be a bad thing though - some of the most rewarding characters are the ones that develop over the course of the story into something much more than they were... so maybe show her slowly learning from her experiences until she's actually really good.
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Posted: Tue Mar 31, 2009 4:06 pm
So you don't really like how she's interacting with yer story? Well, I think that since it IS yer story, you could maybe have her change over the course of the story kinda like Eoforgar says. It would be like she learns from experience and she chooses to try and better herself. If not, there's always the option of leaving her almost exactly as she is. I mean, not every story has to be rushed, right? So she could be the one thing that helps the story not move along so quickly. Sometimes that helps in making things interesting in a story, you know?
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Posted: Fri Apr 03, 2009 8:46 am
Here's part of my dilemma. Is she too annoying or interesting enough to keep around? Also, even though she's useful, I can't think of a legitimate reason she'd be traveling with them.
Suddenly Jorani stumbled out of the trees, her priestess wraps soaking wet, but a huge grin on her feline face.
“Look what I found!” she called happily, and held up three fish. “I saw them when I was getting water, and I thought it’d be nice not to eat old beef again.”
Lorn and Tokori congratulated her. Tokori put the sausages back in the saddlebag and accepted the fish from Jorani so he could gut them. Jorani turned to her saddle bags and started rummaging through them.
Finally, she asked, “Tokori, did you pack my things?”
Tokori looked up from spitting the fish a little sheepishly. “Your clothes are in the cantle bag at the bottom.”
She found the fresh red wrap, and asked again, “What about my brush and perfume?”
Tokori cleared his throat. “Your brush is in the pommel bag. And I…uh…I left your perfume back at the inn.”
“WHAT?” Her roar echoed in the trees. “What else did you leave behind?”
Tokori looked away as he mumbled a reply, but Jorani’s sharp elvin ears picked up every word.
“My shawl? The candles! My jewelry!” she shrieked. “What made you think I wouldn’t need any of that?”
“It wouldn’t fit in the saddle bags,” Tokori defended himself. “I left them with Marel, an old friend of ours. They’ll be there when we go back after we’ve saved the dragon.”
“But what about now?” Jorani shouted. “I look like a mop and smell like a wet dog!”
“You’ll be fine,” Lorn assured her. “We’ve been roughing it for years and look at us.”
“Exactly my point,” she growled. She stomped into the forest and changed her wrap. Then she came back and marched to the other side of the fire, where she brushed her long silver hair and watched them make dinner.
Tokori was focusing on roasting the fish to keep himself from looking guiltily at Jorani. Likewise, Lorn occupied himself by drizzling a little olive oil on the sliced yams and crumbling some cheese on top before setting in the fire. Then he stirred it almost constantly with their one utility spoon.
The three of them sat in silence for a long time. Tokori offered the first freshly roasted fish on a stick to Jorani. She snatched it out of his hand and blew on it to cool it off. When it was finally cool enough, she munched on it while glaring at Tokori. The wild yams were sizzling and tender when Lorn took them off the fire. Jorani used her now empty fish skewer to pick up two, which she tossed from paw to paw until they were cool enough to eat, but she refused any more than that.
The finally rolled out their bedrolls, Jorani taking care to stay on the opposite side of the fire from the two hunters.
“She’s never going to forgive you,” Lorn teased.
“It was for her own good,” grumbled Tokori. “Do you want goblins to be able to smell us leagues away?”
“I’ve heard perfume makes dragons sneeze anyway.”
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Posted: Tue Apr 07, 2009 1:48 pm
Well I don't know about anyone else but I liked that scene. It was very good! I think she makes the whole thing more interesting and I doubt it would be as funny without her around. If you want my opinion (and this is probably why you started the thread anyway), I think you should keep her exactly the way she is. I only wish I could see her the same way you do (physically, I mean). Cuz I have no idea what she looks like. Well, I do have a clue but, that's just it. And ahwt I think something looks like might be completely different in someone else's mind.
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Posted: Sun Apr 12, 2009 10:53 am
Thanks. I think I will keep her. I started working out her back story, and she's turning out to be more interesting than I expected.
She's a frost-elf Princess who ran away from her frozen homeland because her parents wanted her to get married. She's not even 300 years old yet, and she was a surprise child for the King and Queen of the elves--who thought they were done having children a thousand years ago! There aren't very many elves her age, and all the older ones treat her with patronizing superiority, and she got so sick of it that she ran off to join the Opel Temple hundreds of miles to the south.
As for her appearance, she has periwinkle skin and silver hair. Her eyes are violet and she has shortish pointed ears.
As I work out her history and motives, I'm starting to like her more. I'm going to rewrite the most annoying dialogue and I think it'll be fun!
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Posted: Tue Apr 14, 2009 2:29 pm
You see? I thought she could be interesting and make the story even more interesting. That backstory is pretty cool but, I suppose it is to be expected, huh? mrgreen (I'm joking about her cold homeland)
So that's sort of how she looks like? How about body type? Is she very athletic or not so much? I hear some writers even include cup size in their character descriptions. 3nodding
I, for one, haven't done anything like that myself. I suppose I should cuz, my character of Sarah (In my CV fanfic) isn't described in a precise way and I never bothered to actually think of a cup size for her. Still, I did imagine her to be athletic but, not so athletic that she didn't have any boobs. You know what I mean, right?
That's great! I hope you have fun rewriting what you need.
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Posted: Fri Apr 17, 2009 10:13 am
I think she'd be athletic in build--frost elves are the most muscular of all the elf varieties--but she's also curvy, being female. She's also 6' tall. ^_^ Male elves can be nearly 7' tall. (The race has to be tall because they ride mammoths!)
Cup size? Well, she might be slightly curvy, but she's not very chesty. Frost elves live out their centuries matching their wills with blizzards, so they're very lean. She'd be lucky to have a B cup. sweatdrop As it is, if she wasn't so tall, she might be mistaken for a 15 year old.
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Posted: Tue Apr 21, 2009 4:21 pm
That sounds very good. I thought she'd have to be pretty athletic cuz elves aren't exactly known to be otherwise. However, most of my elves (the ones that take after the animals in a certain world) are pretty different than the stereotypical elf we have seen. Most of the women don't have less than a C cup and in rare cases you can even see a couple having D cups or so. It's also very rare to see a few with B cups in their societies. The elves that take after the plants however, are more agile cuz they live in tree top villages and have to climb vines and well, you get the picture, right? That's why most of their women are between A and B and almost never have a C cup. I'm pretty sure that to their society, an elven woman with a C cup might be considered a freak of nature.
I wonder if I should expand more on that sort of thing... neutral
That frost elf of yers sounds pretty sexy. Good job!
I gotta say, I once met a girl in High School (or was it middle school? can't recall) who, was 13 years of age but she must have been at least a C cup, if not more. You should have seen the guys around her, she really attracted attention even if she wasn't exactly pretty, he-he. sweatdrop
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Posted: Tue Apr 21, 2009 4:33 pm
hypnocrown I wonder if I should expand more on that sort of thing... neutral Dude, putting that much attention on breasts just makes you sound totally obsessed... it's not really a detail that most of us worry about beyond a general 'athletic' or 'voluptuous' description, unless it's an especially noteworthy feature of the character that plays a 'big' part in how they interact. I'm more curious about the animalistic aspects of the description of ScarletFrost's character - I'm not really familiar with elves that don't just look like pointy-eared humans...
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Posted: Wed Apr 22, 2009 10:25 am
In the book version of Ella Enchanted, elves' skins changed color with the seasons. Some other books have elves that are green, and WoW has blue-black skinned elves.
I wanted to make my different races so different that there couldn't be any cross breeds. No half elves or half dwarves or strange goblin crosses. ^_^*
The Mist Elves have very long try-point ears that act like wiskers. The Rain Elves are more like pointy-eared humans with midsized, single point ears. Mist Elves also have pale, translucent sea foam skin, while Rain elves have dark grayish blue-green skin (like a jungle canopy on a rainy day).
My Silver Dwarves have skin ranging in color from whitish silver to inky blue-black. The Gold dwarves, by contrast have warmer skin tones, pale yellow to chocolate.
Goblins are green, when they're clean enough to see their skin.
My Centaurs, mermaids and harpies all have a variety of natural skin coloring and patterns that match their animal half. (Pinto Centaurs are fun to paint!)
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Posted: Wed Apr 29, 2009 3:00 pm
Eoforgar hypnocrown I wonder if I should expand more on that sort of thing... neutral Dude, putting that much attention on breasts just makes you sound totally obsessed... it's not really a detail that most of us worry about beyond a general 'athletic' or 'voluptuous' description, unless it's an especially noteworthy feature of the character that plays a 'big' part in how they interact. I'm more curious about the animalistic aspects of the description of ScarletFrost's character - I'm not really familiar with elves that don't just look like pointy-eared humans... He-he, yeah, yer right. I should just leave things as they are. I guess I really needed some confirmation though... sweatdrop That sounds pretty cool Scarlet. One of my worlds has only one kind of creature that is half something and it's the Centaur. I've always liked them for some reason and they ended up being very important for the story. Although their race seems like it's doomed for extinction, they seem to sort of rise up and don't take it lightly. That story doesn't have any dwarves or elves. I just didn't think they were necessary. You know?
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