Character Development: Laurie

Laurie by Hragon

Laurie (Laurenthian) started out life as my MC, and my first sort-of-but-not-really first original character back in school when I had to write stories that weren't Harry Potter fics and very much a

drone. He was there to serve a purpose as a vessel for stories, and he did the job reasonably well but we were both very dissatisfied. It wasn't until 2013 that I really gave him the space to grow and develop, and when I did changed completely beyond expectation.

He began as a quiet, imaginative boy -- very shrewd, very observant, who sneaks around the house to listen and find out for himself what no-one will tell him. In that respect, he is very similar to Wendy from Karen Wallace's wonderful novel of the same name, and one of the most influential books I've read. Based on Peter Pan, Wendy is the oldest of three siblings and takes her responsibilities very seriously. She has learnt that she cannot trust adults to tell her the truth, so if she wants or needs something, she has to go out and get it for herself. She cloaks herself in the imaginary, and relies on her imagination to protect her and make sense of things she doesn't understand, and that

is something that's very much part of 'The Moon Path'. Laurie is the same, but it's his loneliness that really provokes his imagination into action, and the need for companionship.

I suppose it would be worth saying here that I wrote 'The Moon Path' because I wanted to pay homage to my own imaginary friend, who was very important to me during my teenage years and probably saved my life. I wanted to write about that relationship and that dependency. So, at least in their early incarnations, Laurie is very much me, and Joanna is very much Him. As they grew and my focus shifted -- due mainly to a comment from my grandmother after reading NaNo2013 saying she thought it was a book about the brothers -- they changed into something much more themselves. And I'm glad for that.

As drafts have progressed, he has remained essentially the same -- still astute and sharp, and very much reliant on his imagination -- but he has become sharper, fiercer and much more impatient. He is undeniably a product of his parents, inheriting (to a degree) both their tempers, but thankfully being raised predominantly by his brother has tempered him somewhat, and I think it's his loyalty and affection for Dakin that just about keeps him from being the brat he is in danger of being.

Klaus Baudelaire - Series of Unfortunate Events

Talking of Laurie's brattiness, that's not necessarily a description I would give him, although I can

understand why people would and do think of him in that way. In the beginning of the story, Laurie is thoughtless and, for the most part, very selfish because that is the way they (his mother and brother) have encouraged him to be. They want him to stay childish and careless, and have orchestrated the situation that allows for that. When everything changes and falls apart, it is arguably Laurie who has the biggest adjustment to make, and he has to do it alone. He is angry and hurt, and no-one will explain anything. Having spent seven years being incredibly, and destructively, sheltered, coupled with a firey temper and uncontrollable indignation, he struggles hard, and thinks and acts before think about the consequences, because there have never been consequences before, at least none that he was aware of. In part three, when Laurie is thirteen, more than anything he is defensive, and that manifests in unfair aggression. He is unreasonable, but it is self-preservation and distrust more than simply being spoiled-brattiness.

Little Women's Laurie

That being said, in this the fourth draft, he is becoming sweeter and a little less jagged, at least towards Dakin, and I'm enjoying the way that that conflicts with how he is with his parents and Alyk. He has a little more perspective this time around, and I think/hope that's making him a little more sympathetic. He's still fierce as hell and probably wouldn't think twice about breaking someone's arm who threatened them, but that's his way of repaying Dakin and stepping up to take the big-brother role when Dakin loses it.

Visually, he is a combination of BBC Sherlock and Klaus Baudelaire (Series of Unfortunate Events)

and his name, obviously, is shamelessly stolen from 'Little Women' because Laurie is wonderful.

Character Development: Dakin

Alright, so I've been thinking about doing some proper explanations of my characters -- who they are, where they come from etc. etc. -- probably more for myself than for anyone else, but one of the most frequently repeated questions on the NaNo boards is 'How Do Character??' so, here's my how do. 

We will start with my primary MC, Dakin. 

He started, in this incarnation, as a secondary character, included only to fill a small role as 'MC's Brother'. My original intention for Dakin -- back in the days when 'Moonpath' was a weird fantasy set between the real world and an imaginary one -- was to be a sort of connection between the two worlds. Some sort of romance was to be included blah blah blah. Long story short, that didn't happen. Instead, he turned into Laurie's primary motivation for getting the hell off the island -- Dakin was a warning of what his life would be if he didn't escape now. 

In all my drafts, as different as they are, the separation of the brothers has always been a vital component. I really wanted to explore a relationship between two people who have this history, and this tight bond but are still, for all intents and purposes, strangers. I realised, by the end of NaNo 2013, it was this story that I really wanted to tell and, in doing so, Dakin became my MC. 

And by doing so, I had to go backwards, right back to where it all started. 

Dakin starts the story on the brink of his thirteenth birthday. Life is tricky, finding the balance between surviving his father, protecting his brother and keeping his mother happy, but he has his routine and knows what to expect. Everything is predictable and simply a matter of waiting. The thread with which he is held together is very brittle and, at the beginning of the story, he is really starting to struggle not to snap. Everything is changing but no-one will talk about it, and he's afraid of asking the questions he really doesn't want to know the answers to. Life is hard, but he is scared of pushing to make things better, knowing that it could go either way -- infinitely better, or infinitely worse -- and reluctant to risk it. He would rather wait and hope that his mother makes good on her promise to take him and Laurie away, but the more time passes the more Dakin realises that the only person who will save him is himself. 

Developmentally, I began Dakin's story in my comfort-zone. He is very much. at the core, an

amalgamation of all the characters I've ever really connected to. In the beginning, he is very inspired by my (ridiculously extensive) head-canons of Pre-Hogwarts Draco Malfoy. Anyone who knows me will not be surprised at this. Draco has lived in my head for the last ten years, and I've been really wracking my brains as to how to bring him out and make him my own. I knew I couldn't force it, that would be nightmarish, but he's definitely grown into himself as Dakin. I wanted to write about a ridiculously privileged boy who, on the surface, has everything he could possibly want but is struggling to battle some pretty hefty demons. As the story has unfolded, of course, he has moved away Draco and has grown into something very different, but it's important to talk about the roots of the character, and that definitely lies in Harry Potter fanfiction. 

Speaking of fanfiction, there's another character that definitely needs mentioning in connection to

development. After Season Two of BBC's Sherlock aired in 2012, the character of Mycroft Holmes grabbed me like a bulldog and refused to put me down for a very long time. More specifically, the relationship between Mycroft and Sherlock. 

I loved the relationship between them -- these two amazingly clever men with this bizarre brotherly bond that I had never seen before. Of course, me being me, I needed to write it, to extract all the marrow from this headcanon that was growing at unspeakable rates. I was fascinated by the way they are surrounded by all these people and yet they are isolated in their uniqueness and so reluctantly dependent on each other. I have never had any personal experience with siblings, but this was something I could connect to. I saw Mycroft as incredibly protective of Sherlock's waning innocence, and he would do anything to preserve his little brother's childishness, no matter what the personal risk. Obviously Mycroft was a very ambitious young man, and I wanted to explore the conflict of fighting his way to the top whilst at the same time needing to prioritize a boy who didn't necessarily want to accept the help but also cannot survive without it. The age difference between them (7 years) also struck me as interesting and was very influential on the path I took those headcanons down. For more info, see my fic All We Have in the End  Unfinished, but I'd love to go back to it one day. 

Okay, so back to Dakin. Once everything crumbles (as of course it has to) and everything holding him together has been stripped away, he is left with only the shell of himself and a stranger who had been brought in to, effectively, keep him alive and out of the way. Dakin between the ages of 14 and 18 was really interesting to write because everything that made him him was removed. He has nothing -- no control, no freedom, no real purpose to live but even his life isn't his own anymore. The only thing giving him any sort of motivation at all is the vague hope that everything will go back to the way it was. He has forgotten why he wants that or what it would mean should it happen, but the want is deep and instinctive. He is so preoccupied with this want that it keeps him rooted in the past and prevents him from moving forward. He is static, unable to move backwards and forwards. The motivation that comes from this isn't a healthy one -- he cannot have what he wants, and brooding over it only makes it feel as though he is losing it all over again. It is only with the final realisation that everything he knew from before is gone and letting go of the scraps that he is finally able to start making forward progress and start building himself back from the beginning. 

Inspiration and influence came this time from the character of Yuki Sohma from Natsuki Takaya's manga series Fruits Basket. The isolation and the damaging effect of being alone with nothing but your own thoughts and the callous criticism of others eating away at you until there's nothing left really struck me, especially in such a young character. Being broken down mentally can have a catastrophic effect physically, and that was something I wanted to explore. How could anyone survive that, and what would happen when they came out the other side?

Another element of Yuki's story that really inspired me was his relationship with his mother. In all my stories in all the years, I have always somehow managed to avoid talking about mothers; they are always mysteriously absent for whatever reason. But, with Moonpath, I wanted to break this habit. And the relationship between Dakin and his mother, it transpires, is one of the more interesting. Dakin's love and unconditional faith in his mother and her promise to him is both what holds him together in the beginning and breaks him apart most brutally. I was surprised, in the beginning, that my beta readers despised Aurelia far more than Lysandis, and when I questioned Sarah on this, she made the simple case that 'Mothers are supposed to put their children first', and Aurelia's failure to do so make her the true villain of this story. She holds the power, she could make things better so quickly and so easily, but it is her reluctance to face up to her

mistakes and her subsequent distance from Dakin that really sets the events in motion. 

When you're a child, your mother is the whole world. It doesn't matter what anyone else says, she is always right and you will be on her side unconditionally. Unfortunately, unconditional loves comes at a price when it isn't reciprocated, and that's something I really want to get to the bottom of with Dakin and Aurelia. Everything he does is, ultimately, for her and the less she acknowledges him the harder and the more desperately he tries which, unfortunately, only pushes her further away. I wanted to write about the impossible position of a guilty mother who loves her son but cannot and will not accept the mistakes she has made and the damage she has caused. 

I don't necessarily agree that she's the villain - I don't really think I have a villain at all - but she certainly holds the most power and is the inciting catalyst for a great deal of what goes on, even in her absence. 

Realising that his mother isn't going to save him is major turning point on two occasions, and makes him stronger at both points, giving him the incentive to fight for what he needs himself. 

By the time Part 3 comes along, at which point Dakin is 19, he has managed to scrape himself together into a good place. He is as content and as happy as he ever expects to be, with a routine and work to keep him occupied and distracted. By this point, I wasn't really influenced by any outside sources, more looking at the logical route that a character with this background would take. My thoughts were: As long as he keeps still and nothing changes or deviates, everything is perfectly fine. Of course, in novelling, 'perfectly fine' is unacceptable and the boat needs to be rocked. Long story short, getting what you want comes at a hefty price and never materializes quite in the way you expect it to. 

I can't really say much more without giving the ending away, but yes, this is how a character grows from seed. It takes time, a helluva lot of time, and patience and false starts, but if you spend enough time with them eventually you'll wake up one day in shock to find a three-dimensional human being taking up space in your head. 

Oh, and funny story about the name *headdesk* In October 2013, I needed a name for a Final Fantasy character and Dakin sprung into my head. I had no idea where it came from, assuming it was from a book or something, but I liked it a lot! NaNo passed, and Dakin was christened Dakin and I was very pleased. Still had no idea where I'd heard it before though... Then, one day in early December 2013, I was pottering a long minding my own business, and then I remembered. 

It was the bloody middle name of my bloody ex-boyfriend - someone I reeaally didn't want to pay tribute to!

But by that point it was too late. Thankfully, Dakin is completely himself and not even slightly similar to Him. Thankfully. 

Art Credit:

All pics of Dakin belong to me and were drawn by the wonderful Suzanami 

Mycroft and Sherlock belong to and are drawn by Against-Stars 

And all Fruits Basket belong to Natsuki Takaya.