I think that it might be a lot of the character interaction that especially drains me while writing, like perhaps how I find it talking to other people, I have to think of their own personalities, their relationship with another character, and how they would logically interact with them. Where I am right now in my main project is where my main four characters are with two other important characters for the next couple of chapters and there is a lot of nuance I want to put between them.
For example, my main character sees herself as quite strong and leader of the other three main characters, although one of two other characters is worried she will get hurt and thinks she meeds protected herself, she hates this, but also has a crush on him but is not aware of it. My story being in the first person I am wanting to play up quirks of my main character that she does not find things creepy as others do, she is brash, but also observant of other, to a degree that is overdone by the first important person, while the second important person she has an unearned dislike of. Without saying these are the facts I am trying to have it come out as just writing of what the narrative hints at, and this chapter (18) is the one where other characters may comment on things that show her as unreliable as a ‘normal’ perspective. I fear she comes across as too bland otherwise, but also don’t want her to be not relatable.
A second main character is very attached to the first, she generally very reserved while balanced with outbursts that go the other way, she will follow the main character, but also see unreasonable behaviour. The third major character is the next I really want to focus on now as she is pretty awkward, is rather shy but the way she shows it can instead have her come across as aggressive or angry. A major part of her is that she is especially shy around men, which the guest characters are, so there has to be thought in how she will act for a while. And the fourth main character is generally logical and verbally critical of things she is a problem, but underneath that exterior of looking to have no patience of “stupid things” that she could be taken as looking down on them, when not reading she thinks the most of helping others.
All my characters are quite different and have to interact with each other differently, where I have perhaps cheated a little where the four main characters were inspired by different parts of my personality where I have fleshed out traits to be more well-rounded. Or at least I hope, because their traits mean they can appear a bit contradictory: The most self-assured one is the most observant, the most reserved can be the most confrontational, the most aggressive can be the shiest, and the least patient can be the most caring. I guess it has made me anxious if I have even made realistic characters on top of trouble writing how they interact.
A previous chapter I wrote in a college professor who was the rudest and most ignorant despite station, that the way he interacted with my main character that I fear might seem unrealistic but was based on my own interactions with the worst moderator on the web I have ever met this side of a god complex. Which now that I think about it made that arc kind of ironic without realising it.
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Through dream I travel, at lantern's call
To consume the flames of a kingdom's fall