I don’t really think that the holidays are good for productivity. I’ve gotten nothing done the past three weeks and now that I’m sitting down again, it’s taking me forever to figure out what I’m doing. I read plenty and did lots of research and made tons of notes, but all that’s gotten me are scraps of paper floating around my desk with no organization whatsoever, and a disjointed idea of making my characters “better”. I think that comes from a discussion about bad guys in the movies that I had a couple of weekends ago. My prime example is the emperor in Gladiator. Not my favorite movie anyway–I don’t really like Russell Crowe. Or Nicholas Cage either, for some reason, but that’s another story. I can stomach Cage. But Crowe? Icky.
Anyway. The emperor. From what I remember, they set up his character really well at the beginning with him trying to please his father and lots of complex character development and all this potential to be really cool and interesting… Then it all goes to Hades and he ends up as two dimensional as every other Hollywood bad guy. I mean, Russell Crowe has to have someone to be the foil for his good guy character, right? Ta da! Evil Emperor!
I would rather that this didn’t happen with my characters. I want some really good bad guys. Some so creepy that they make your skin crawl a bit, and others so good at hiding their evilness that you can’t even tell. But that’s my problem–I’m afraid that I’ll make them as two-dimensional as the movies do. So I suppose I should sit down and read a bit more about the evil characters. I’ve got an excellent character study going for one of my characters in Marguerite of Angoulême (or Navarre, depending on which you prefer. I like Angoulême better since it defines her as a woman, not as wife… But that could be argued that it defines her as a daughter… Hm. And she did do some of her best work as the Queen of Navarre… Whatever. She’s somewhat of a badass.) Even thinking of renaming my character after her since I like her so much. Of course, my character is a bit more devoted to her children than Marguerite was. Marguerite didn’t seem to like her daughter very much. I think she was hoping for a son, which is really annoying, considering how much a “New Woman” she was supposed to be. And she had a really disturbing thing for her brother… Although there’s some debate about that. But it wouldn’t surprise me. A lot of incest seemed to go on in the Middle Ages. Not sure what’s up with that. Population shortage? Maybe women were just too sheltered and didn’t really meet/talk with any men other than their fathers and brothers, so they got a little creepy and infatuated. Whatever. I think that Marguerite is good for my Catherine character, and I have some good ideas for some other characters as well, so we know what that means… Yes, that’s right. More research. Another biography. No more time off.