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Write On! In the beginning... [1]

['This Content Is Not Subject To Review Daily Kos Staff Prior To Publication.']

Date: 2023-08-03

I have always loved origin stories. How did the hero become heroic? Where did the villain go wrong? How did the tiger get his stripes?

Greetings, writers, and welcome to another edition of Write On! Tonight I want you to think about the characters or world of your WIP. Where do they come from? How did they get their start?

I was recently reading a murder mystery, and the protagonists invested tremendous effort trying to psychoanalyze the perpetrator. They believed if they could figure out his past and what events in his childhood had shaped him, they could catch their killer. Because events in our past do shape us. We are all the product of our various differing experiences. The book is the immersive and grim crime drama The Alienist by Caleb Carr.

Considering the origins of a character can help to flesh them out, and make decisions as to whether they will follow this-or-that course of action seem less arbitrary. They can also justify their actions to the reader, deepening the meaning. If two people meet and fall in love for only the flimsiest reasons, it’s not too convincing, but what if we know they were infatuated with one another since they were young? Then the story has greater weight.

Here is one example of an origin story I felt I had to get to the bottom of:

The Fabled Lost Jewel of Togwogmagog??

Long ago, I began to watch Doctor Who during the era of Tom Baker, the fourth Doctor. I eventually did see most of the third Doctor thanks to the magic of reruns, and even the second in his appearance in a special (“The Five Doctors”). And I went merrily on from there.

But at some point, long after, after even David Tennant’s time in the sun, I got curious, and by then the internet was a thing, and so I sought out and found the early episodes (the ones that are still surviving, at least).

You see, I simply had to see where it all began. I mean, how do you even begin to introduce a character like that? Where do you lay the first bricks in the foundation of the world-building to fashion such a one?

Of course, a lot of it wasn’t there at the outset. Regeneration, for instance, only came later.

Still, those early episodes showed a different face of the Doctor (in more than just the physical sense). He was irascible, gruff, quite different from the modern depiction. It was fascinating to me to see how the character had grown and changed.

So, how about your world? Or the world of one of your favorite works of literature, movies, or TV shows? Or one of our standard characters or worlds, like Togwogmagog?

The Fabled Lost Jewel of Togwogmagog???

What kind of jewel is the famed Lost Jewel of Togwogmagog? When was it created? In the heart of what volcano, or by what skilled hand? By the dwarfs who made Thor’s hammer?

Is it an amethyst? A fire opal? Emerald, ruby, diamond, sapphire, amber or onyx, heliodor or pearl, chrysoberyl, chalcedony, obsidian…

It could be anything from agate to zircon.

Or something else?

Is it real? Is it a myth?

Is it enchanted? Cursed? Or simply invaluable?

Does it confer power? Authority? Dominion?

Why was it lost?

Was it taken?

Maybe it was cast away, like Alexander, the child of King Priam and Queen Hecuba of Troy, the prophesied doom of the city, only to be adopted by a shepherd and renamed Paris?

Did some Cassandra make a prophecy about the gem, and its owner spurned it out of fear?

Or was it stolen by a dragon?

Or demanded as payment by a greedy wizard in return for saving the queen’s life?

Merely misplaced?

Or was it lost in war… or disaster?

Could it be A Jewel at the Heart of Quantum Physics? Or even a Time crystal?

No one knows the origin of the jewel. That is, unless you decide, and write its saga.

The Fabled Lost Jewel of Togwogmagog????

In their book, The Superhero Reader, Charles Hatfield, Jeet Heer, and Kent Worcester describe an origin story as: “a bedrock account of the transformative events that set the protagonist apart from ordinary humanity.” They suggest origin stories are so ubiquitous and significant in the superhero genre because it is “about transformation, about identity, about difference, and about the tension between psychological rigidity and a flexible and fluid sense of human nature.” And indeed, origin stories are important there, but aren’t most stories about “transformation, identity, difference”?

Origins are important for all characters because, in the words of the song “What It’s Like” by Everlast, “You know where it ends, yo, it usually depends on where you start.”

Tonight’s challenge:

Tell me an origin story. Tell me about

The transformative events that set your hero (or villain) on their journey; or

The creation or founding tale of your world, or some part thereof; or

The origin story of the Jewel of Togwogmagog or any of our stock characters; or

Any other origin story you feel like telling

If those don’t suit you then how about a scene of no more than a few hundred words using the words decaf, nix, and sojourn...

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