The Life Choices Write Tag

It’s been a while since I’ve done a tag, and it’s been a while since I talked about the project I was originally meaning to draft this month. Now’s as good a time as any to tell you more about the main character of this project, right?

Here we go!

For starters, thank you so much to Kat @ Life and Other Disasters for tagging me!! I really appreciate it.

RULES

• Thank the person who tagged you but also link back to the original post!
• Provide a short description of your WIP/story
• This is pretty focused on main characters but don’t hesitate to use several characters for the answers if you want to!

 

PROJECT SEA GAYS

At the moment, the title stays under wraps, hidden behind a code name I’m so fond of, but! Have a short summary, on the house.

Life as a pirate is hard enough. With all the dangers of the sea, survival is hardly guaranteed. Still, Lohna would never give it up, until she has to because the sea is draining away and it’s all her fault. Joined by a sharkslayer mermaid named Mahri, testing a newfound magic at her fingertips, and pursued by gods from both their worlds, Lohna must brave the newly created desert and its terrors in order to restore the life she never meant to destroy. With the threat of divine intervention hanging over her head at every turn and the sea dwindling away with every minute she wastes, it’s a race to find the power to make things right once more.

For this tag, I’ll be focusing on Lohna! Mahri’s history is still in development, but I’m 100% settled on Lohna (partly because she got her start as my very first D&D character), so she gets the limelight today!

 

QUESTIONS AND ANSWERS

Where does your main character (MC) live? Were they born there or did they move to that place?

Lohna was born aboard The Champion, her mother’s pirate ship, and save for bouts of shore leave, she’s always there! That ship and its crew is home, and more important to her than anything in the world. Not a conventional home by any means, but dear to her all the same.

Does your MC have a dream career? What (if anything) stops them from pursuing it?

Well, it’s definitely hard to continue a career of piracy and high seas sailing when the magical draining of the sea is your fault. Lohna’s biggest obstacle to getting back to the life she loves is her own mistakes.

Did any of your characters ever go against their parents/family’s wishes? How did that change their relationship?

Being the daughter of a pirate captain can be a blessing and a curse. On one hand, Lohna’s learned all kinds of handy skills, and she gets some preferential treatment from Captain Carravia. On the other hand, she’s expected to one day become captain of The Champion, and her mother’s high expectations can cause some friction. In particular, Lohna’s quick to run her mouth and even quicker with her fingers behind your back. More than once, she’s cheated and gambled her way to success of varying degrees, and the captain disapproves of those skills being used so flippantly. Just because she taught Lohna how to manipulate cards doesn’t mean she thinks Lohna should be using that talent all the time. There’s a time in a place in her book, and whenever she catches Lohna cheating, there’s inevitably extra responsibilities on deck, often menial ones, and a period of sullen silence between the two.

Ultimately, though, Lohna’s never done anything drastic, not intentionally. When and if her mother ever learns the sea draining is her fault, though, that might be an issue.

If faced with their greatest fear – would your MC try to overcome it or run the other way?

Lohna likes to pretend she’s the fearless type. She trusts too much in her luck magic, newly awakened, and perhaps abuses it. Even before realizing her magic, though, she’s always been brash. Heights don’t scare her, and though the sea can hardly be considered friendly, it is home, and she does know its moods well.

Violent storms, though scare her, and when possible, she prefers to hide away. And on a more intangible note, she’s terrified of being abandoned. Raised all her life among pirates, she’s never really known how to be alone, and the thought that she could be abandoned shakes her badly. It’s not something she’s sure she could overcome, and she’d do anything to avoid it.

For someone who projects confidence, she has her moments where she can’t help but be afraid, and when it comes down to it, she flees. Better to run from her problems than to face them head on. She forgets that that means living with the consequences, though.

Did any character have to cut a person out of their life? Why?

Technically, yes. On a small, unrelated to the plot level, pirates have come and gone in her life, and the ones accused of mutiny, even if they were once her friends, had to go. Her mother is the captain, and mutiny doesn’t fly on The Champion. On a plot-related level, though…

Well, it would be spoilers if I told you anything more than yes. How about we leave it at that?

What is your main character’s biggest regret?

Causing the sea to drain, of course! It was her bullet that set things in motion. Just behind that, of course, is the choice to cheat her way out of taking watch while the rest of the crew went on shore leave. She was caught cheating and ended up on watch when she might not have been on watch at all if she didn’t insist on gambling to avoid it.

Piracy doesn’t allow for too much of a conscience, but in this case, the results are big and bad. She’s feeling really, really guilty.

Which character is most likely going to help a stranger, even if they got nothing out of it in return?

I wanted to say Lohna at first, but that isn’t true. She’d do anything for the crew of The Champion, but anyone else is suspect. She might play at being friendly, but she’s guided by a certain wariness around strangers.

Mahri, on the other hand, would help. Like Lohna, she puts her family first, but she’s more ready to help a stranger. Her methods aren’t necessarily orthodox or kind, but she is interested in doing the right thing at the end of the day.

If your character got good/bad news, who would be the person they first tell?

Before the story starts, Lohna would absolutely go to the first mate of The Champion, whose name keeps changing but starts with a B. Since her relationship with her mother isn’t so much close mother-daughter so much as pride as a protégé and mentor and pirate, B is the older brother she never had, and a patient listener. She trusts his judgment, even if she doesn’t always like it, and he’s got a good sense of humor. If anyone can make her smile, it’s B.

By the story’s end, though, Mahri is her go-to confidant. Because let’s face it: this is the pirate/mermaid f/f enemies to lovers adventure story of my dreams and I refuse to compromise on this.

BONUS: Make an aesthetic for your MCs life if there had been no obstacles (money, geographical, etc.) and they had everything they wanted. (It is up to you if you want to explain it or not!)

I TAG…

I don’t know!! I’m not sure who else in the blogging world is a writer, so if you are, consider yourself tagged and totally let me know if you do the tag! And let me know if you wanted to be tagged in future writing tags!