NaNoWriMo: Day 12 and About Eva

Hi all!  Today's post comes to you from Los Angeles, California.  I'm currently attending the Hackaday Superconference and trying to keep up with NaNoWriMo at the same time.  It's...a bit of a challenge, but hey, I eat challenge for breakfast.

Not really.  I eat toast and eggs.  Or leftover Chinese food.

Anyway, the writing has actually been going pretty well!  The stuff that I've written in the past couple days hasn't been 100% original material for NaNoWriMo, so that's made the going a little easier.  Since I've previously written some of the story, I've been more adapting the old stuff to fit with the new characters and plot.  That has proved to be nearly as challenging as writing new material.  I'm constantly judging myself for the stuff I've written in the past, which is not at all a constructive thing to do, but I can't stop myself.  So in addition to working through all that mental drama, there's the matter of fitting old material with new characters - trying to decide whether this character would still say something like that, if they wouldn't be more angry, those kinds of things.

Now that I mention it, I'm not sure I've actually introduced my main character!  Her name is Eva Leroux, although she takes on the name Eva Larch for a while.  I try not to describe her as much as I can, only offering comparisons, like "So-and-so was taller than me, but not by much" or "She looked to be about my age."  In the past, I've struggled with doing waaaaaayyyy too much description and not nearly enough plot planning, so I've been experimenting with completely withholding information about the main character to see how that goes.  Honestly, it feels pretty good.  I think I could do this as a habit.

Okay, anyway, Eva.  She's nineteen, and a college sophomore at the beginning of the story.  She's definitely based on myself to an extent, although she also contains both idealized and seriously downgraded reflections of my memories of my time as an undergrad.  (Idealized: she does serious scientific research.  Downgraded: she's sort of an introvert, which I definitely was, but she hardly talks to anyone.)  Eva is studying kudzu bioengineering, and wants to work for KuTech in their research labs.  The summer after her freshman year, she managed to get a really prestigious internship (haha yeah right) at KuTech.  One thing led to another, and she was asked to go sabotage some bioterrorists.

Trust me, it makes more sense when you've been thinking about the plot for seven months.  Or if you read it, that would be good too.

So she goes to sabotage some bioterrorists who are illegally growing plants other than kudzu, and then the next thing she remembers is arriving back at the city she just left that morning.  Two months of memories are just gone.  She remembers being on the train going away, and coming back, and nothing else.  Her employers at KuTech assume that Eva had been drugged by the bioterrorists and try to find a "cure" to get her memories back, but nothing works.  Eventually, as she heads back to the university for her sophomore year, she's come to terms with the fact that she might not get the memories back - until, that is, she finds the bottle.  (See my Day 3 post for this excerpt.)  Now, suddenly, she finds a video of herself on her computer, one she doesn't remember making, in which she describes exactly what actually happened when she was out in the kudzu wastes.

Writing a character like this, who basically has two sides of themselves but only one has all of the memories, has been an awesome challenge.  It's almost like Eva is an unreliable narrator (I write almost exclusively in first-person present tense), but she's only unreliable sometimes...I guess she's somewhat reliable, just like me when I promise I'll do something for someone else.  Sometimes I just forget, okay?  But back to Eva - it's been interesting trying to both write her as someone who thinks she knows herself so well like only a college sophomore can, and also as someone who knows she doesn't know herself as well as she thinks she does, and then as someone finding out she doesn't know herself as well as she thinks she does...Oof it's complicated.

The gist of it is that Eva is a very multifaceted character, or at least I think so, and I think by making myself focus on the mental part of her character rather than the physical I've forced myself to be more creative.

That being said, my plot is incredibly predictable, so I need to keep working.

And now, an excerpt from yesterday's work:

Red slipped through the double doors and vanished from my sight.  Letting out a long breath, I flopped onto a bench to enjoy a moment alone.  It boggled my mind how seriously the Banzais took all this.  Librarians, botanists, programmers, intimidator or whatever it was that Dessa did – how did they find these people?  It seemed impossible that they should be able to exist.  My mind retreated briefly to the square of hyper-kudzu hiding upstairs in my pillowcase.  If it’s anything at all like the original kudzu from the mega-growth – the kudzu just outside these walls – it would be easy to release in the dead of night and have the greenhouse completely overtaken by morning.  I glanced at the doors through which Red disappeared a few minutes ago.  In there were even more plants, things that could be anything.  Things that could kill.  Why even maintain these plants, I wondered – what was the point, besides just outright rebellion?  There was no good reason for any of this.

Red’s distinctive hair blossomed once more on the other side of the double doors, followed a moment later by the real thing as she stepped back into the hallway. 

I pause.  My breath is hitching in my chest, and I can feel my eyes starting to sting.  I close my eyes.  Oh god, I thought I could do this, but now I’m not sure I can. 

The Sweetheart won’t last forever.

“God, Shylo, I know,” I whisper to myself, hearing her voice in my head.  I raise a hand to my forehead, pressing on my temple as if I can just push out the memory without having to repeat it.  But I need to make this video – I need to record it for myself, so that I’ll know, so that I’ll understand.  I take several deep breaths. 

“Eva, this is our botanist, Shylo Sakura.”

My eyebrows shot toward my hairline.  I’d expected someone old, like Felipe, with crazy flyaway hair and dirt caked in every wrinkle on their face – someone with crazed eyes who always walked around barefoot in a lab coat.  Instead, Red was trailed by a girl who couldn’t be any older than me clad in a plain plaid shirt and cutoff denim shorts, her feet encased in well-worn leather boots.  Shylo’s nearly-black hair was ramrod-straight and cut in a short, choppy style, a few bangs drifting down over her face as if they were an afterthought.  Her nose was short and wide, her upper lip much thinner than the lower.  Freckles spread from her forehead down her nose and over her cheeks, like a diving bird spreading its wings.  I caught myself with my mouth hanging open and clamped it shut, my teeth clacking against each other. 

“Nice to meet you,” Shylo greeted me, and I clambered to my feet once more. 

“Yeah, you too.  I’m Eva Larch.”