writers_muses Prompt # 5.4 ~ What scares you the most about you

[on_holy_ground]

This is such an easy answer, and yet it is one that is rather complicated at the moment. For me, the thing that scares me the most about Darius is that I’ll screw him up. Now I would think that this is something that most writer’s probably struggle with when it comes to canon muses, but for me the fear has become much more prominent in the last year.

I had become comfortable to a point, with writing him as the peaceful priest. I had gotten his voice down fairly well and had been told that I was doing a good job with a well-loved character. I was still a bit nervous with him, simply because he had a lot of depth with regards to how he thought about things and I wasn’t always sure that I conveyed that very well. That is something I still struggle with to this day, actually.

However, it wasn’t until I decided to explore his life as the barbarian general that I really started to worry. There’s nothing at all in canon for me to use in order to figure out what kind of a person he had been back then really. All we know for the most part is that he was a strategist that could have possibly ended up ruling most of Europe if he had stayed on that path. This didn’t allow much in the way of figuring out what kind of personality he had in those days though.

Therefore, I had to use what few clues I could gather from his life as the priest, and use those to figure out how he might have behaved before the change. For me, the fear lies in having people that know the character looking at me like I am completely insane for seeing him the way that I do in that era. Also, it’s difficult for me to see him in that era myself, so I am afraid that his voice when I play him now is inconsistent. I’ve tried to work that into the plot, but I don’t know how well I’m doing with that aspect of things.

Probably the biggest thing that scares me about all of it though, is that I’m afraid to write him as his old self because I’m afraid of what other people think about what I’m doing. I’d love to say that I just write for my own pleasure, but the fact is that I like to know what others think as well. Otherwise, I wouldn’t even bother with putting him out here in the various writing communities for other people to see.

Comments

[anson-greene.livejournal.com]

Sorry I'm just getting a chance to respond to this. I'm new to Darius, as you know, and I admit I never really followed the Highlander series. Add to that the fact that I'm far from a hardline canon devotee *g* and I can see that I'm probably not the person you're worried about, as far as the perception of how you write Darius goes. I wanted to put my .02 in anyway, though, and say I admire you greatly as a writer and I enjoy Darius so much. I've known him mostly as the General, but I've also read some of the entries that deal with his time as a priest, and I marvel at how well you pull off writing such a deep, complex character.

I'm fascinated by his contradictory nature, the two halves of the whole, and you do an amazing job of illustrating them both without allowing one to overshadow the other. He's a brilliantly drawn character and always a joy to read, whether he's the General or the priest. I hope you write him for a very very long time. :)

ooc

[on-holy-ground.livejournal.com]

Awww, thank you do much! He's a very difficult character for me to write, with only one other pup of mine that causes me more trouble, so I am glad that he is being enjoyed by others. ((hugs))