Vyvyan Evans
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GENRE: Science Fiction
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BLURB:
Five years after the Great Language Outage, lang-laws have been repealed, but world affairs have only gotten worse. The new automation agenda has resulted in a social caste system based on IQ. Manual employment is a thing of the past, and the lowest soc-ed class, the Unskills, are forced into permanent unemployment.
In a world on the brink of civil war, a deadly insomnia pandemic threatens to kill billions. Lilith King, Interpol’s most celebrated detective, is assigned to the case.
Together with a sleep specialist, Dr. Kace Westwood, Lilith must figure out who or what is behind this new threat. Could the pandemic be the result of the upskilling vagus chips being offered to the lowest soc-ed class? Or are language chips being hacked? And what of the viral conspiracy theories by the mysterious Dark Court, sweeping the globe? Lilith must work every possible angle, and quickly: she is running out of time!
While attempting to stop a vast conspiracy on an intergalactic scale, Lilith also faces shocking revelations about her origin, coming to terms with her own destiny.
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EXCERPT
Her father then turned back to Lilith, gazing at her with the kindness she loved. “I have to go away.” He gulped. “You must be very brave, Lily. Because what I’m doing is for you. You’re very special. I believe you will change everything. Not just here, but everywhere.” With that he reached into his jacket and pulled out a small bracelet from inside his breast pocket. He handed it to Lilith.
“Another gift?” she asked, with cautious excitement. Lilith turned it over in her hand. It was silver, with a small, strange-looking screen on the outer side. The screen was narrow and black, and numbers were spinning in iridescent green, fleetingly across the screen.
“I guess it is. This is a Swiss Secure bracelet. It will live with you, expanding as you grow.”
“Is it alive?” Lilith asked.
Her father chuckled. “In a way, I suppose it is. When you’re older, after you’re chipped, the numbers will stop spinning. And then you’ll receive a message from me—two, in fact.”
“Memoclips?” Lilith asked, confused. She knew that was what the chipped adults called them.
Her father dipped his head. “Actually, faceclips. They will explain things … when the time is right. For one thing, where the music comes from, the Nunciature Evangelion—the Tower of Songs.”
“Music?”
“It will come to you, later today. This music will help you become your potential, but it will also be your one Achilles heel …”
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How to Make Your Characters Believable
While a fictional character emerges from an act of
imagination, fiction is grounded in lived experience. And in turn, the best
fiction both reflects on and gives meaning to our shared lived realities.
While a fictional character is necessarily not real, and
many even exhibit fantastical or superhuman attributes, in the best fiction, a
character or protagonist should resonate with the reader. And in so doing, the
character should entertain, move a reader, and ultimately provide a mechanism
for reflecting on some aspect of the real world or the reader’s experience of
it and of themselves.
For a character to resonate, they don’t have to be like a real
person, or even act like a real person. But there have to be sufficient
elements that tie them to the lived experience of readers, thus rendering the
character believable.
For instance, a character’s appearance should more or less
reflect (some aspects of) expectations and norms for that particular character,
such as gender, age, dress, and ethnicity attributes. Similarly, a relatable personality,
and reactions to story-events that are in keeping with that personality, facilitate
believability.
A character’s personality is often discussed, in fiction, in
terms of “voice”. This is communicated by a skilled writer using vocabulary
choice, paralinguistic cues (such as apt descriptions of gestures and facial expressions),
style of dialogue, and other cues, including
the character’s outlook and assessment, both on the story-events, and on
life more generally. These elements all serve to give a well-rounded feel for
the character, making the character “feel” fully developed.
What is also important is that the character’s emotional
responses to events, and their goals, should be grounded in everyday (non-story-world)
logic. A character should react to story-events in keeping with reasonable
norms as to the standard types of experienced emotional valence. If a character
reacts emotionally in non-standard ways, that is not a logical consequence of
the character’s personality or goals, then this can jar, and result in the
reader not feeling a connection with the character.
Finally, and of the utmost importance, is character development. To successfully resonate with a reader, a character must learn, make mistakes, and evolve—whether for better or worse—just like an ordinary person. A character must experience danger and challenges—whether physical or emotional—and react in a way that is in keeping with the character’s personality and goals. All these things help make a character believable.
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AUTHOR Bio and Links:
Book website (including ‘Buy’ links):
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GIVEAWAY INFORMATION and RAFFLECOPTER CODE
4 Comments
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DeleteThis looks like a great novel. Thanks for sharing.
ReplyDeleteThis sounds like an interesting book.
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