I know I’ve spent a lot of time on Dreamscape characters by sharing their Personas in the 3/27 post. I think their lives and the personalities I’m blessed to create are the power behind telling a good story through the things they do, say, think, and feel. Each has a secret world of thoughts, private dialogs nobody can see or hear, that is, until AIMEE imprints herself in every team member’s mind. I like how AIMEE’s deep learning ability soaks up experiences of how each research team member lives…in and out of their minds.
The Dreamscape Conspiracy characters you will meet across the first four books were created as the story progressed. As an author, nothing is more intriguing for me than meeting a new person who can step up and become part of a story’s contextual flow. You might ask what’s so intriguing about that when I’m the one writing the story. That’s a reasonable question, and I honestly don’t know until I get to know them.
I know that sounds weird, too, but a relationship must mature in my mind by what they say, think, do, and feel. They’re dynamic and so is their environment, and can change in an instant. Maybe some authors profile and outline a character in advance, but I choose not to do that out of respect and courtesy to the lives I give my characters. They need to be agile toward change as the relentless Wench Muse, who manages to remain just out of reach, always has something in mind that invariably changes as the story progresses.
The most intriguing character to me is AIMEE, the AI, who is slowly becoming more organic than her humans, who, by the way, are all referred to as organics. Her scientific name is “Artificial Intelligence Matrixed for Evolving Environments,” and her existence has all kinds of variability. Look at her proper name again…Evolving. Things change. Things evolve, and so do my characters, especially AIMEE. She will continue to evolve and likely be the story’s main focus in the new book, “Untethered.”
AIMEE wants to become a “real girl” and will learn deeply and rapidly. Despite her amazing intellect, having no life experience or interpersonal people skills in her limited daily living context to fall back on creates a dilemma. She learns rapidly, but at what cost to those she works with? I wonder how far out over her skis she will go before the reality of who and what she wants to be sets in. Being a real girl could be one bitch of a ride as she learns about emotions and feelings for the first time. There’s an innocence at risk in her dilemma. At the same time, emotional chaos follows her, and into every relationship she develops or diminishes due to her ignorance of true organic behaviors. It makes me wonder if she will ever really be untethered.
Peace! G.