Nancy Tart: Writing for Life

February 8, 2018

Creating Characters: Brantley Station Saga

One of the last set of characters I created were for a youth adventure series called “Brantley Station Saga.”  This entire set was built off of one comment by my Dad.  He was helping develop a website when he observed, “all of your series stuff is for girls.  Have you ever thought of writing for boys?”

Thought about it?  (Yes!  Web of Deception, The Living God, many other single stories, and most of my “in progress” works are aimed primarily at boys in middle and high school levels.)  However, he was right about one thing.  Outside of my rooster in the Adventures of Long Tail, there isn’t a main male character in the Ann, Mary, and Susan Mysteries or in Five Alive: Stories of the Funny Sisters.  Even in my Melacotia Saga books, although Jeremy Scott is a primary character, the books were written for my sisters to read and Sarah is the primary character.   

From there, I dove into the adventure world I’d dreamed of writing.  I developed Brantley Station using my futuristic model from the Melacotia Saga.  I created a narration storyline following an underappreciated unclaimed youth, Ethan.  (I started him at 14, with The Protector.  This changed when Rebeccah wanted the “Pirate Baby Story” in full.)

This jumping backwards did give me an opportunity to illustrate the origin and development of Ethan’s character.  (In these two first books, the spotlight is shared by Jamie, a young submersible pilot.)  Ethan is a shy boy who aims to please.  His melancholy personality pushes him to perfection, which makes him a good worker, and enables him to be content to be invisible.  Ethan’s goal through his life is to keep unnoticed.

I imagined this child whose traumatic early childhood is scarred with death of his mother and the distance in grief of his father.  He had a close cousin who tried to fill this gap and cheer him up, but only a few months afterward, Ethan is kidnapped by pirates.  He becomes essentially a slave.  Because of several injuries while he was fighting with his captors and Ethan’s shoving his “dream-memories” of his earlier life away as a coping measure, Ethan doesn’t remember anything before the  pirates.  He manages to live through this for a long unknown amount of time – a few years – until he’s trying to hide from an abusive pirate in the captain’s docking sub.  This providential hiding place sends him to Brantley Station.  Here he ends up trying to fit in because he has a primal desire for the deep.  He is scared by wild stories of “topside” by the military police at the station.  Ethan finds himself taking up the lowest position and hiding from most people by keeping himself busy with work.  He works diligently and easily learns new tedious tasks; by nature he hates disorder so many of his tasks end up being cleaning jobs.

I imagined how his character and personality, originally Melancholy-Phlegmatic, could have changed with experiences and time.  Was he distanced from people by his mother’s death when he felt his father’s dealing with grief by retreating?  How did he keep his people-pleasing, obedient, truthful, positive character amid the abuses of being held captive?  How does being forced to live in the guard barracks affect him?  Ethan chooses to stay honorable because of voices he hears from his past – he calls them “dream-memories.” I gave Ethan an inner strength that helps keep him grounded.

I created a memory that would connect him with his past – using a book read nightly by his older cousin from which Ethan recites passages and a song Ethan’s mother used to sing which the boys created their own new words for.

In creating Ethan, I wanted to craft a believable, dynamic character.  Each of the secondary characters like Bria Addison, Corey Skitter, Makayla Ervin, Chef Brummen, and Victor Potter are also carefully designed to be as realistic as possible.  You can read about these members of Brantley Station in the young adult series, Brantley Station Saga.

Thanks for reading!

Type at you next time…

~Nancy Tart