So, first off, I'm up to 40,000 words (plus like 100 more). That's only 5,000 away from halfway through.... which on the one hand is good but on the other hand I'm like "holy crap I have to use up those remaining 50,000 words!" Even though I'm probably not technically ready for it, I'm feeling antsy and thinking about making somebody read it, just to see if I need to be nudged in any certain directions.
I'm going to try to write in this more. If nothing else, it'll guilt Sara into writing on her blog more and I like reading hers. Before I go any farther, though, I figured I should do a (very) brief rundown of the main characters (along with photos of the celebrity that most closely represents them in my head) so that in the future if I mention someone I don't have to get into describing them THEN and losing the moment or whatever.
What we have is a group of young adults on a team of parahumans (people born with extraordinary powers and abilities). The team is called Legacy.
JD is the main character and the leader of the team. In her earliest incarnations (like when I was 14), she was just me with a badass attitude, but now I don't think we have much in common other than eye color and a sense of humor. Of every member of the team, JD's the one who most embodies the ideals of a hero. In the book she says to one of the other characters something to the effect, "Everyone else on the team could walk away today and live a normal life. Can you honestly imagine that for me? This is who I am." At the beginning of the book, the only thing that matters to her are her younger brother Aidan and being a good hero/team leader. She has feelings for her teammate Tyler, but that takes a backseat to her brother and the hero thing. A lot of the book (other than stopping the big bad guy) is her learning to lighten up and be human. She's around 22 years old with long strawberry blonde hair and green eyes, 5'5". The actress that now plays her in my mind is really a little more attractive than what I wanted (she should be nice looking but not beautiful).
AIDAN is JD's younger brother. He's 19, with light brown hair and hazel eyes, about 6'1". I feel like I'm losing touch with him a little bit as so much of the focus is on JD and Daniel, but I've got Aidan scenes on my "To Do" list. He's the funny one, and flirts with anything that moves (but more in a joking make-the-girl-feel-good way than in a sleazy way). The more I get to know one of my coworkers the more he reminds of Aidan, so I've been trying to sort of channel him when I write. His sister is his only family and therefore one of the most important parts of his life, but he's not obsessive about it the way JD is. I picture a young ('cause he's a bit older than I am now) Jared Padalecki for Aidan, and he's the second most perfect casting choice (some of the others, like JD, I am just not so sure about yet).
TYLER is one of the two main love interests, and the one that JD's had a crush on for a few years. He's a good guy, but kind of your typical dumb male when it comes to relationships, and he makes some pretty bad choices. His first meeting with JD and the reason she ends up liking him aren't in the book but I may write them for my own sake (plus when I hit it big I can post it on the Website to make the fangirls happy). My problem with Tyler has been establishing why he'd be worth having feelings for in the first place when all we seem to see is him screwing up... so I've been working on that and I'm a lot happier with it now (lucky I have those 50,000 words to use up). Tyler's the other funny one of the team, but in a more sophomoric way. Aidan's humor is charming and flirty while Tyler's is more likely to involve burping or playing a practical joke. I haven't exactly settled on an actor for him, but in the book he's 23, 5'11" with a black faux hawk and light blue eyes. He can't ever turn off his powers (stronger, faster, better senses) the way the others can, and therefore they create a stronger sense of who he is than the others. He's just the huge (musculature-wise) funny guy. Of all of the characters in the book, he's the one most closely based on a real person that I knew. The actors in the photo are two of the top contenders to play him in the imaginary movie (They happen to be on the same TV show so I have a picture of them together).
ERIN is out of place on the team, and hopefully you'll find yourself wondering why she's even on it in the first place. All of her actions are based in insecurity--she thinks her only value comes from sexuality, which unfortunately becomes true because she believes it. She's got a good heart when you get down to it, but she's self-centered and puts value on the wrong ideals. She's sort of the anti-JD, and this comes through in their interactions. Erin is 5'8" and curvy, and always dresses to impress. She'd never leave the house without a planned outfit and full makeup. She has dark curly brown hair and dark blue eyes (dark enough to almost look purple, like Elizabeth Taylor). She's somewhere around 23. I sort of picture her as Katy Perry's less attractive sister.
MARA is the youngest and newest member of the team--she's a few months shy of 18 when she joins. She's half Japanese, and I've sort of run with the stereotype a teeny bit in that she's the most calm and balanced of the team (sort of got that Zen thing going on). She's a Hot Topic kind of girl and loves to read (she's obsessed with Twilight, although it never specifically names the book), with pink streaked hair. She's 5' tall with light brown (almost honey colored) eyes. Mara's the one I had the hardest time defining, but in the end I think she's come through as being a good friend to JD and easily the wisest person (despite her age) on the team. She's just genuinely content with her life and wants everyone else to be too. She's also got a pretty big crush on Aidan but I don't know if that will actually be mentioned in the book--just one of those little things I know about the characters as I'm writing. He could do a lot worse than Mara--and he will. As for what I picture in my head when I think of her I have no idea. I generally just think of a smiley face with pink hair, since that's who she is. I just googled "young Asian actress" and looked around until I found someone who was Mara-esque. For the past ten years Mara has been half black until Rob talked me into making her Asian. I almost switched it back but I've had fun with her new backstory.
DANIEL is the third corner of the love triangle and probably the second most-written about character in the book. In the beginning, in the various incarnations of these characters, Daniel was the JD character's best friend and always ended up with the Erin character. At some point in the past few years (while I was in Augusta actually), I realized that in all of these different, JD has tried to break them up. In those versions, she was wholly devoted to the Tyler character. But I realized that I was always reluctant to let her actually end up with Tyler, and she was always trying to get Daniel to leave Erin (although for genuinely platonic reasons.... Erin was always cheating on him).... and that sort of got the wheels turning and I imagined that maybe JD was trying to tell me something (writers are always saying that their characters tell them things but it was the first time it had happened to me). Anyways, in this version, Daniel is a parahuman but he's not a member of the team. He's pretty much the complete opposite of Tyler in that he's caring and sensitive and just seems to understand people, but that's not really fair since it's part of his powers. He'd probably be the same way even without the powers, though. He can provide the yin to JD's yang, if she'll let him. Daniel is around 24, with shoulder-length light blonde hair (usually pulled back into a low ponytail) and grey eyes. He's 6'4" and is unquestionably portrayed by Travis Fimmel. The moment I first saw Travis (I remember it, freshman year of college), I gasped and said "That's Daniel," and he always will be. If only I had such an easy time casting everyone else.
