I’m trying to build a cynical teenager and fortunately I do not need to look far. My collection of kids consists of 5 boys and a lone girl. She’s a bit of a cynic herself, but modeling the character for this story is going to take more than her. I think teens are cynical and limited in general. In my term as such I felt like nobody outside of my circle of people could possibly know as much as we did or impact the world–our world–as much as we could. This was obviously a false reality generated by bravado. I have one of those in my 5. I also have one of those in my story–the main character starts his arc this way. This is not the direction I am leaning for this additional character. I need something different.
I am building a character who becomes a critical point in what amounts to a school-shooting styled incident. The character in question winds up on the victim side of the shooter, though doesn’t lose her life. She exists in two different lights. She is seen one way by the boy who loves her and another way by the ‘shooter’. My job here is to figure out what that darker and more cynical nature of hers looks like and how that mirrors the shooter.
I haven’t gotten very far on the shooter (again, I don’t have to look far for the threads of anger common amongst teens). I know that he sees the world as operating in a way that he is forced to put up with and is extremely tired of the people around him and really just wants to do something about it to assert some level of dominance over the situation, because he feels he has a right to tell them about themselves and penalize them for their behavior. This is a trait I see in a lot of teens. Dictionary.com defines cynical in two fashions. First as, “believing that people are motivated by self-interest; distrustful of human sincerity or integrity.” and secondly as, “concerned only with one’s own interests and typically disregarding accepted or appropriate standards in order to achieve them.” This right to penalize fits those definitions lock and key. I feel like this definition is the central motivation for the character’s shooter-style outburst. He doesn’t trust people, he cares deeply about his own stuff/world view, he disregards appropriate standards to deliver his brand of justice.
In other words, he’s a teenage dude.
I’m having fun building these characters as I crawl back towards this novella and the joy I intend to see in getting it finished. I guess that space between stories is nearing it’s edge.