A convenient way to get at the heart of a character’s inner being is to look in their closet. The things we keep in our closet (real closet or the headspace) are indicative of how we see ourselves and what we want to project or sometimes even want to hide from and avoid projecting. The actual closet is where we store the things that we want to wear and where we prepare ourselves to share ourselves with the world. The fictive closet–the head space–is where we hide out and keep the parts of oursleves we don’t want people to see until they earn our absolute trust.
Today a student brought me a video and along with it a writing prompt for our class asking us, “What decorates the walls of our character’s closets.” She profferred it as a ‘What is the hard question your character doesn’t want to answer?’ I will attempt to answer it for both a protagonist and an antogonist in the Torathae.
Both Elin and Tharsis hide from the question of who they are. Throughout the story they exist as parallels. Both wear the trappings of their respective nations but there is more to their thoughts and to their blood than the nationalism that is meant to define them.
The primary antagonist is a priest named Gethsah, and his question mirrors that of the dual protagonists of the tale. He hides from the question of what he is and what his origin is. This lie he and the others in his sect have created powers their society and creates the conditions for war in the lands.
It is hard to answer these questions with any real depth here without revealing much more of the story than I am comfortable with. My story is about discovery–both within and through an deeper understanding of the world around the characters. It is about the lies our teacher’s tell us and our abject willingness to accept these lies, because it is easier than facing and even searching for the truth. As such, explaining the truth snatches away the mystery at the core of the tale. So, I am being deliberately vague in my answer.
The walls of all of these closets are decorated with the history of the character’s people, and the interactions between these three very different but parallel histories are keys to the truth that will shape the fates of all three.