[I thought I had posted this this morning, apologies! I swear I hit post]
Good Morning Adventurers, I hope that between the World Cup and Fourth of July, everyone had a fun and safe weekend. I myself was kept busy with several parties, projects, and a very surprising catch of the sniffles, with more projects to work on today. Once I’m done writing this, I’ll be heading off to tear down a shed at my parents house. So let’s tackle the questions that I had left you guys with:
- How will this warrior fall in love with Zaya, the Unbroken?
- How will these two characters interact with each other on their journey?
Alright, time to get off the phone and start typing. So here are the two characters who are going to “fall in love,” so to speak. Could I say this more eloquently? Probably, but for the sake of this post, lets keep it simple. Besides, the “how” is the more important part of the story anyways. So lets answer that first question:
How will this warrior fall in love with Zaya, the Unbroken?
Lets approach this question by looking at some aspects of the characters first. Age Gap—he’s ancient and she’s twenty-six years old. Why? Why not have them be closer in age? Well, for one, my wife is a romance reader and she likes to read these sort of things, and the second being that what guy doesn’t like a warrior who has been roaming the land doing cool warrior things. So why does it matter? Well, how does a guy, who has been roaming the land for thousands of years, all of a sudden one day, fall in love with someone? That’s kinda the question that needs to be approached here in this story. Has he been celibate or has he just flown with his desires while accomplishing his goals along the way. When you look at some of the Romantasy novels that are published today, you can immediately clock that this trope tends to lean into that second option.
With that in mind, how does Zaya change Grim? Change? What do I mean by this? Well think about it. People don’t change, unless they absolutely want to. Why do you think people tend to be rooted in their ways? So the real question that should be looked at when looking at the relationship between Grim and Zaya is how does she affect him to the point where he will want to change? How can someone come into your life and affect you so much that you are willing to change core parts of who you are just to be someone worthy of being with them? It’s kinda like how I became a teacher—I did it to prove to my wife that I was not going to be a bum of a man without a job and incapable of supporting her(despite her having a job/career herself). It’s a matter of wanting to be worthy enough of that person.
For Grim, this challenge is going to come in the form of companionship. I won’t say more than that, but it can be examined through the lens of the second question that I’ll be answering here:
How will these two characters interact with each other on their journey?
So the idea here is how these two end up caring for each other. As I’ve mentioned in the last two previous posts, both characters have a “reckless” trait about them. Grim plays reckless with his own life every time he goes into combat, while Zaya tends to be reckless in her choices. While on their quest, choices that they normally make alone will impact their would be simple journey. When Grim would normally just leap over a gorge, he now needs to consider his normal person companion. When Zaya wants to save someone, she doesn’t consider the consequences/repercussions of killing the “bad guys.”
Likewise though, I hope to portray their best qualities in how they express care. Relationships are about companionship just as they are about love. My wife isn’t just the woman that I love, she is my best friend. She is the first person I want to talk to, the person that I want to hear laughing, and I just want to give her as much of my time as I possibly can. With that said, I want to do the exact same thing with these two characters and for any set of characters that I write in the future. To do that, for these characters at least, I want to express how they “care” in this novel. I want the reader to see each of the characters attempt at being vulnerable, slowly having the characters open up and hear what the other person is saying. I want the characters change themselves, in order to be a better companion for each other, as the story progresses, until at last, they can be what the other person needs.
A.G. Flowers 
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