Warm Up

NaNoWriMo starts in about 10 days. It's about time I started warming up for it. I'm putting in a little more preparation time this year. Not that much preparation is needed but I want to do it a little differently this year.

For this warm up, I want to reflect on the story, "Conflict Over Agamemnon", I wrote last year. I've always wanted to come back and write up my thoughts on it but I've never found the time. This is as good a time as any.

David was the main character from last year. David is the classic reluctant hero. He has a dark past and is tortured by the misdeeds he has performed. His apprehension towards the current conflict is driven by it. He was (and still is skill-wise) a very efficient assassin. The conflict gives him to opportunity to once again apply his deadly skills but ..... in the intervening years David has started to develop a conscience. The untold back story has David raised from a young age to be the ultimate killing machine. However with the world at peace, he is quietly reassigned to a location where his deadly skills would not be needed. During this time, like any intelligent person he has started questioning what he done. When the conflict starts, his training kicks in and his instinct starts taking over. David emerges victorious at the end when he overcomes this training (his script as Victor Frankl would say) at the end and does opposite to what he has been trained to do. When he does that, the cycle of conflict that exists within him is broken and his true self is able to emerge.

For some unknown reason, the reluctant hero archetype appeals greatly to me. Why? I don't know for sure. Maybe it has something to do with the reluctant hero having to make the difficult choices to do something rather than nothing. It's the Edmund Burke quote "Evil triumphs when good men do nothing " rewritten as a novel.

The main character for this year will have elements of the reluctant hero but won't be one. For this year 'm going with a close relative, the regretful protagonist.