About Introductions

The previous post, titled "Introductions," is a short story that illustrates the first meeting between Blue the nelfkin guide and Zi the elf sorceress. This scene has taken many forms over the years, and when I think about the most important scenes in the story, this one stands out. Of course, the initial role play's scene differed a great deal from this one. In that scene, many characters meet up at the same time. However, when we started working on our "book" project, the meeting became exclusively between Blue and Zi (and Yuna).

This is Blue's "call to action," whereas Zi has already been on the quest for while, though the "quest" is not well-defined at this point. Unlike most novels, the story could not be told from only one character's point-of-view. In the role play, there were often several of us at a time writing from our own characters' perspectives in the same scene. Since trying to write from every character's perspective makes for very difficult and confusing reading, this has evolved into an "episodic" sort of thing, where each story is written by a different person, with a different character.

In a role play, new characters are usually brought with an "intro" post, which might be significantly longer than following posts from the new member of the group. These "introductions" set the scene for the new character. This story is Blue's introduction post.

Blue is a big sister, like myself, and so she has an inflated sense of responsibility for her friends. But it takes time for her to warm up to people, so I have always enjoyed writing first meetings between her and other characters. She always brings a sense of skepticism to the scene. She's crazy smart and resourceful, and loyal to a fault. But in a scene like this one, she's fresh and young and the most important meeting of her life has just occurred, but she has no idea and is probably just thinking about how much her family can use the money Zi offers her in payment. Because if she's anything, Blue is practical.

- Rachel