Hey, all! It’s been a while since I wrote about what it is I do as a writer. How I write my books and why I write them. I thought since I’ve finally gotten it in my silly brain this year to fill in some of the gaps in my bigger stories, why not answer questions you might not know you wanted to know the answer to? [laughter]

Today marks nearly a year of Jen not smoking and being on antidepressants and not killing actual people. My brain spent the majority of that time in a weird fog that I can’t fully remember. I know I usually write a scary story for you all to enjoy on the blog that later ends of in a short story book somewhere, but I wanted to change it up.

How or why do I usually write my female leads the way I do? Well, you know, character arc takes time sometimes. In my first novel, it took over half the book for one of the two main characters to finally see she needed to stand on her feet and use what she had to the best of her ability.

Why did I do that to her? Well, nobody comes fully equipped with all their abilities as soon as they know they can do something special. Plus, making badasses takes time, energy, and a bit of creativity. Character Arcs that come across too fast don’t really help some plots develop. I thought the two things went hand in hand.

It takes a bit of time cultivating to create full universes for fictional people. There are a lot of things in those universes that people don’t even know about yet. Ask me about magic some time. (Mystik Legends or Revenging the Evil Series).

When writing, I also like to take it slow through a few chapters and introduce the characters. Then shit sometimes tends to get a little weird. From the beginning of the book: one might look at a Research Assistant for a museum as a sissy little weakling who can’t do anything for themselves. By the end of the first story: she turns insane from her trauma and learns how to use weapons and survive through the most horrific night of her life. Beginning of a story arc: CREATED. Real character: UNLOCKED. It was from that moment on, the two main characters in my first novel had to learn how to navigate a different terrain than what they were used to and use skills they hadn’t imagined as real. After that, they learned, battled, became the super badass women they are in the books. Two ladies I’m proud of.

I’m also proud of how the story arc for them panned out. It was somewhat quiet for a while for them mostly. They got to rest some. Until Jen’s sister needed help. [Who knew it would end up being a whole family of supernatural people?]

Holly wasn’t my main character in the next series I wrote. Her husband was. Thing is, I oddly have a thing for writing badass women who have to learn to save themselves. He does share a place with her in my heart always, but she shines just a tiny bit brighter to me. She fought hard for her family.

Also, I write about the occasion vampire chick who is pretty cool and has a heck of a backstory. A friend of the family who fell in love and decided to tell her man about her life. Why? So he could know all of her. She had never been so vulnerable before in all of her long life. Without telling too much plotline to this one, I built up this world for you. One that didn’t exist. I wanted to give you visuals. Things to see from the past. We went through eras of history, you and I, together. I had fun writing that book.

The last one, the last exploration so far of the world building and character arcs of the two/three worlds I’ve built over ten+ years as an author—that would be ATONIA—LET IT BLEED. We take our established favorites and throw them into a crazy, chaotic situation and they have to figure out how to fix it. AND they got other people to babysit. [Laughs.] It’s a hoot. That’s for sure. It also leads you into the last novel I will probably put out for a while if I ever get all the chapters done on it. It’s a different type of book from the rest of them. I started that thing in 2011 and knew nothing of building worlds.

To say that I was nervous about it is an understatement. Back then it was seven fast chapters. Someone advised me to slow it down so I did. It was so messy over the years because my brain wouldn’t let me iron out all the kinks in it. I think a few years ago, I finally figured out the style that worked for the chapters to start working. I wrote most of them. It’s only down to a few left. This year, however, my brain isn’t working properly enough to think about Monty and his malarkey. [Yeah. Back to that.]

Let’s circle back to a conclusion for this post. I tend to write my female characters into women who can end up taking care of or protecting themselves and those around them. I try to be that person in real life. I want my characters to be that too. Be the best badasses they can. Save who needs saving, get the bad guys, try not to hurt anyone in the process. Unless you’re Holly and your ‘give a fuck’ button is broken and you need a redo. On that one, *IYKYK. [*If you know you know] Also, even though she is technically not the main character of the Revenging the Evil series, she was one of my favorite badasses to write.

Frankly, they all were. Every single one of the women characters I’ve written, for whatever reason, I enjoyed something about them. Even if they ended up stabbing someone to death. I bet it was justified.

Jennifer Oneal Gunn

© October 23, 2023