Awesome Characters: Naruto and Sasuke

I decided my blog was too boring with just random status updates about how my writing is going, so I'm going to try to implement some other segments to spice it up. One of those segments is Awesome Characters, where I will discuss, well, characters who I think are awesome. :)

Today's characters will be: Uzumaki Naruto and Uchiha Sasuke. (That's surnames first, for those not into Japanese) from the anime Naruto. A google image search will show you plenty of examples of what they look like. Note that the series has a time skip, so there's a kid version and a teen version of both.

I don't know how I could possibly talk about them without including some spoilers (no ending spoilers however--it's not over!), so if you've decided you want to check it out without knowing anything more about it, leave now.

Ok then. Naruto is the main character of the show which is about ninjas. He starts out as a little brat who staves off his loneliness by pranking the village by doing things like painting goofy doodles onto the Mount Rushmore-like carvings that hang above the village. Really, he's just a lonely kid who's not that great in ninja school and for reasons he doesn't understand yet, he's an orphan and no one in the village wants anything to do with him. Even his homeroom teacher initially treats him with coldness. However, the reason for this is because on the day that Naruto was born, the Nine-tailed Fox was unleashed on the village and the people suffered great losses, including Naruto's teacher, who lost his parents that day. The Nine-tailed Fox was sealed up inside of Naruto, so he is what's known as a jinchuriki, a carrier of a tailed beast. This is basically like being a walking weapon of mass destruction, so the villagers are forbidden to talk about it, so they end up just giving Naruto the cold shoulder constantly and he has no idea why.

However, his homeroom teacher sees that Naruto has a good heart and is really just an ordinary kid, and warms to him. This sets Naruto on a happier path, he still deals with feelings of resentment toward the villagers who treated him so badly, but he channels his feelings into a positive goal: he's going to become Hokage (leader of the village) one day, and make all of the villagers recognize him as a great person. Little does he know at first, but his father was actually Hokage, and his parents sacrificed their lives to save him and the village on that fateful day, his mother was the Nine-tails jinchuriki before him, and they sealed the Nine-tails inside of him not as a curse but because they had faith that he'd be able to handle it, and they are right. Throughout the series, Naruto matures from being a brat to a real hero. His personality is so complex and real that sometimes I get this odd feeling like I KNOW him, like he's a real friend of mine somewhere out there. Like, his personality doesn't shift unbelievably far, he continues to be something of an airhead in some ways, but his heart and spirit just grow stronger and he strives for peace in situations where anyone else would not be able to resist taking revenge.

Speaking of revenge: enter Sasuke. Naruto and Sasuke are paired up in a three-man-cell along with a girl named Sakura after they graduate from the ninja school. Sasuke is the opposite of Naruto, he has excellent grades and a cold personality. He was created to be Naruto's foil and rival. Naruto is blond, Sasuke has black hair, Naruto wears orange, Sasuke wears blue. Naruto is energetic and loud, Sasuke is aloof and laconic. There's one thing they have in common: they both lost their parents. The difference is, Sasuke wasn't an infant, he was a child who remembers having a family, and they didn't die defending the village, his brother slaughtered his entire clan and left Sasuke alive, claiming that he "wasn't worth killing" and that Sasuke should "hate him and come and find him if he wants revenge." Sasuke latches onto revenge so hard that it consumes him. Instead of something like Naruto's dream to become Hokage, Sasuke's only intention in his ninja training is to become strong enough to kill his brother.

The thing that makes Sasuke's story so tragic (up until now at least, like I said, the series isn't over, I don't know his ultimate ending) is that he almost finds happiness with his team. The pivotal episode comes when they are confronted with his brother too early, Sasuke's still just a kid, and yet his complete and utter failure when he attacks his brother shatters his happiness. That, combined with his jealousy when he sees Naruto is starting to become stronger than him, convinces him that he'll never achieve his goal if he stays with them, and when another enemy presents him with an opportunity to desert his village and become powerful, he takes it.

Even then, Sasuke isn't completely evil. We see him on team evil, but he doesn't kill his enemies, he just incapacitates them. He claims it's because his brother is the only person he wants to kill. However, he descends into real evil territory after he makes a shocking discovery. His clan had been planning a coup against their village, and his brother was given the choice to slaughter his entire clan (with some help from someone you meet later) for the good of the village and he took it. Peace at any cost. Sasuke is enraged at the village for forcing such a choice onto his brother, and once his fury is redirected at his home village, he loses the mercy he had been holding onto, and starts killing (or at least trying to kill) even people he considered his closest friends.

Meanwhile, Naruto is the opposite. His compassion for Sasuke is absolute, even after Sasuke tries twice to kill Sakura (their third team mate) Naruto is still convinced he's going to save his friend, or at the very least, die with him and be friends with him in the after life, because Naruto so easily could have gone the way Sasuke did if he hadn't had positive influences in his life.

I'm unsure where the author is going with them, and a lot of my feelings still hang in the balance, wondering how he's going to resolve things. (Are they really both going to die at the end??) But the fact that I care so intensely about the outcome just shows how well crafted they both are.

Did you read my little talk about Naruto and Sasuke? Was it interesting? Leave me a comment and I'll write about more awesome characters that I love. :)

Changing POV

Wow, it has been over a month since I started this MS. I've now gotten to a point where I realize first person isn't going to work for this MS. Though I really wanted to give first person a try since I've read some fabulous books written that way, ultimately this story is developing into a plot where the MC may not be present or conscious during events that would be better shown on camera. Therefore, third person multiple seems the way to go.

Off we go!

Yesterday was the Summer Solstice here, I had decided that I would start this WIP at the precise moment, 4:09 PM yesterday. Starting was challenging but fun. I haven't been this serious about a WIP before. I was telling the lovely Cait yesterday that I feel like if I can just get through this MS and get it as polished up as I can, then the dam inside my head will break and nothing will stop me anymore. As it stands I've spent a lot of time day dreaming about novels, planning novels, writing parts of novels, and not enough time writing novels to completion and revising novels. This will be a big step forward for me from being a hobbyist writer to becoming a querying writer, and hopefully, beyond.

Being Michelangelo

Today Taliesin and I were discussing our impending doom, aka how in just ten days we have to begin writing our novels. After I read a Frankenstein analogy retweeted by Jenny, we got to talking about the steps to creating a novel and came up with our own analogy: Being Michelangelo. I've never been much of a sculptor, but I know what it's like to turn a rough sketch into a finished drawing. But Taliesin mentioned chiseling out a statue and I found it fitting because, a perfect slab of marble looks pretty (the swirly mist stage where you haven't made any firm decisions and your idea looks great), then you have to make it all ugly by breaking into it (the decisions), then you start seeing a human figure but it's all wonky and ugly (the first draft), then it improves (the following drafts) and so forth until hopefully you've polished it so well you're left with your masterpiece. Even Michelangelo has to make a crappy statue before he makes a perfect statue.

This should have already been obvious to me, but for some reason imagining it out is helping me cope with my feelings of "ruining" my pristine marble slab by hitting it with those initial hammer strokes, cutting away the areas I won't need when I start the first draft of the body. It's giving me new courage.

Music

Thought I'd share some of the songs that are inspiring my WIP.

LI theme - "Too Close" by Alex Clare. I twist the lyrics in my head for this one, it's not that he's growing apart from the MC, it's more that he and the MC are so goal-oriented that he feels like they're too deep in their missions to fall in love.

MC theme - "Not In Love feat. Robert Smith" by Crystal Castles. Similar to the other song, the MC is resisting falling for the LI, rather than it being over. For some reason these songs just work in my head even though the lyrics are off.

Love theme - "Melody" Clark Owen feat. Lena Katina. The way they sing the duet parts is perfect for when the MC and LI are working together.

10 days left!!! Ahhhhhhhh!!!

10 Life Rules

This blog-like device is mostly just a writing journal for me, I've never given a thought to readership, but if anyone does read this and wonders why I'm not talking about writing. I think the foundation of a successful writing career is having a well balanced writerly life, so I'm laying out ten life rules that I think will help me along the way.

1) Remember that the world has always sucked; it's also always been beautiful.

2) Remember to follow your heart, follow your muse, be smart but not fear-filled.

3) Remember that goal-related activities come first, but it's ok to relax sometimes; it's ok to need to be alone sometimes.

4) Remember to leave the past in the past after you've learned from it.

5) Remember to fix yourself; help other people humbly.

6) Remember to keep in touch with loved ones, near and far; don't burden others, but don't refuse help just for pride.

7) Remember that it's okay to get and look older.

8) Remember to maintain your health but not obsess; eat quality, splurge occasionally.

9) Remember to maintain your intellect but don't feel like you have to know everything.

10) Remember to keep your own score and use outside rating systems only in practice, never in heart; change your internal rating system with careful consideration.

Beat sheets

Today I saw this post by Francesca Zappia. It contains a link to a beat sheet spreadsheet which I found fascinating. I had heard of beat sheets for screenplays before but had never really looked at one or tried to use one for noveling. I did some digging around and found an INCEPTION beat sheet on the website of the guy who designed the beat sheet spreadsheet. I also found a THE HUNGER GAMES (novel) beat sheet on there too. Between the two of them, I got a pretty good idea of how it works, and I think I understand something of what made the pacing in INCEPTION and THE HUNGER GAMES so well done and satisfying. Also, neither one adhered specifically to the number formula used in the spreadsheet, I imagine there's a lot of flexibility to be had there, so I'm not planning to use it as some kind of paint by numbers worksheet but more as a guide.