I love my husband, but he has the tendency to bring up that I write really dark stuff to everyone we know or people I just met (which is a bit hilarious to me to see their reactions).
We were having a conversation about schizophrenia with a couple of my friends and my husband decided to bring up my novella and tell them what it’s about. I love that he’s so passionate about the work that I do, but I was screaming a bit inside because I wanted to wait a little longer before telling people what the whole enchilada was with this story.
I’ve told you that my novella, “We Don’t Talk About That”, is about mental health, but I didn’t mention that it shows how it affects both the individual and their family and friends.
So, I guess it’s out of the bag with some of our friends, and since he’s read the “finished” product, I’m sure it’s going to be told to others down the line… I’ll just talk about my novella more in-depth now.
See what I did there? I know, I’m super cheesy.
Anyway, today’s WIP Talk topic is going to be about who my characters are and what their deal is.
You’ve read before that I was writing this novella in two point of views.
1st Person – Molly 3rd Person Limited – Kevin
You might be wondering why I chose to do 3rd person limited with Kevin and I’ll explain that in another post.
— For now, let’s get introduced to Molly and Kevin.
Molly is a 16-year-old girl of Japanese descent. She has long dark brown hair and same dark brown eyes to match. She’s an overall do-good person with an outward cheery personality. Molly loves math and science and is involved with extracurricular activities like Honor Society, Student Council, Book Club, and takes piano lessons every week. She’s very naive in the sense of what’s going on with her brother, Kevin, and the family dynamic. Molly is desperate to fit in with the kids at school, so much so she’ll pretend to be someone else while hanging with her “friends”. She’s also very much egocentric until the story begins. You can see a little of her self-centeredness in the beginning of the story, but it slowly fades away as she becomes more aware of what’s been going on in her family.
Kevin is an 18-year-old boy of Japanese descent. He has medium length disheveled dark brown hair and dark brown eyes. Kevin’s favorite subject was English and he used to play the violin but his love for anything started to fade away when the voices came. Kevin was diagnosed with Schizophrenia a couple of years ago and the medication sometimes works, when he takes the full regimen. The hallucinations are nightmarish to Kevin and the voices he hears are ten times worse. He’s been struggling to keep things together because he still wants to protect his younger sister, Molly, despite her thinking that Kevin hates her guts for being the “perfect” daughter. Kevin and his parents don’t get along anymore. He wants to stick around to make sure Molly will survive living with their parents, but he’s not sure how long he can hold on to reality.
We follow the story through their respective point of views and get a little bit more insight with what’s going on in their lives and how mental health plays a large role in shaping their futures.
I hope this gets you excited about reading my novella. Let me know in the comments what you think of my characters and your guesses with what’s going to happen in the story.
Thanks for reading!
-Emi