ShandyT
asked
James Islington:
Hi James! My question pertains to Ashalia from Licanius. Without getting into any specific spoilers, I wanted to say that I greatly enjoyed that she always seemed to do the cleverest thing in every scenario, finding smart, efficient solutions to her problems—basically, everything I as the reader was rooting for her to do. How did you go about balancing that competency with keeping her character grounded?
James Islington
I'm definitely a fan of competent characters, and try to write them that way, so that's great to hear - intelligent protagonists and intelligent villains are much more interesting (at least to me) than people constantly making poor decisions.
As far as keeping Asha's character grounded - I think it comes down to having her deal with the problems she faces with the tools and skills we already know are at her disposal, rather than her suddenly being great at everything. And that means that sometimes she simply can't win a scenario, too - she has plenty of setbacks, they just tend to be unavoidable, rather than due to her doing something stupid. So that, probably more than anything, helps show her to be highly competent without stretching it into unrealistic territory.
As far as keeping Asha's character grounded - I think it comes down to having her deal with the problems she faces with the tools and skills we already know are at her disposal, rather than her suddenly being great at everything. And that means that sometimes she simply can't win a scenario, too - she has plenty of setbacks, they just tend to be unavoidable, rather than due to her doing something stupid. So that, probably more than anything, helps show her to be highly competent without stretching it into unrealistic territory.
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