In a story I've been working on for awhile, demons play major
characters--both heroes and villains. And I flatter myself that any
assumptions you made after reading that last sentence would be blown out of the
water if you read the manuscript, but you can't because it's not
finished. So there.
Yesterday I was working on a scene where a full-fledged
lieutenant of hell is summoned. The thing was, I had no idea what the
demon should look like. I did a Google Image search on demons to try and
get inspiration, and found an astonishing amount of erotic artwork. While
lust is one of the seven deadly sins, it wasn't the sin I was looking to
emphasize. There was also a lot of anime characters to peruse but that's
not quite what I was looking for, either. I refined my search to medieval
demons, which came up with a lot of sketches, paintings and stone lithographs.
Lots of horns. Lots of wings. Lots of leering masculine
faces. And lots of random animal body parts.
None of those fit my itch, so to speak, but I felt I was
getting closer. I decided the animal thing seemed pretty
classic--symbolic, no doubt, of the beast-like drives and passions which can
tempt us off the path of righteousness...or...whatever. So I figured OK,
animal part it is. But then which animal?
Ultimately I turned to a random page of the manuscript,
flurried around my cursor with my eyes closed, and then opened my eyes to look
at the letter it landed on: T. So that's an animal that starts with the
letter T? Turtle. Ok, my demon will be...part...turtle? The
first thing that came to mind was the enormous tortoise in "Never Ending
Story," which was not in the least bit frightening despite its glum
attitude and slimy, mossy back. Ultimately I think I did find a way to
use a turtle shell as inspiration to come up with something I've certainly
never seen or heard of before.
Scary is hard! Really hard! How do you do scary?
Scary is hard! Really hard! How do you do scary?
I love that idea!
ReplyDeleteAnd can't wait to see that book in print.