Tervel Andrews

WHAT/WHY OF HUMANITY



People are interesting. It's a fact. Even in the lives of the most boring person, there's bound to be something or some interaction that has cause a chain events in their lives that helped shape who they are today. The problem is that you can't always understand how small actions in a series of small actions that a have been directed at a person can change them one way or another.

This makes people interesting to study, to observe. Oliver, the main character of IED Tokyo, spends a huge part of his life studying and watching people, trying to understand why people do the things they do and hopefully use it all as a tool for creating stronger characters and stories in his writing. He fixates on lives and aspects of them, trying to work out people's actions in relation to their motivations, and in return, what they would do when placed in a particular situation.

This is what writers like Brian K. Vaughan are amazing at; taking a character and making them a person through their decisions and indecisions, and building their story so that no matter how unexpected and tragic or brilliant their actions are, there's always a firm link that allows you to believe that a character's actions were within them. This is something that the writers of Heroes didn't do a good enough job with when they overhauled Sylar in Volume 3. It's also what makes it believable, yet completely fucking unbelievable!, that Alter would kill 355 in Y: The Last Man (and don't even get me started on her motivations for EVERYTHING she put the world through).

There's a difference between writing a story and writing people into existence. When you write people, its easily possible to become emotionally invested in their lives and deaths (Skins, I love you).

And that's what I hope to be able to do in my own writing. Because what's the point of creating a person if no one cries hysterically when they die?