Story Building - character interview

I'm coming down to the final couple days before posting the story I want to workshop. I'm still torn between a short story I already have written, which I must extensively revise and one of the stories I mentioned here. So in order to flesh out the latter story a bit more, it's time for another character interview! Same questions as last time.

The character is Jemma Grienyte, of the to-be-named short story where science meets magic and all goes horribly wrong.

1. What do you do for a living?

I'm a PhD student working on my thesis in magiphysic cosmology, and I get by on the pittance paid to me by the university laboratory for working as a petty rune smith. It's a little embarrassing.

2. Are any other people living with you? Who are they?

I have a roommate, another graduate student. She and I hardly see each other, but she seems nice. We've gone out for drinks a couple times, and we usually order take-out a couple times a month while we unwind for just enough time to watch a movie. She's a grad student in linguistics, so her field is as unintelligible to me as mine is to hers.

3. Tell me about your parents. How well do/did you get along with them

I get along fine with my parents, but I think they're eternally bewildered by my choice of occupation. They are both renowned grand rune smiths, and while they're proud of me for the degree I'm aiming for, they don't really know what to say to me. I guess we've grown apart.

4. What was your birth order? How many siblings did you have? Older? Younger?

I have younger twin sisters who are both in the family business. Every Grienyte is in the family business.

5. Who else was in your family while you were growing up? How did you get along with them?

Just my parents and my sisters. My extended family is almost exclusively made up of more rune smiths, though it becomes a bit awkward when certain households are much farther up in the professional hierarchy. It was a world that always surrounded me growing up, and I never wanted to stay in it.

6. What were three things you liked to do when you were a child?

I liked to get out of the house above anything, especially to go play by myself. I liked asking "why" questions to the point of irritating the adults around me. When I was a little bit older, I liked horrifying my parents by smoking.

7. What were you afraid of when you were a child?

I was afraid of ending up in the same world as my parents, where everything revolves around runes and magic and professional rivalries that get really dangerous. But on a more normal note, I was really afraid of my closet at night.

8. How did you respond to the physiological and psychological changes in your life as a teenager?

I did stupid teenage things - I smoked, I went to parties with friends where we smoked illegal substances, I drank with the same friends, I drove too fast. Looking back, I'm not sure if I did these things to horrify my parents, to spur them to kick me out of the house, or just to get their attention. It might have been all of them.

9. What makes you happy now?

I love getting first crack at the test results.

10. What is your greatest fear?

That the whole of my contribution to magiphysic cosmology will be my petty rune work.

11. What would you change about yourself if you could?

If I excised my affinity with runes, I suppose I wouldn't have this job. I guess I would stop worrying about the future and my place in it so much and enjoy the opportunities I have.

12. What is it that you have never told anyone?

I only took magiphysics so I could retain some link with my parents and the rest of my family. I was a little bit vexed when it turned out to be so interesting.

13. What do you want?

To finish my thesis! To understand the test results! To explain the interaction between magic and science with one grand sweeping theory. And I want my parents to ask about what I'm doing.


Hmm, this was not quite as revelatory as my prior interview was, though I suspect that's because I knew far more about Jemma going into this than I knew about Seaton prior to that interview. Still, I'm excited for this story. If I could bang out the whole thing in two days, I would post it a biiiit later than I should, but it would be thrilling to have a whole new story.