Best Character Writer of the Week: Lord Durham

[rcduggan]

Congratulations TheHyphenated1.

[Capibara]

Congratulations!

[stnylan]

Congratulations TheHyphenated1. It's a grand tale you are telling.

Also as a shopkeeping note to the general public, I have just updated the list of winners in the first post.

[TheHyphenated1]

Well, well… the time has come for my peach.

*takes a lusty bite out of the barely-in-season fruit*

Excellent. Now it is time for my speech.

Sorry, sorry! I hear the groaning now... *clears throat*

Quite honestly, this is the one award that I thought Weltkriegschaft would have zero chance of winning -- ever.

You see, this is called “Best Character Writer of the Week”, but my AAR, Weltkriegschaft, is not character-driven -- I swear!

Although there’s actually a very large cast of characters, the story is not about them, it is about the world and times in which they lived. In this way, I would compare it to both David Westheimer’s novel Death is Lighter than a Feather and Ken Burns’ documentary The War. That is, the personal stories are a vehicle for understanding a thing which itself is complex and impersonal -- world war.

But enough about why Weltkriegschaft shouldn’t have won!

I was very pleasantly surprised that English Patriot enjoyed my characters so much and had decided to give me the nod.

I have had a truly marvelous experience bringing to life these characters, from historical figures like William Shirer (to whose defining history The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich I owe quite a bit), to characters purely of my own devising like Eddi Althaus.

I relish being able to mix these historical and invented characters in my story. That is one of the singular pleasures of alternate history, and one which most writers of fiction -- in any medium -- do not get to enjoy.

Through it all, I make every attempt to craft the characters not as literary figures but as living people. I’m pretty methodical as a writer and researcher, and one of the things that I pay attention to in that regard is dialogue. I find that very little dialogue in fiction closely approximates the way people actually speak -- at the same time, though, transcripts of speech tend to come across as tedious. I try to find a happy medium that best represents the speech patterns of my characters. Another consideration for me is language. Because Weltkriegschaft is set in Nazi Germany, I keep in mind when writing dialogue that most all of the characters naturally would have spoken German. That is, I write the dialogue to have the feel of a sense translation from German.

Readers of Weltkriegschaft will notice that there are two types of characters: characters with at least one chapter from their perspective and all the rest. The first category encompasses people like Johann Mahler, Fr. Martin Kappel, Walter Friedmann and Ernst Trommler. The others include central historical figures such as Adolf Hitler to bit characters mentioned only once such as Oberjäger Ganze from the assault on Eben-Emael. Some of the historical characters are too mythic in stature to be properly appreciated as “Perspective Characters”. Rather, they are best seen through the eyes of a subordinate or another who works closely with them (the chief example so far being Cristoph Scholl’s deepening association with Hitler).

Finally, a paragraph absolutely must be devoted to Adolf Hitler, whose characterization English Patriot kindly singled out for mention. Writing Hitler has been a unique challenge for me. He is without human equal in his murderousness, ambition and influence. He plunged the world into a war that would ultimately cost eighty million human lives, brought his nation and people to ruin and very nearly exterminated the Jewish people. Yet he was possessed of almost supernatural intuition, luck and charisma. His effect on people was described as something like magic or witchery. How these two rafts of traits could run together and occupy a single human being has been interesting for me to explore.

It seems strange to find in true history a villain more complex, more ingenious, more insane and more diabolical than any Sauron, Iago or Miltonian Satan from the world of literature. But I have. In Hitler we have one of the very few historical persons with a claim to being seen as the embodiment of evil itself. The challenge then, is to not shallowly portray him as a cardboard cutout of pure evil, but to attempt to shed light on the man he was. I am of the opinion that it is only by glimpsing the seductive, hypnotic and even affectionate qualities of Hitler that we can truly grasp the monstrousness of his character.

Writing about Hitler is not like writing about any of the unkempt, cave-hiding guerrillas that are the villains of today -- because I know that a man of his singular character will likely never again arise in the age of Man. Hitler represents, as Shirer says, “The last of the great adventurer-conquerors in the tradition of Alexander, Caesar and Napoleon, and the Third Reich the last of the empires which set out on the path” -- of world domination.

I believe it a very good omen for humanity that we have passed far enough from that darkness that it now begins to seem almost mythical.

*is broken from his reverie by swelling orchestral music*

Ah, it seems that I am being played off. That is the conclusion of my speech, such as it is. I hope it shed a bit of light on where I’m “coming from”.

I’m currently reading heavily to choose a successor, and I’ll be back tomorrow with my nomination.

Thank you all again for the congratulations!

[comagoosie]

Excellent speech, and peach.

It sounds like Weltkriegschaft is a masterpiece, I gotta check it out.

[TheHyphenated1]

I have made great effort to choose a successor only after considerable care and reading, and I am pleased to have struck California gold!


The Golden Nation - California (VIP) AAR, by DerKaiser, is a wonderfully written tale, with well-crafted characters and elegant dialogue.

The characterizations are uniformly well-drawn, but Don Alejandro del Serrano drew particular attention. He is one of the most convincing and appealing leaders of men to be found in AARland, and adds immeasurably to the quality of the AAR.

Congratulations, DerKaiser! Enjoy the week, and I encourage everyone to take a look at The Golden Nation and the fantastic characters fighting for and against the California Republic.

[canonized]

Many congratulations DerKaiser !! You know I'm always impressed by your great work and I'm so proud to call you a colleague !

[crusaderknight]

Congratulations, DerKaiser!

[Hardraade]

Congratulations, DerKaiser!

[robou]

Congratulations Sam, hope we can have you back from the real world sooner or later

[stnylan]

Many congratulations.

[Mettermrck]

Nice job, I like your California AAR!

[Qorten]

Your Victorria AAR with California is very good DerKaiser, welld eserved!

[comagoosie]

California AAR Sweet!

Congrats Der Kaiser.

[Snugglie]

Congratulations Der Kaiser!

[General Jac]

Another victory for the defunct royalty of Germany I see.
Congratulations DerKaiser!

[Woody Man]

Excellent choice theHyphenated1! And congratulations DerKaiser!

[RGB]

Congratulations!

[rcduggan]

Well done, Der Kaiser.

[Capibara]

Congratulations!