For this Qlev pod video, we are visiting a character I initially had not planned for. Senator Roberto Bosso emerged while writing a scene involving my three protagonists, Hein Sorenson, Felice Vongestalt and Kay Occamore. The event in question was Hein’s speech about his latest scientific breakthrough, and suddenly, I found myself writing about this corrupt politician with an Italian-sounding name but a German accent. It was clear that he was up to no good, and there was more, something off about how he reacted when he saw Felice.
I am at 42k words, half-time, and all main characters are in place. They still surprise me at times, and that’s OK. Some side characters keep showing up and want to party along, but we’ll see. This one here is for Senator Bosso, the vile, corrupt, slippery pig, easy to hate, hard to kill.
SNN @5: In a turn of events, Senator Bosso is no longer presumed dead or missing. The question remains, is he Suspect or Victim? Latest reports indicate the Senator's pod left the Sphere and is now heading for the Outer Zone. GAIN Enforcers are in pursuit. Stay safe Sphereans and Trust in GAIN.
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Senator Bosso's pod spotted outside Sphere IV. According to Chief Enforcer Trenton Fludd, Bosso now Prime Suspect.
Senator Roberto Bosso (Excerpt from Scrivener Character Sheet)
Role in Story
High Official Senator of the Logicians, a vile, corrupt, scheming politician, sells a prototype of Quantumbridge CLEO code to Sphere IV, causing a catastrophic cascading failure.
Physical Description
Small, bulbous stature, round cherub-like face with mean little blue eyes. Shorter than most Sphereans, with curly red hair and pale skin. He wears his Logician Blue Coat, always opened halfway down to show his chest hair and Senator Sigil, which he wears around his neck on a golden chain.
Personality
Convincing, sly, cunning. Playing all sides to get what he wants with no regard for anyone but himself. Has a weird sex thing with Holo Mods, sweats when nervous and likes to show off his status.
How about you? Are you keeping character sheets/sketches for your writing? Their external wants, inner needs, and fatal flaws? Here are the categories from the Scrivener Character Sketch default template:
Character Name, Age, Location, Role in Story, Goal, Physical Description, Personality, Occupation, Habits/Mannerisms, Background, Internal Conflicts, External Conflicts, Notes
Does this sound like a “Planner” activity? Maybe, it does but you don’t have to fill in all the details, and even if you do, it’s not written in stone. Things change. All. The. Time.
Feel free to click the ❤️ button on this post and share it with a friend so more people can discover it on Substack. 🙏
TFTD Community
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Credits
Music “Bossomania” by
. Ryan did stellar work here, and I couldn’t help but add Bonus Material to the video to match the song runtime.For more of his work, check out his Substack .
Pod Design by Master of Pods, Joe Reeve. This one took longer. We went over several iterations... many, many shape variations were explored…
Voiceover by Alexander Ipfelkofer.
If you are interested in the whole design process behind the pods, check out my podcast with the Designer here.
All concepts and designs are based on the novel SPHEREAN by Alexander Ipfelkofer.
Amazing, Alexander! I imagine Bosso inside the cockpit jamming out to the music, speed floating away from whatever morally heinous work he's conducted.
Love this! 🤩
I enjoy the commentary of how you are using characters and changing them from the start. Yea I also do this in scrivener. I have a few things going on I’m scrivener besides the actual narrative. Usually it gets refined and changed a lot a long the way. I can’t write the way you do -- chapter by chapter. I work more in circles eventually arriving at something that I can share.
You have a multimedia hit. Really enjoyed this.