xl - Day 11 - Who is your favorite/least favorite character to write?

On the surface this one's a bit tricky because I don't exactly have a stable of recurring characters. There are only two, at least at this point, who appear in more than one story I've written. You've already been introduced to Ira Mastema, the other is Richard DiFalco. Both are important characters in the novel I belted out in November and re-appear in the short story I finished just over a month ago.

Fortunately for me, Mastema, or at least Mastema at different points of his evolution, answers both questions. 

Mastema was the second character I developed for SALIGIA, after Sam Benson, the protagonist. This happens quite frequently in my writing. Villain and hero share a connection and as a result, the two characters are developped in tandem, or one immediately after the other. Throughout the process of writing the novel, I had enough of a grasp of Mastema to know how he would be propelling the plot forward, but came to realise I didn't know why.

It didn't matter that much when my main focus was making the plot work.  A while after finishing the first draft of the novel, I decided to flesh out part of the back story. Mastema made another appearance, and again the hows were easy enough to lay out, but the whys eluded me. Trying to make a living, breathing character out of a complete question mark is frustrating, to say the least.

I can't remember the moment it changed, but change it did: while poking around his back story, I started to realise what made the man tick. There's some interesting material in that back story, and I think I can turn him into an interesting and engaging "bad" guy. But up until that point it felt like I was trying to navigate a block of solid concrete through an obstacle course.