Chapter 13: Fragmentation or Characterization?
Dan Woo sat at the table in his room, his pen scratching away. He was trying to make sense of his new life.
His right hand stopped, the pen still in his grip. A single piece of paper lay on the table before him.
Character Sheet
Dan Woo A
He was going through his usual process of developing characters, yet this wasn’t the usual character development or understanding. He needed to understand himself—his own character settings—from his recent meetings with Baek Hari and Kyung Ju Yeon.
He felt there was a mystery to his own existence, and now that the glamour of being transported into his own work was fading, he needed to understand the fragmentations happening within him. Being a writer, this was the only way he could make sense of it.
He had decided to divide the two sides of Dan Woo: Dan Woo A, the one he was conscious of and familiar with, and Dan Woo B, the one from the story working behind the scenes.
He gazed again at the character sheet he was developing.
NAME: DAN WOO A
OCCUPATION: SCREENWRITER
BACKGROUND:
Born and raised in Seoul.
Has a mother; lost his father at an early age, around four or five years old.
Lost his sister during his university years to a plane crush.
Had a childhood friend, Han Soo Hee, who grew up to become his wife well, ex-wife now that they are divorced.
VOICE + PERSONALITY:
Dan Woo thought through his own life. How would one characterise his voice and personality?
"MBTI," Dan Woo muttered, laughing at the suggestion. Of course, he knew he couldn’t fit his personality into a certain box, but it was all the rage now, and it would be a quick way of forming a skeleton to beef up his personality. Maybe. Or maybe he just didn’t want to truly take a look at what he had.
When he thought of MBTI, his memory brought up a time when he and Han Soo Hee had tried to see which box his dead sister would fit into. They did their own first, then his sister’s. If he remembered well, he seemed to be an INFJ, but how would that actually translate?
He felt he wasn’t truly an introvert, but more of an ambivert who leaned towards introverted tendencies. He could deal with groups well, but large social events drained him a lot.
He picked up his pen and began scribbling again.
VOICE + PERSONALITY:
Ambivert leaning more towards introvert tendencies.
Back to N.
He thought it through. He was definitely intuitive. He could easily read patterns, especially in how people related to each other. How else would he have been able to become such a great romance writer?
He turned to the paper.
VOICE + PERSONALITY:
Ambivert leaning more towards introvert tendencies.
Observant with a romantic worldview?
He thought back to his own life. Did he have a romantic worldview? He thought he did, but at the same time he felt maybe he was doing too much.
This was why he didn’t want to go through his traits. It made him feel self-conscious and a bit narcissistic.
"I suppose that is also a trait."
VOICE + PERSONALITY:
Ambivert leaning more towards introvert tendencies.
Observant with a romantic worldview?
Self-conscious.
He moved on to F.
He looked back at his emotions. How did he digest those?
He was an emotional person; that much was true. Yet he always tried his best to hide those feelings away. He had a hard time expressing himself, so he did it through storytelling. It was one of the only ways he could speak to this hidden side of himself—through using characters.
"Maybe Dr Kyung Ju Yeon was correct. Creatives attach pieces of their soul to their work, and I am no different."
VOICE + PERSONALITY:
Ambivert leaning more towards introvert tendencies.
Observant with a romantic worldview?
Self-conscious.
Emotional but guarded. Expressed through storytelling.
He felt he had enough now to move on to voice.
How would his voice look if it were told through the lens of a character? If he accounted for his occupation as a writer and his history?
Maybe simple language with occasional poeticism. In formal situations, he would default to a professional tone, of course.
He laughed at the words.
As for quirks, maybe a feeling of detachment from his own story. He was literally cataloguing his own life like he was a character in a story, so maybe he treated everything from the point of view of a writer. And maybe redirection?
He didn’t want to think too much about that. He felt he had enough.
VOICE + PERSONALITY:
Ambivert leaning more towards introvert tendencies.
Observant with a romantic worldview?
Self-conscious.
Emotional but guarded. Expressed through storytelling.
Quirks: point of view of a writer; redirection instead of confrontation?
Finally, the last part of this basic character sheet came up.
Motivation, goals, and dreams.
He wrote the words down.
MOTIVATION, GOALS, AND DREAMS:
His pen hovered over the page as he cycled through his thoughts.
If this had been before his transmigration, the goal would have been easy.
To publish his hidden masterpiece script, Script Matters.
It was his labour of love. That would have been his dream.
His dream would have been to go down as one of the greatest screenwriters in drama history, maybe win a few awards across various genres.
His motivation would have been to prove, beyond a doubt, that his writing existed beyond the proximity of his wife. He wanted to show that he could be complete with or without her.
But now that he was in this story, what motivations were there for him to explore?
He was an actor, not a writer.
He was being hunted by the literal need to act.
His eyes immediately turned to his screen. The clock was counting down.
22:16:19
He only had twenty-two hours to look for a new character to devour.
Maybe the need to survive—that was his motivation.
He certainly didn’t want to die yet, but that goal felt functional.
Of course, no human wants to die, do they?
He scribbled something unconsciously.
SCRIPT MATTERS
He looked at the words.
MOTIVATION, GOALS, AND DREAMS:
SCRIPT MATTERS
He was in Script Matters. His brain knew that. His heart knew that.
But why?
On the side, he scribbled:
Survive / Leave?
He wasn’t sure what his goal was.
He turned to the other side of the paper. He didn’t want to think too deeply. He could always come back to the motivations later.
He began scratching the paper with his pen.
NAME: DAN WOO B
OCCUPATION: ACTOR
BACKGROUND:
Born and raised in Seoul.
Lost his father at an early age, around four or five years old.
Lost his mother?
Had a childhood friend called... who?
Has an ex-wife called Baek Hari/Kim Seo Jin, whom he was married to for six years.
Sleeps with his therapist?
Likes green tea because of his wife?
VOICE + PERSONALITY:
He was stuck.
He didn’t know much about Dan Woo of this world. In his original story, he had barely given him any full backstory. He was supposed to be a background character, but now he was... incomplete.
Maybe he could go and see some of his previous works, like movies, or just look at his social media pages. Of course, that wouldn’t give him accurate information. People weren’t what they portrayed to the world, but it might give him glimpses of who he could be.
Could be.
The words lingered.
He turned back to the page with DAN WOO A, his eyes immediately heading for MOTIVATION, GOALS, AND DREAMS.
He thought through his own feelings.
He, too, felt incomplete.
In fact, many things were incomplete: his love life, his writing career, his grief.
His eyes turned to the words Script Matters.
For all that it was his masterpiece, it was also incomplete.
A goal immediately came to mind, but before he could put pen to paper, he heard a knock—the same as yesterday.
It was the same knock.
The same door.
The door to the west.
He turned when he realised, once more, that he had four doors in the mist that he hadn’t tried to look into, even though he was curious. It was another form of incompleteness.
Then he remembered Dr Kyung going on about the projection of his shadow. Maybe this so-called shadow was projecting incompleteness into his life because he was perpetuating incompleteness in it.
He was going to break that.
He first turned to the door to his north. He walked steadily towards it, reaching it in seconds, but when he tried to open it, he found it wouldn’t budge, as if it had been locked.
He tried again and again.
No luck.
He turned to the one in the east. It was the same result. He couldn’t open it.
Then to the one in the south.
He couldn’t open it.
He fell back, deflated, at the spot where he was seated as he looked toward the northern door.
There had to be a special condition for opening these doors, he thought.
He turned back to the door to the west.
It was sparkling and glowing, calling out to him.
He got up and walked towards it, yet when he reached it, he remembered his timer.
What if he entered and his timer immediately went to zero?
He stood there for a second, just staring at the glowing runes and patterns before going back and sitting at his desk.
He turned his eyes to his system.
The countdown was doing its thing.
He could still hear the knocking, but he ignored it.
His eyes turned back to the goals.
MOTIVATION, GOALS, AND DREAMS:
SCRIPT MATTERS — survive / leave?
He scratched out the words.
SCRIPT MATTERS — survive and complete.
He was going to complete Script Matters.
As the thought solidified into conviction, he felt his soul leave his body before resettling within it.
[Ding]
[Core Concept Under Development — 3%]
Three percent.
Why had it risen?
Yet the question soon faded.
The knocking on the door suddenly grew louder, changing from soft knocks to full-on banging as his system unconsciously shifted to the tab labelled Incarnations.
The silhouette of the figure pulsed with a faint golden light.
Immediately, the paper doll appeared in his grasp.
A flood of words rushed into his ears like a tidal wave.
No—it wasn’t words.
It was prayers.
As this happened, an image started to form in his mind. Images he was unfamiliar with planted themselves there. Memories that didn’t seem to belong to him.
He reeled back, falling from his seat under the intrusion of the different streams of information all at once—the memories, the prayers for help.
The intrusion brought with it the sensation that his head was splitting apart.
Through all the haze of memories and requests, a single man seemed to stand out.
He was dressed in tactical gear, steeped in urgency. He was clearly a veteran in the field.
"Anomaly 0-23, we request an audience."
The words echoed through his mind as everything settled.
"Audience? Anomaly 0-23... who was that? Was that me?" Dan Woo asked, speaking to no one.
Anomaly.
Had he been classified as an anomaly?