Meet the Turrim Cast: Wynn
Wynn Drexel: artificineer
Ahh, my dear, sweet, problem child.
Wynn is the first of my characters ever to keep secrets from me. He originally showed up as Grayden’s prankster-best-friend, in and out of scrapes, and generally causing most people around him a moderate level of annoyance.
But it never felt right. He didn’t really fit in that role as I hammered out book 1, but I didn’t know what else to do with him. Wynn completely refused to tell me anything more about himself as I wrote that first book.
In book 2, he informed me that he was smarter than I had originally thought. But not just smart… like… scary brilliant. (And can we just acknowledge how overwhelming that particular nugget of info was? Now I… a not at all scary brilliant individual… have to write someone who is?!)
In book 3, he finally admitted that he was also really socially awkward, struggles with hyper-focus, and often worries that he’ll just forget to eat and eventually starve to death if he is allowed to be left to his own devices. A mechanic and scient, Wynn loves all things mechanical. He’s fascinated by gears and calculus and how things work. He loves to tear things apart to see how they work and then see if he can put them back together again. He’s most likely to be found at his drafting table pouring over schematics or drawing his own.
Side-note: I just love how Chloe depicted him with oil stains on his shirt and ink/graphite stains on his hand. (And yes, Wynn is left-handed!) Seriously, look at that detail!
It was shortly after that that I realized I needed to pretty much re-write book 1 from the ground up in order to accommodate these sudden revelations by my character. glares at Wynn… not that it helps, he’s pretty oblivious to social cues.
I have been asked if I’ve ever felt about my characters like Charles Dickens in The Man Who Invented Christmas, and until Wynn showed up being such a brat, I probably would have said, “Yes and No.” Yes, they do step into my head kind of fully formed, but no, they don’t argue with me.
But then Wynn.
Who has argued with me every step of the way.
Politely… but bluntly, and with unwavering firmness.
It’s in book 3 that Wynn really finally steps into the spotlight and gets his very own plot-arc, which is where he finally had to give me more than the small breadcrumbs he’d been doling out before. And that was where I finally understood who he really was, which made writing him much easier.
Out of curiosity, I went ahead and took the Meyers-Briggs test on Wynn’s behalf. I like using THIS SITE when I’m doing this for my characters. I don’t always “type” my characters because 1) I personally fall squarely around the 49-51% mark on THREE of the characteristics and 2) people don’t always just blindly follow their “personality type” when it comes to making decisions… but sometimes it’s a good tool.
I’ve never ever been able to take this quiz for a character where every question is clearly at one extreme or the other.
And I was barely at all surprised when the result came back that Wynn is an ISTJ. Because he’s basically my husband, but without Derek’s incredible social skills. (Derek is an ESTJ and he’s like a wizard when it comes to socializing. (Introverted me is always amazed, jealous, and a little bit incredulous at how easy he makes interacting with people look).
Practical and fact-minded, with an ability to drill in and hyper-focus on whatever problem he’s most interested to solve, Wynn is the type who absolutely can’t drop something until he feels like it’s finished. However, he can’t focus on a single conversation in a room that’s full of other voices… even though he desperately wants to focus on the person talking to him, he has no idea how to block out all the other words he can hear from others talking, which often leads him to stare blankly at the person he’s speaking to, which can often come across as rude.
Emotions and intuition are a complete mystery to Wynn, and he highly admires anyone who can tap into these things and use them to solve problems (probably one of the reasons he is so drawn to Grayden as a friend).
Because of this, Wynn rarely second-guesses himself, but when he does, it tends to send him into a downward tail-spin until he crashes.
This thought by Grayden really captures everything about Wynn so neatly.
So, what do you think of Wynn Drexel?
Despite him being such a problem-child, I have to admit that Wynn has gradually become one of my favorite characters of ever. He’s got this wide-eyed innocence to him, and I dunno… I just love everything about him. Besides, I’m always just a little bit more at home with socially awkward characters.
Do you have any questions about Wynn that I didn’t answer in this introduction? Or any of the other characters I’ve introduced so far?
Next week, I’m going to introduce the final member of my Academy students: Beren. I think you’re going to really love him!
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