Writing Kaelva, Astrid, and Freyna’s character arcs came easier to me than I expected. Sure, I sharpened their journeys across several drafts, and I still await feedback from my first round of full beta readers, but underlying everything, the most unlikely of references helped me build their stories:
Pro wrestling.
This may disappoint some of you, but this doesn’t mean The Valkyries includes any tables, ladders, and chairs in any of the fight scenes.
Instead, pro wrestling helped me fine-tune how Kaelva, Astrid, and Freyna evolved over the course of the story while remaining believable relative to the supporting characters throughout The Valkyries.
Burying and Putting Over
I first realized the connection between pro wrestling and The Valkyries when writing a critical fight scene between two characters. To avoid spoilers, I’ll refer to them as A and B. A was dead-set on their goal, but B stood in their way. The two clashed, and by all means B should have won without breaking a sweat: B should have buried A.
I wrote myself into a corner: how do I have A win in a believable way without B looking weak?
Or, how I said it to myself at the time in wrestling-speak: “how do I put A over without burying B?”
And I laughed as I realized I was relating my fight scene with a pro wrestling match, but it makes sense, right?
If A walked in and wiped the floor with B, B would have lost all credibility in the future.
But if A couldn’t find a way past B, how could A hope to overcome what awaited them next?
Again, I won’t share any spoilers here, but the latter portion of chapter 12 of The Valkyries shows I solved this problem.
Faces and Heels
Another core aspect of pro wrestling is the conflict between a face—the good guy—and a heel—the bad guy.
The Valkyries evolved from a scene where Kaelva, Astrid, and Freyna forgive each other from a devastating event in their past that tore them apart—but even before I wrote a single word, I knew they’d have to face the one responsible for shattering their bond.
In other words: the faces—Kaelva, Astrid, and Freyna—needed a heel—the villain—to defeat to cement their reformation.
To craft that villain, I reflected on a wide range of antagonists across all forms of media, but at the end of the day, I sought to create a villain that readers would absolutely hate.
I wanted the entire arena to boo the heel while the heel smiles and laughs, taunting them to hear even more boos.
In pro wrestling, heels garner hate—or heat—from the crowd through cowardly, nefarious, underhanded, or simply downright vicious acts.
The heel of The Valkyries is no different.
My heel is deviously cunning, holds no qualms about underhanded tactics, and viciously carves through whoever stands between them and their goal.
The only thing the heel lacks is cowardice.
The heel grows into a threat that cannot be ignored—and their actions will echo across the saga of The Valkyries, reaching beyond this book and deep into the next.
Worse yet, the villain’s actions result in one of the most heartbreaking themes in pro wrestling: heel turns.
Turning Face and Turning Heel
The terms turning face and turning heel mean what they sound like: turning face means a heel becomes a face, and turning heel means a face becomes a heel.
So when we say a character turns heel, it means a beloved “good guy” is now a “bad guy.” Heel turns most commonly come about as the result of a betrayal—one good guy betraying another good guy. The motivations vary, but at the end of the day, the good guy isn’t so good anymore.
Wrestling fans could list tons of heel turns that broke their hearts, like Seth Rollins turning on Roman Reigns and Dean Ambrose to break up The Shield, or John Cena turning on Cody Rhodes, breaking Cena’s run as a face that spanned over 20 years.
In both cases, fans couldn’t believe their eyes.
Literary fans can surely list just as many heel turns, if not more, like The Red Wedding from George R.R. Matrin’s A Song of Ice and Fire, the litany of betrayals toward the end of John Gwynne’s The Shadow of the Gods, or in the case of a slower-burning heel turn, Oscar Wilde’s The Picture of Dorian Gray.
In each case, we as the observer—fan or reader—watch as someone we thought was on the good side either turns bad—or was bad the entire time.
On the flip side, there’s always the hope a heel finds the light and undergoes a face turn, either to help a good guy, to stop an even worse bad guy, or to simply atone for past sins. Star Wars fans will immediately recognize Darth Vader turning on Emperor Palpatine in Star Wars Episode VI: The Return of the Jedi as a face turn, along with Loki in Genevieve Gornichec’s The Witch’s Heart, where he tries to make amends for his prior actions against Angerboda.
A sudden heel turn breaks hearts, and a well-earned face turn earns a measure of redemption.
Full Circle
Could I have written The Valkyries without pro wrestling?
Absolutely.
But pro wrestling helped me all the same as I structured the character arcs for Kaelva, Astrid, Freyna, and others, keeping key moments believable and earned.
Because regardless of your opinion on pro wrestling, it all comes down to storytelling—the same as books, movies, video games, and so on.
And that’s the bottom line, because Kaelva, Astrid, and Freyna said so!
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