The Logline

For the nerds who like to see how a project comes together, here’s a piece of the process that went into deciding how these characters came to be!

Starting with the characters who were never a question: the Seven Deadly Sins!

The Seven Deadly Sins have been a part of media for decades, from 4th Century theorization, to Agatha Christie’s book series, to even anime, the concept of these fearsome seven has been ageless. While it is not a proper part of Christian canon, the Seven Deadly Sins remain a great personification to communicate through. This story started with the idea, “what if the Seven Deadly Sins tempted someone who was (justifiably) losing patience with a flawed church?” A crucial part of the story that would never change, was that the main character was justified in her anger, but the sins’ would tempt her to demand justice through hypocritical means (e.g. becoming a parallel of the sinners by sinning equally if not worse, rather than seeking proper justice). More than temptation, the sins symbolize the evils already within her that she allowed to fester, meaning they are tempting her negative actions to grow from the roots she already planted. Though they are characters for the audience, to Naomi (the main character), she is essentially having a debate with her own conscience.

Starting with Pride. Naomi, needed to be exceedingly prideful, so that despite being right in her judgements, she would also be stubborn and resistant to correction or feedback. Anything that triggered her sense of injustice or criticized her perceived moral center needed to make her shut down and be unreceptive. This includes sound advice from friends that could have saved her from her bad path. Pride, the character, is also the most intensely vivid and present, symbolizing her greatest and most influential sin. He tempts her simply by prodding her tender wounds and encouraging her to keep her life centered around a tunnel-vision demand for justice.

Next is Lust. Now, Naomi doesn’t struggle with lust in the traditional sense of wild attraction, but rather lust as an unending, insatiable desire for a trustworthy father and an intact family. (Not to say wanting such a thing is wrong, but it consumes her so much so that she shuts down and blinds herself to opportunities to build a family for herself through good friends). In the story, her father submitted to lust in the tradition sense and neglected Naomi to be a perpetual playboy, which makes Lust one of Naomi’s antagonists. However, Naomi also parallels her father by letting her lustful desire consume her and control her actions. Lust more acts a trigger than a tempter for Naomi but also sets the stage for Wrath.

Speaking of Wrath. I wrote Wrath to tie in closely with Lust, as unmet desire often surfaces in the form of rage, Wrath is always by Lust’s side when on stage or interacting with Naomi. Wrath personifies Naomi’s response to Lust by acting volatilely towards Lust (also symbolizing abusive relationships born from a false sense of entitlement to having desires met). Although it takes time for Naomi’s rage to result in anything irreversible, Wrath needles her to have temperamental outbursts tied closely to her pride, which are a critical part of her character flaws.

Next is Greed. In this story, Greed is a red-herring tying closely with Envy. Naomi doesn’t struggle with greed as aggressively as she does the other sins, and she knows it, so Greed’s temptation is more of a bid to make her underestimate how much the other sins will affect her. She is led to believe that the sins are a joke, which will make the confrontation of the other sins all the more jarring for her.

Now for Envy. Envy is another of Naomi’s significant personal sins. While Naomi lusts for an ideal family life, she also envies anyone who has it. This results in an underlying bitterness toward her friends, which paired with her pride, is another of the key reasons she shuts down anyone who would be able to guide and help her. The character Envy is one of the most painful personifications because she is ruthless in triggering Naomi’s insecurities and jealously and set her on a path toward revenge.

Moving on to Sloth. Sloth is another of the sins that Naomi actually has a surprising tendency toward, if you understand what sloth entails. Most people call sloth mere laziness, but it is also really neglect of anything you should be doing. Naomi is slothful because she always has a justification for why she doesn’t need to take any initiative to build a better life. She fruitlessly expects everyone who has wronged her (either truly wronged or wronged her in her opinion) to make it up to her. This means not taking better job opportunities because she expects her neglectful father to provide (when he has shown he never will), not moving to a better part of town to stay near her father and the church that hurt her, etc. To tempt Naomi, the character Sloth, merely feeds into the mentality Naomi has already lived with; that there’s no point in fixing it herself when the person who wronged her should fix it.

Finally is Gluttony. The first thing you may think of is comfort eating, but at this point in the post, I’m sure you know we’re thinking a little deeper than that. Gluttony is the sin of overconsumption, beyond what is necessary or healthy. Gluttony can apply not only to food, but also negative emotions. As I’ve established, Naomi has a tendency to overindulge her moral opinions, expectations, and misery at the expense of actually making her life better. She is a glutton on her own suffering and surpasses reasonable frustration and pain to seek out ways to continuously be suffering and therefore continuously be justified in her self-destructive decisions. For Gluttony to tempt her, the character continues to feed into her negative emotions and keep her locked in a worldview of perpetual misery that also keeps her prideful, slothful, and temperamental.

The most interesting part of writing each of these characters, was acknowledging how they overlap while still prioritizing their individual roles in the story. I’m sure you can see how each of the sins ultimately feeds into pride, which is Naomi’s most prominent sin. (Probably why people call pride the source of all vices). Anyway, you may have also noticed a referred to certain sins as male or female.

When deciding to make sins male or female, I centered that around Naomi as a young woman. Pride is written as a male partially because pride is often associated with the fallen angel Lucifer, but also because Naomi is a parallel of her father, who also suffers from pride. It visually communicates how her father is influencing her, even though she would never admit it. Lust is female because from Naomi’s perspective, her father’s lust and the women he chases are the villain. Wrath is male, as I mentioned to symbolize a toxic relationship while paired with Lust. Greed is male because Naomi associates greedy behavior with her father. Envy is female because Naomi envies how other women are her father’s priority. Sloth is female because Naomi uses the absence of her mother (more on that in the next post) as one of her miseries to justify her slothfulness. Gluttony is the only character for whom being male or female is not tied to a crucial story aspect, however, musically, Gluttony is written for a baritone voice type, finishing a set of at least one vocal role for each voice type from bass to soprano.

Like I said, the Seven Deadly Sins were never in question, however, the rest of the characters underwent a long road of rewrites. Like and follow for part two introducing the rest of the cast. Thanks for reading!