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Who's
YOUR Character? by Shon Bacon
What
do you know about your characters?
Hopefully more than what's in the book or books your readers
devour! As creator, just
like our Creator, we should know our characters inside and out.
Their fears, their desires, their likes and dislikes, everything.
Of course, we don't put all of these things into our books
because it would bore our readers, and we would never get to the point
of the book - the actual STORY. When
we know from which our characters came, it helps us to develop strong,
complex, well developed characters that readers can read about and say,
"Man, that character is so real.
I know a person just like that." Usually,
at some point in the writing process, I write dossiers for my main
characters. If a story just
hits me and I immediately start writing the story, there is usually a
time toward the middle of the book that I peter out a bit, and during
that what I call literary constipation stage, I sit back and begin
talking to my characters, sometimes on paper, but many times just
aloud...people often think I'm crazy, LOL.
If I'm in organization mode, where I'm drafting out an outline
first for my story, I often marinate on my characters in my mind and
draw up dossiers so that I have a lot of back story for them before I
write the story. Either
way, I make sure to learn and love my characters as if they are real
people. One
of my favorite characters (and I love all my babies-lol) is Carter
Devlin from TO CATCH A CHEAT. She's in her early thirties and she owns a cheater
investigation company. In
addition to being a cheater investigator, she's also a counselor - often
for the victims of her investigations.
What she does is intriguing enough, but I'm endeared to her
because she's a broken character that strives to do the right things and
just wants to be loved and appreciated and not fall into the same issues
her mother has had. All of her life, she played patsy to her mother's
infidelities and now, she's totally against relationships.
In the story, it's obvious she's against relationships because
her mother helped to paint an ugly image of what marriage means, but
she's also against relationships because she fears of turning into her
mother and becoming a cheater. That
gives her a lot of dimension and makes tension escalate when she not
only finds herself attracted to a cheater she's investigating, but also
finds herself falling for her best friend, Vince, a partner in the
investigation company. Carter
grew up in a middle class upbringing and lives a very multicultural,
real life. One minute, she
can be listening to Nirvana, the next, waxing ebonically with her
friends, and the next, pretending to be a lesbian to catch a cheater.
She eclectic, she has heart, and she has her flaws - that's real. Another
favorite character of mine is Jack King from RUNNING FROM MISS RIGHT
(which is probably my favorite story thus far).
This was a story that I wrote in about a month, and in the
process of writing the story, Jack was always very real for me.
She's in her late twenties, works for a film production company,
and wants to be a screenwriter. She
has a female boss that won't let her move up, two best friends who are
getting married and are making her a bridesmaid, and she has to deal
with her sexual identity when her best girl friend kisses her one night.
One thing that's mentioned early in the story and once or twice
during the story is the kiss isn't Jack's first foray into dealing with
the same sex. She's always
been interested in girls but after one particular incident when she was
a young girl (a mother found her kissing her daughter) and sexual
incidences at her all-women college, Jack just considers these things as
part of a phase in her life, and she moves on.
The kiss from Carrie, her best friend, opened her Pandora's box
and made Jack question who she was as a person, and I think everyone, in
one way or another, questions who he or she is, what he or she wants,
and how he or she will finally resolve those issues.
I also like Jack because, like Carter, she lives in a
multicultural world. I've
read books in which it feels like the character lives in chocolate or
vanilla land, and there are no other races or influences in the
character's life; that doesn't feel real to me.
I also dig her because she's self-deprecating and funny.
She has absolutely no problem laughing at her stupidity or her
fuck-ups. She's very
conversational and loves talking to the reader as if the reader is her
confidante, the only person who might truly understand her.
Though Jack grapples with determining who she really is sexually,
ultimately, I think her biggest fear is making a choice that will
totally fuck up her existence - something I think we all do from time to
time. When
I write my dossiers - above are just some of the reasons I love these
characters - I tend to do them like "job applications"
- name, age, sex, weight, height, eye color, glasses, fears,
favorite colors, parents, education, friends, biggest disappointments,
desires...etc... One thing I love to ask about my characters is WHAT DID YOU
CHARACTER DO "JUST" BEFORE THE START OF THE STORY.
By answering that question, the character becomes
"alive" before the start...as if he or she had always been
there. An
example of a character sketch chart can be found at The
Scriptorium Webzine for Writers. Who
are YOUR main characters? What makes them tick? What
are their issues? Why do
you love them? Why do you
feel so connected with them? E-mail
me at chickoflit@hotmail.com
and share some information about your characters!
I’ll post a few in the next issue of TNC’s The Write Life!
Next: Article #10: Writing Dialogue |
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