 |
| photo credit: suzyhazelwood Love vintage books! via photopin (license) |
I decided to continue writing a story that needed an ending last week. While I’m largely against the idea of going back to a story I lost interest in, there comes a point where I can’t resist. This wasn’t a bad idea either. Turns out, I had more story in me. And the character brought me back. She’s complicated, I’m finding. I like complicated.
This was a sharp contrast to a story I had already finished writing and had typed. I liked the idea of it, but the character was so flat. She was a foggy, shallow reflection of myself. This usually happens when I attempt writing in first person, to be honest. So my mission is to go back and change this to third person and explore the true character in the story.
All of this made me think of characters. It’s the reason I go back to a story I’ve written. More than the plot line or the setting in my story would ever inspire me.
How do we achieve that real feeling of a character? I mean I have done worksheets before that led me to fill out a characters history, personality, tastes, favorite childhood toy, but if I’m not seeing it, it’s all made up. The person isn’t real until they form a reality that makes them unique.
So, as I think about the characters I write – the ones that take form as well as the ones that don’t – I must remember what makes a character unique and beautifully complicated are found in the very things that make us unique and complicated.
It’s found in our sadness and woes…
Great post! I have never written a proper book or story apart from probably in school or when I was younger. But I am quite good when I am reading to visual the characters, what they look like and how they act from a book.
Lauren
http://www.bournemouthgirl.wordpress.com
Yeah! The more vivid a character is, the more you can see them!
I find a character crosses that line when they start taking you, the writer, in a direction you might not have seen coming.
Yup! Same here.