Characters

16 May 2011 Comments Off

by 1-Sierra-Gulf in Being a writer, Fiction, Short Stories, Writing Tags: Point-of-view, Post-A-Day 2011

One of the hardest aspects of writing is putting together believable interesting characters. Even though I may have an idea for the story line in mind I don’t always have a firm lock on the characters description or what their individual personalities will be like. I seem to alway piece together each character from the many people I have met and written about in my journal, then throw in a little mystery and imagination to round them out. This formula has worked well for me, although I have to tone down some of them and boost some others to make them seem real.

I once had a writing teacher who told me that a character is only as real as the writer makes him or her. If the character does not have a role in the story that brings delight, horror, love, hate, etc… to the story then don’t waste your time developing that person. One of the best characters that I wrote about was an old man who comes out of the night into a pub. He is dirty, wet, and foul, but determined to have a drink. I described his disfigured face in detail while recounting how the old man watches the rest of the pub dwellers and waits for the bar keep. The place is silent as the other patrons wait for something to happen… then the bar keep quickly walks up to the old man and yells “GET OUT!”, where about the old guy raises his hand, now holding a revolver, shots the bar keep through his open mouth, spraying blood and brains across the room, then calmly gets up and leaves. The character of the old man was wonderful and is only mentioned again in the end of story when he repeats his actions in another pub.

It is the writer’s mission to make each character something special, or so I believe.

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