I like to think I know mine pretty well--I will admit, though, I know some better than others. Some characters I know right off the bat, better than I know myself. I know how they would act in any given situation--what they would say, what they would do, what they'd be thinking. I can tell you about their entire growth as a person, from start to finish--how each event in the story affected them, for better or worse.
Other characters I don't know nearly as well. Other characters are harder to read--they take longer to look at, to figure out how their mind works. These are the characters I have to wrestle with--argue and fight and plead with until they give me just a glimmer of what they're like.
I mentioned, once, the problems I was having with a current WIP. It was causing me immense frustration, to the point that I just wanted to pull my hair out by the roots. (And I really really really love my hair.) I knew something was wrong with it--I just didn't know what. Even after changing the plot drastically from what it started as, I was still lost.
Why? Because I didn't know my main character.
Virtually every other character in this story was one I knew extremely well--it was just the protagonist, who was telling the story, that I was having trouble with. I didn't know who she was, really--I knew what she looked like, I knew what was supposed to happen to her, but nothing clicked as easily as it had with other characters.
Until I realized: I couldn't relate to her.
Relating to a character is extremely, extremely important--my characters have always been close to me, because in some small way, I've always been able to relate to them. I like to think that there's a part of me, of my life, in each of my stories, and most of it lies within my characters.
This character, this new protagonist, is one I've been visualizing since I was fourteen. I thought it'd be easy. I thought she's practically write the story herself.
She didn't.
It was like trying to converse with someone you have nothing in common with. It's not that I expected to relate to her situation exactly--I'm not exactly royalty--but no matter how hard I tried, no matter what angle I tilted it, I couldn't find the common ground. I couldn't find a way to relate to her, to parallel our lives.
Until suddenly, recently...I did. My life started to shift and change, my heart along with it...and, with one tiny nudge, everything clicked into place.
Having common ground with your character isn't always a necessary thing. I've written plenty of characters, at one time or another, that I had nothing in common with. But sometimes, when something isn't working...when, no matter how much you push or pull, it just won't budge...sometimes, finding common ground can help. Just starting from one simple emotion--one simple, familiar twinge of the heart--and building up around it can work wonders.
Until later,
- Justyne
Why? Because I didn't know my main character.
Virtually every other character in this story was one I knew extremely well--it was just the protagonist, who was telling the story, that I was having trouble with. I didn't know who she was, really--I knew what she looked like, I knew what was supposed to happen to her, but nothing clicked as easily as it had with other characters.
Until I realized: I couldn't relate to her.
Relating to a character is extremely, extremely important--my characters have always been close to me, because in some small way, I've always been able to relate to them. I like to think that there's a part of me, of my life, in each of my stories, and most of it lies within my characters.
This character, this new protagonist, is one I've been visualizing since I was fourteen. I thought it'd be easy. I thought she's practically write the story herself.
She didn't.
It was like trying to converse with someone you have nothing in common with. It's not that I expected to relate to her situation exactly--I'm not exactly royalty--but no matter how hard I tried, no matter what angle I tilted it, I couldn't find the common ground. I couldn't find a way to relate to her, to parallel our lives.
Until suddenly, recently...I did. My life started to shift and change, my heart along with it...and, with one tiny nudge, everything clicked into place.
Having common ground with your character isn't always a necessary thing. I've written plenty of characters, at one time or another, that I had nothing in common with. But sometimes, when something isn't working...when, no matter how much you push or pull, it just won't budge...sometimes, finding common ground can help. Just starting from one simple emotion--one simple, familiar twinge of the heart--and building up around it can work wonders.
Until later,
- Justyne
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