AW Blog Chain : What Character do you want to meet?
This month blog chain on Absolute Write is about our own characters, the ones we’ve created in our work. It’s like asking someone “What famous person do you want to meet?” or “What dead person do you wish you’d met?”
Though this time, these characters aren’t just strangers people have told us about and inspired us or intrigued us to meet. These people are ones we’ve created. In many cases, they are the best and worst part of ourselves. We take the best (or worst) parts of our favorite (or least liked) people in our lives and combine them into protagonists and antagonists. In that one character, we pour our heart and soul into their lives, but as we write, it’s not a memoir, rather our fingers give life to these people and that can be very different than anything we do.
Take Sarah from The Gift of Sight. She’s a photographer (so am I). She’s a business owner (so am I). She’s got dark curly hair (so do I). But she’s single, has no kids and her camera likes to add photos that aren’t possible — aren’t real … but are. Mine doesn’t quite do that. π She’s my size, my height, has my personality, etc. because she was my first created character.
Ryan, her counterpart, was big, brawny, dark, handsome and very open minded. Strangely, that’s only part of my husband. π But hey … they weren’t married, so it didn’t have to be him, right? I’m ok with not meeting either one of them because both of them have ME written all over them.
Then I created Grace and started a Young Adult novel, but deleted her because I didn’t fall in love with her. Then I created Jahye and Jackson in Two for Tuesday. He was an attorney and she was a bankrupt ex-CEO. I’ve worked with enough of them to understand their mentality. π But I delete them too (at 50k words) and honestly? Am not so interested in meeting them.
Then Charley came along in Little White Lies. She’s a shape-shifter and man, oh man, would I like to meet her and her man, Wyatt. They’ve known each other “forever” and are connected by those “forces unknown”. He’s strong and open-minded. She can kick ass and take names then be as sweet as can be. There is one supporting character in the book : James. One of my beta readers (you know who you are!) wants HIM. James is this loveable teddy bear of a guy that takes care of Charley, loves her like a sibling, but moreso and knows they don’t have a shot together, so he does whatever he can to make sure she finds love with Wyatt. He is her biggest advocate and hero but NOT her love interest. Awe. π Poor James. Big, strong, handsome (of course) totally loveable and looks out for everyone. Right? Don’t you just “gotta love him”? Picture him with Hurley’s personality on LOST, but Jack and Sawyer’s body. π
Then I started on another “me” story and stopped it at 15k words. We just won’t go there as the characters REALLY were me and my husband and I may get back to that one but for now you get a taste of Morgan and Aaron.
Hmmmmmm …. yes, I want to meet these guys. Why? Because I truly don’t know everything about them yet. They are still only 1/2 created as if they are standing on two sides of a room waiting for me to bring them together. One step at a time, closer and closer until *bam* they are together.
Morgan is an average height woman with a super-petite build, fiery red hair and crystalline green eyes. Aaron is tall, built and quite scholarly with dark shaggy short hair and ocean-blue eyes. She’s a therapist to an ‘interesting sort of clientele’ and he’s a professor that debunks myths. She’s confident but has a super-soft side. He’s brilliant with strength and a really big … secret (where did your mind go?). Really, both of them have supreme secrets and that’s the “pink elephant” in the room that’s keeping them apart right now … along with a few people that are as enamored with Morgan as Aaron (and I) am.
Why do I want to meet Charley, Wyatt, James, Lily, Cael, Stuart (can’t forget Stuart) and Chase from Little White Lies? And Morgan, Aaron, Cate, Cea, Deena, Drake and Patrick from Mystic Therapy?
Because they are my peeps and if they didn’t say ‘hi’ to me on the street when I walk by I could just take an eraser to their lives and wipe them out. π Ok, that was totally selfish.
They are characters that I love. The few that I love to hate? Well we won’t name them. They just might stand up and wave and say “I did it!! I did it!” to get the attention they want and can’t have because they are in fact … the bad guys.
So who do you want to meet? Did you create a character that you just love and wish they were in fact your friend? π
Here are the other folks in the chain, please do visit!
Proach
RavenCorinnCarluk
AuburnAssassin
DavidZahir
xcomplex
Frodo
FreshHell <-- Before me
Aimeelaine <-- Me!
Anarchicq <-- After me
Breddings
*RomanceWriter*
Forbidden Snowflake
razibahmed
CScottMorris
Aheila
LadyMage
leahzero
Aimee, Great post. I woke up this morning thinking about how there’s too much of me in my current MC. She’s one of the first characters I’ve created, so your post helps me make sense as to why she’s such a ball of confusion — I’m not letting her come into her own self. Thanks for sharing your experience!
Thanks Christi! Glad I could help! LOL π
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Great post, Aimee. Are charcters fun! I guess a bit of ourselves will always leak into our characters (or a lot).
Stacey
They sound like a very interesting bunch! All very rich and tasty. I can smell great stories in the making.
It’s not always easy to get away from who we are and who we know, and create characters that are their own person. From what you’re saying, it seems you got there. Good work!
James sound really loveable but too mellow for me. Lol!
Keep on writing! I’m sure your stories are worth it!
Thanks Stacey! I agree. They are fun! π
Aheila : James is … um … not mellow. π LOL Thanks for the encouragement!
Lol, Aimee! He might just be my kind of man then! π
Really geat post, Aimeelaine. Wow, you have a lot of interesting and unique characters. I would love to meet all the good characters, but wouldn’t want to cross paths with your bad characters…lol.
Interesting–I don’t think any of my characters are any more “me” than the rest. Certainly none bear much of a resemblance to yours truly, not in terms of biography or appearance.
Proach : Yeah a few of my ‘bad’ guys are evil … others are just plain …. stupid. π
David : That’s great if you can think outside your own box. π
Would I be giving myself away if I mentioned that you’ve made James sound even yummier than even I thought he was? I am still going to steal him and give him a cameo. I’ll need him in the Albuquerque / Santa Fe area in probably a few weeks. Write him out for a brief “mission”, will ya? LOL (Gave myself away didn’t I?)
Great post Aimee!
Totally gave yourself away there Claire. π You can borrow him, just like I’ll borrow Dori. π He’s always happy to help out a damsel in distress. π
Do you really delete some of your stories? I save everything I write even if it sucks. They are little wonderful steps towards something better and greater.
Ann — yes, when they are bad. π And they were. I can’t even believe I wrote part of them. There was nothing redeeming about them. π π I got better afterward, but I *really* didn’t want the reminder. π
Hiya Aimee,
Thanks for this~more to come~
A few of my MCs have parts of me in them. I think that’s inevitable because you’re pulling from your own experiences. I do, though, have a couple of characters that are not like me and who I’ve rescued from old short stories. Characters that have just been begging to be let out of the file cabinet. I do what I can to oblige them.
“I do what I can to oblige them.” So you bow to their whims too? π It’s fun to let our characters take over … at least some of the time. π
Extremely well-rounded. That’s great