Confession

While it's probably not a writerly thing to do, I want to make a confession. I say it's not very writerly because it's supposedly bad form to give people a potential bias against your work. However, I think examination is more valuable than preserving a reputation so I'm going for it.

I mean, it's not THAT bad...

Characters are not my favorite part of reading and it's my weakest part of writing.

No! I don't listen to gate-keepers!

Before you think I'm saying my characters suck and I should crawl off to a nice boring non-fiction, hear me out. I wouldn't say I'm bad at it. I love observing people and talking to people, but making characters is to my love of storytelling as social media is to actual human interaction. It can be thrilling, it can be emotional, but it just doesn't quite hit the same high feels of a real social interaction. It's the equivalent of a 'you had to be there' or trying to recall nostalgia in a photograph. It can be a great high, reading or writing something great but it's also not a substitute or better. Different, more like.

Story telling and world building is where I get my fix. I'm not going to pretend it's a unique concept. In fact, writers like Tolkien put most of us to shame. I'm not quite dedicated to the point of creating my own language or thousands of years of elfy, dwarfy history but I love the connections and I love the trees. I'm not obsessed with maps but I have a few crude sketches and know my elbow from my asshole.

Prove it? You don't see me trying to lick my asshole, do you?

The trees though... I love how things seemingly unrelated connect. I love seeing old branches spring forth with new buds. I even love when spiders tangle the hopeful new leaves with gossamer and choke them.

At some point, I realized I just don't bear the same confidence with characters. Not for lack of knowledge or authenticity or interest, but more because I kind of just winged it the first time I was able to write anything longer than a college thesis.

Yeah, I remember what my college thesis was about! It was about--

But I wondered if this was really that authentic. I'd over-written characters in the past and lost my way. Namely, I'd written them in so much detail that they just wouldn't fit the story anymore and I wasn't quite patient enough to set them aside and start a new one or edit them as I went. You're probably cringing at that. Edit the character to fit the story? Sacrilege! But yes, I believe that all elements are flexible, most especially the evolution of characters. In that sense, it shouldn't seem so horrible now. It's not unusual that writers claim their character 'misbehaves' or 'refuses to cooperate'. This is just the 'not a hipster' version of that.

Wait, hipster writers, I don't hate you! I'm just not into making disassociative identity disorders look cute and normal!

Removing the crutch of 'overplanning' seemed to be a breakthrough in gaining ground, but I began to wonder-- was it a crutch at all or if I just evolved as a writer without that being the factor? So, out of the blue, I've started a journey of back story, turning each character into their own little trees. Not like a profile or some formal neat arrangement; I just picked up a pen and started scribbling in a notebook. 

I know it's not a new discovery and it's not even new to me. With 'ambition for completion', I just temporarily lost a piece of the joy of just writing something for my stories that wouldn't be seen but still gives me a piece of confidence in my characters I wasn't so sure of with my winging-it approach. Okay, I still kind of wing it, but after I've written a bit about who they are, what they value, their past and their personality, I find it's a lot easier than going back on an edit AFTER I get to know them and constantly dealing with the aggravation of something that they wouldn't really say or do.

Another confession-- even though I did wing it with my first series a lot, I still enjoy the very robust characters throughout. They did go through some refinement in the many edits I did. They still hit all the right notes of being aggravating, beloved, frustrating, disgusting and/or flawed. I still see them as self-aware yet willful, people with demons and angels, some who get more chances than they deserve and some who die the first time they take a risk. I still see how they are trapped in their nature or struggling for discipline in a mind too free to choose who they are.

Starting this blog, I've always wanted it to be grounds for honest discussion. It's because I perceive making characters as my weakness that they might actually benefit from that criticism.  Given a chance, even with my love of the story, I'd still be inclined to talk about my characters in terms of how I would my friends. I'd see their ideals and aspirations at war with their actions and reactions, where their confidence falters and where they beam with their strengths. Sometimes a nicely formatted profile just makes them a nearly faceless job applicant to me. There's something oddly familiar about scribbling about them on paper with the frenzy of a diary entry. This feels like the right place to build that confidence.

In a way that a discovered diary is anything but.

He means the diaries. At least all the ones with hearts and your crushes' names in them.