Blog Entry #2: Author & Character's
Part 1:
Creating characters is my favorite part of constructing a story so I'm going to go out on a limb and answer all of the prompts in this post...
The characters I typically write about are young adults, between the ages of 20 and 30. I'm drawn to these characters for a couple of reasons. First of all, I can relate to them easily, considering I'm in this age range. The novel I've been working on has the majority of the character's in their early twenties for example. And at the same time most of the writing's I work on are focused towards this demographic (as well as older teenagers). When it comes to the development of my characters, I wouldn't say there is anything underdeveloped about them. You might find that rather arrogant, but I'm being entirely serious. On my laptop I have several character personality charts for every one of them, and I've planned them out to a tee. I know their favorite colors, favorite music, their extended family, the vehicles they drive, even their birthdays. I'm just that committed because character creation is a hell of a lot of fun.
Honestly for my first workshop, if we're talking about the one page drafts we just turned in the other days, two of the character's I used (Todd and Jason) are pulled from the novel I'm working on. There's no traits that give this away about them, it's just the use of their names. I might, depending on whether or not I continue with this piece for future workshops, want to continue using these characters because there's so much I want to do with them. While they seem like your average young adults on the outset, there's a lot more than meets the eye after the fact.
I agree with the quote by T.C. Boyle as well. My character's have personalities that readers either will enjoy or loathe. They are here to tell their story and if I made every character likable it'd be a story full of Mary Sue's. The more diversity, the better. Creating a likable character, to me, means they have to be relatable in a sense that they are human too. They enjoy the things we like, but also have their own flaws. Even a supposedly hatable character can be liked. It all depends on how they are, how they act. And to finish this section off, I like everything about creating characters. Since I started writing all those years ago, it was just so much fun creating people and having them interact with others I created. From the elaborate backstories to the most trivial aspects that wouldn't be important, it's all fun. I hope this wasn't too much of a drag to read, but now you've got a better idea as to how much character creation means to me.
Part 2
A&B: Dorothy Allison grew up in Greenville, South Carolina to a fifteen year old single mother who was poor and working two jobs at once. She never knew her biological father but had a very horrid relationship with her stepfather, who would sexually abuse her. As she suffered from untreated gonorrhea due to this abuse until her 20s, she's unable to have children.
D: Allison attended Florida Presbyterian College on a National Merit scholarship. She graduated with a bachelor's in anthropology and did graduate studies in the field at Florida State University. During this time, Allison worked several odd jobs such as a salad girl, a maid, a nanny, a substitute teacher, a worker at a child-care center, a clerk with the Social Security Administration and finally she answered phones at a rape-crisis center.
Finally, I will be reading Allison's first published collection Women Who Hate Me (1983).
Creating characters is my favorite part of constructing a story so I'm going to go out on a limb and answer all of the prompts in this post...
The characters I typically write about are young adults, between the ages of 20 and 30. I'm drawn to these characters for a couple of reasons. First of all, I can relate to them easily, considering I'm in this age range. The novel I've been working on has the majority of the character's in their early twenties for example. And at the same time most of the writing's I work on are focused towards this demographic (as well as older teenagers). When it comes to the development of my characters, I wouldn't say there is anything underdeveloped about them. You might find that rather arrogant, but I'm being entirely serious. On my laptop I have several character personality charts for every one of them, and I've planned them out to a tee. I know their favorite colors, favorite music, their extended family, the vehicles they drive, even their birthdays. I'm just that committed because character creation is a hell of a lot of fun.
Honestly for my first workshop, if we're talking about the one page drafts we just turned in the other days, two of the character's I used (Todd and Jason) are pulled from the novel I'm working on. There's no traits that give this away about them, it's just the use of their names. I might, depending on whether or not I continue with this piece for future workshops, want to continue using these characters because there's so much I want to do with them. While they seem like your average young adults on the outset, there's a lot more than meets the eye after the fact.
I agree with the quote by T.C. Boyle as well. My character's have personalities that readers either will enjoy or loathe. They are here to tell their story and if I made every character likable it'd be a story full of Mary Sue's. The more diversity, the better. Creating a likable character, to me, means they have to be relatable in a sense that they are human too. They enjoy the things we like, but also have their own flaws. Even a supposedly hatable character can be liked. It all depends on how they are, how they act. And to finish this section off, I like everything about creating characters. Since I started writing all those years ago, it was just so much fun creating people and having them interact with others I created. From the elaborate backstories to the most trivial aspects that wouldn't be important, it's all fun. I hope this wasn't too much of a drag to read, but now you've got a better idea as to how much character creation means to me.
Part 2
A&B: Dorothy Allison grew up in Greenville, South Carolina to a fifteen year old single mother who was poor and working two jobs at once. She never knew her biological father but had a very horrid relationship with her stepfather, who would sexually abuse her. As she suffered from untreated gonorrhea due to this abuse until her 20s, she's unable to have children.
D: Allison attended Florida Presbyterian College on a National Merit scholarship. She graduated with a bachelor's in anthropology and did graduate studies in the field at Florida State University. During this time, Allison worked several odd jobs such as a salad girl, a maid, a nanny, a substitute teacher, a worker at a child-care center, a clerk with the Social Security Administration and finally she answered phones at a rape-crisis center.
Finally, I will be reading Allison's first published collection Women Who Hate Me (1983).
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