Okay, I've been watching the Bravo channel which is filled with commercials for the "Real Housewives" from everywhere. Now I ask you, do you actually believe that those are real housewives? Can you imagine any one of those ladies changing a diaper, cleaning up puke, or dealing with a dishwasher that's just flooded the kitchen? No, because just looking at them you know they've got a houseful of servants to take care of those things for them.
Realizing that, I got to thinking about characters in our stories. We're always told to make them real, make them believable. How do you do that? Take a good hard look at your story. Is your female lead a supermodel or a housewife? If she's a housewife, the woman is not going to have six inch fingernails, Gucci shoes, or diamonds dripping from her neck and ears. Her hair is probably pulled back in a ponytail, she's barefoot or wearing slippers or sneakers, and she's wearing a T-shirt and jeans or sweatpants. What ever she's wearing can come into play during the course of the story. A man grabs her ponytail to stop her. Barefoot, broken glass on the floor. And have you ever tried to run in slippers? Not pretty. Sweatpants, surely she couldn't be dangerous but that gun in her hand gives the lie to that.
Real people go grocery shopping, yes even the men, they do dishes, they scrub the grout in their bathroom. No, you don't have to include that in your story but it helps you the writer to remember just who your character is and not just what they're doing. Knowing that helps keep the character grounded. Most characters are just like you and me, ordinary people with ordinary problems until that moment when everything goes sideways. Use their ordinary to make them real.
2 comments:
Sandra, good advice as always. One thing I've done when a character won't come alive for me is find a newspaper photo to stick up on the wall. The newspaper part is important--no models out of catalogues or magazines.
That's a good idea, Anita. I rarely describe my characters so I have a very vague idea of what they look like. For me, who they are is more important. I usually skip the parts where the writers give the height, weight, hair and eye color of their characters :)
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