Knowing A Character

Have you ever read a book and gone: Wait, who is this person again?

Yeah, that was me last night when writing a slow scene for my current WIP, Into The Woods. It included a lot of...conversation between characters. And as I wrote, I found my characters leading off into conversation about someone else. And then I ran into a problem--I don't know this someone else.

Well, that's not entirely true. I know them, but not as intimately as I should have, I know them on the outside, but I don't know them on the inside. And, as any writer knows, to write the character, you need to know the character. You need to know their inner thoughts, their mindset, their goals. You need to know their greatest fear, their greatest weakness, their greatest strength. And while it was only a side character, I found myself struggling to write her for this very reason.

The best of authors can describe a character in one sentence (or in the first thing they say, go check out my post The First Sentence to dive a little deeper into that topic), and the rest of us, me in particular, need a little more time.

And so this was my struggle, I hadn't brainstormed who this person was supposed to be, so I didn't know how to put that sentence (or paragraph, because I'm just learning) together.

I guess my situation is a little more complex than that also because the book has two POV's (two main characters who take turns being the narrator) and the two characters see this subject character as two different persons. That might also be a reason why I'm struggling. [But hey! I have to give it to him, if my mom left me at nine years old in the middle of the woods with skin that killed people and only showed up ten years later, I probably wouldn't be happy either. This is the exact opposite of how my Female Main Character sees my subject character (I keep calling her that but her name is really Taliah...if that's even how you spell it) as this bouncy, kind mother who is trying to make things better.]

Anyways, that was my weekly rant. <3

Note: If you guys need some extra music, go check out my spotify profile and hang out with my character's tunes for a little while.

Weekly Quote:

'Either write something worth reading, or do something worth writing.'

-Benjamin Franklin

Stay Strong,

Claudia