This title definitely isn't related to the fact that yesterday I watched the entire TV special Harry Potter: The Making of Diagon Alley. And it definitely doesn't show how excited I am for that theme park when I haven't actually been to Disney World since Apple came out with an iPod Shuffle and Expedition: Everest was still a dusty lot.
I'm going to attempt a horrid segue here into our topic today, which actually does tie into the title of the post (thank goodness I got something right, huh?). I mentioned it a little yesterday about giving a piece of yourself to whatever you do, whether that's drawing, writing, cooking, or something else entirely. Like a significantly less murderous form of a horcrux, your work should house a little sliver of your soul. You can't create life out of nothing, something needs to be living first.
Characters are the easiest way to determine whether you've done this. If they jump off the page, they've been given life by their writer. And when that writer is you, you have quite the responsibility to your new people if you want them to end up like Harry, Ron, and Hermione, creating a fanbase or at the very least a loyal readership who adore your characters. Nothing's more of a sock to the gut than having someone comment on your Goodreads page, 'the characters were flat, I couldn't relate to them'. And the thing is, it's not an impossible feat to do this. It just requires a certain personal awareness.
And not everyone knows themselves best. I'm very fortunate to be what's called 'self-intelligent' according to the Gardener Multiple Intelligences test, meaning that I know myself and how I function very well. But the way to make good characters come alive comes from (in Voldemort-esque fashion) splitting a shard of your soul and sticking it in their chest.
That sounds pretty weird, right? But it's not. Take, for example, my protagonist from my current WIP, The Artist. This year I discovered that I'm kind of a Momma Bear, protecting those who I love and taking responsibility for them. I thought that would be an interesting trait for her to have, since I was having a hard time expressing her benevolence. But she seems so much more real now that she's constantly looking after everyone around her as opposed to random blips of kindness that appear in her actions. She's better for the little sliver of me that's in her. It's really great for your antagonists, as well, or characters that are antagonistic towards your protagonist. One of the antagonists that you meet in the first book of the WIP trilogy exhibits one of my flaws - my fear. I experience emotions very intensely, and fear is no exception. The way that fear paralyzes me and makes me completely paranoid got split off from me and sent into him, and that fear is part of his downfall.
Taking pieces of yourself and putting them inside characters doesn't hurt you, not like it hurt Voldemort in Harry Potter. Your soul is regenerative, you can split it off and stick it in however many characters as you please. But something that I think is wonderful about doing this is that, like with my antagonist, you can create themes in your works by doing this. My antagonist, unfortunately tagged with my ensnaring and petrifying fear, makes choices based on that paranoia and other emotions trying to compensate for that emotion - generally anger. But he falls. Not just because he's the antagonist, that's not real life. He falls because he is so wrapped up in his fears and what he thinks may happen that he makes several bad decisions in who to trust and what to do. It's a theme that I want to express to my readers and myself - fear cannot control you if you want to succeed. It's natural, and it will always be around, but you must learn to surmount it instead of allowing it to consume you as it consumes him.
So go on, try it! If you have existing characters, try and find bits and pieces of you in them. When creating your characters, don't be afraid to make a side of them in your image, even in the facets of your image you don't like. Writing is a very personal experience for this reason, because the writer literally sticks bits of themselves in the words. But those pieces of you are what your readers will latch onto and cherish. I know for a fact that there's a huge place in my heart for Hermione Granger, the young bookworm and brightest witch of her age. I was her, I was the nerdy little bookworm who excelled in school and feared failure. That connection has never been broken, and remains as strong as when I met her back in 2000. Don't your readers deserve that kind of connection to your characters? I think they do.
May your soul split easily,
Brie
I'm going to attempt a horrid segue here into our topic today, which actually does tie into the title of the post (thank goodness I got something right, huh?). I mentioned it a little yesterday about giving a piece of yourself to whatever you do, whether that's drawing, writing, cooking, or something else entirely. Like a significantly less murderous form of a horcrux, your work should house a little sliver of your soul. You can't create life out of nothing, something needs to be living first.
Characters are the easiest way to determine whether you've done this. If they jump off the page, they've been given life by their writer. And when that writer is you, you have quite the responsibility to your new people if you want them to end up like Harry, Ron, and Hermione, creating a fanbase or at the very least a loyal readership who adore your characters. Nothing's more of a sock to the gut than having someone comment on your Goodreads page, 'the characters were flat, I couldn't relate to them'. And the thing is, it's not an impossible feat to do this. It just requires a certain personal awareness.
And not everyone knows themselves best. I'm very fortunate to be what's called 'self-intelligent' according to the Gardener Multiple Intelligences test, meaning that I know myself and how I function very well. But the way to make good characters come alive comes from (in Voldemort-esque fashion) splitting a shard of your soul and sticking it in their chest.
That sounds pretty weird, right? But it's not. Take, for example, my protagonist from my current WIP, The Artist. This year I discovered that I'm kind of a Momma Bear, protecting those who I love and taking responsibility for them. I thought that would be an interesting trait for her to have, since I was having a hard time expressing her benevolence. But she seems so much more real now that she's constantly looking after everyone around her as opposed to random blips of kindness that appear in her actions. She's better for the little sliver of me that's in her. It's really great for your antagonists, as well, or characters that are antagonistic towards your protagonist. One of the antagonists that you meet in the first book of the WIP trilogy exhibits one of my flaws - my fear. I experience emotions very intensely, and fear is no exception. The way that fear paralyzes me and makes me completely paranoid got split off from me and sent into him, and that fear is part of his downfall.
Taking pieces of yourself and putting them inside characters doesn't hurt you, not like it hurt Voldemort in Harry Potter. Your soul is regenerative, you can split it off and stick it in however many characters as you please. But something that I think is wonderful about doing this is that, like with my antagonist, you can create themes in your works by doing this. My antagonist, unfortunately tagged with my ensnaring and petrifying fear, makes choices based on that paranoia and other emotions trying to compensate for that emotion - generally anger. But he falls. Not just because he's the antagonist, that's not real life. He falls because he is so wrapped up in his fears and what he thinks may happen that he makes several bad decisions in who to trust and what to do. It's a theme that I want to express to my readers and myself - fear cannot control you if you want to succeed. It's natural, and it will always be around, but you must learn to surmount it instead of allowing it to consume you as it consumes him.
So go on, try it! If you have existing characters, try and find bits and pieces of you in them. When creating your characters, don't be afraid to make a side of them in your image, even in the facets of your image you don't like. Writing is a very personal experience for this reason, because the writer literally sticks bits of themselves in the words. But those pieces of you are what your readers will latch onto and cherish. I know for a fact that there's a huge place in my heart for Hermione Granger, the young bookworm and brightest witch of her age. I was her, I was the nerdy little bookworm who excelled in school and feared failure. That connection has never been broken, and remains as strong as when I met her back in 2000. Don't your readers deserve that kind of connection to your characters? I think they do.
May your soul split easily,
Brie
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