Howdy, howdy, squiders. I got a flat tire today, which is a pain in the ass. Siiiiiigh. Hole in the sidewall, so no repairs for me.
But anyway.
WriYe’s September prompt is: What type of characters do you like writing? Hate writing?
At first thought, I don’t think I hate writing any sort of character. Boring ones, maybe, but if you have a character you’re not jiving with, maybe you should spice them up a bit?
Like, let’s look at Lily, who is in Shards. She’s a secondary antagonist, and on the first draft, she was kind of boring. I think I wasn’t quite sure what to do with her.
That wasn’t really Lily’s fault.
When I did the revisions that would end up in the published version of the book, I spent a lot of time doing character work on Lily. What was her background? What was her motivation? Why was she working against the main characters (in the first draft she’d been an antagonist still, but I wasn’t clear why, and so her actions didn’t always make sense)?
And she ended up being one of my favorite characters in the book.
Even despicable characters can be fun. Sometimes it’s therapeutic to work through someone being evil.
So I kind of feel like if you have a character you’re hating to write, something’s wrong with the character. And you should take a look at them and either flesh them out better, or maybe remove them from the story if they’re not working. Sometimes the wrong character is in the wrong story, after all.
I’m afraid I’m not going to be a ton of inspiration on this particular prompt. Characterization typically comes easily for me, so it’s not something I spend a lot of time on (unless a character isn’t working, like Lily above, and even then I can normally sort them out–or remove them–without too much trouble). Now, pacing is something that does NOT come easily, and so I have spent more conscious time working on that.
What about you, squiders? Thoughts on characters?
