They say a main character has to have motive, passion, drive. You have to be able to flush them out, sift through their many branches. What type of character is that for me? And is it different for every reader? How do you write someone into existence that both men and women can relate to? What would their strengths be? Weaknesses? I don’t know. These are all things I’m thinking about this weekend.
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January 7th, 2012 at 12:52 am
Writing to the opposite gender is difficult. I don’t think men tend to like my work since I write with lots of romance. I beta read a guy’s work where he had a woman looking at a man’s waist. He’s an excellent writer…just didn’t know that woman look at other things.
January 7th, 2012 at 8:00 am
Great post. I enjoyed reading your blog today.
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January 7th, 2012 at 1:42 pm
I’ve found characters write themselves. Write as if having a conversation with your character. Sit around, go to dinner or walk in the woods.
January 8th, 2012 at 7:25 pm
Yeah, it’s a difficult battle, fleshing out a main character. One you get the basics, though, everything else tends to branch out quickly. But those basics…man. You want the character to be believable, recognizable, yet unique and idiosyncratic enough to be distinguishable from cardboard. You want to put enough of yourself into your protagonist to be able to identify with him and yet avoid the hackdom of writing lame variations of yourself in every story. In my flash fiction, I can wing it pretty easily, but now that I’m getting ready to develop a novel, I’m worried. Good luck to us both.
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