I’d
like to spend a couple of blogs talking about the characters and character
development in my first book, TEN DAYS.
As a novice author, I probably spent
more time ‘sweating bullets’ trying to make sure the characters were believable
than developing the plot.
There
was a level at which the plot kind of took care of itself. I only had to cover a week or so in the entire
storyline. Each day had to follow some
logical progression with an outcome which was already predetermined. I provided background material in a few
places, and ‘poof’ I was done. Okay, it
wasn’t that simple, but you get the basic idea.
The
characters, on the other hand, required depth of thought. None of us are two dimensional. I tried hard to avoid stereotypes. My opinion is that no one is just simply what
we see on the surface so that thinking carries into my writing.
I
stated in one of my first blogs that I’m a Christian. Just using that label ‘pigeonholes’ me in the
minds of some. For some the title causes
them to think of me in positive terms; for others it means that I’m a dimwitted
bigot.
Those
of us who are Christians can be equally, if not often more so, guilty of seeing
those who aren’t ‘one of us’ in very simplistic terms. When we attach a label to someone we read the
label and miss the person. None of the
main characters in TEN DAYS are Christians; it was a very intentional decision.
All
four of the main characters are really good people with pretty pure motives. I made them very likeable. It was all for a reason - really terrible
things can happen to very good people whether they are people of faith or not.
It
is sometimes a forgotten tenant of my faith; that I care about all persons
without regard to their ‘labels’. I am
free to evaluate where I think they are in life but I’m not allowed to withhold
compassion.
My
characters are in an unenviable set of circumstances. Right at this moment there are easily
thousands, if not millions, in similar situations around the globe. Do I care enough to do what I can? Do I even care?
I’m
just not a ‘they lived happily ever-after kind of guy. Life just isn’t like that. It’s not that I think life is always tough,
but real people go through difficulty and sometimes long stretches of pain. It makes them/us who we are. As my lead pastor says, “it’s not if the storms
come…it’s when the storms come…”
When
you finish reading TEN DAYS I want you to have cried, to have screamed “No”, to
be upset with me for having taken you into the lives of the main characters. If you come away with a sense of loss, felt
their hearts race in fear, and then I’ve been an effective author. While my characters are fictional, they have
their counterparts somewhere in the real world.
