The Character of the Characters

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.