My Approach to Characters

When I am telling a story, I am attempting entertain as well as give my readers something to think about. I try to focus in on the characters because I think people are the story. My main objective is to present flawed characters as they are. There are two things I try to do in order to make the story interesting. First, some of the characters I create understand and accept their flaws but most do not. In my life, I have had the opportunity to interact with quite a few people. It seems to me that most conflict is caused by people that do not understand their flaws or have not found a way to compensate for them. The second tool I try to employ is to try to present unusual situations and see how the characters react. In some cases, the characters act exactly the way you would expect them to given the background information provided to that point. Sometimes the characters will behave in inexplicable ways. That’s what I hope to achieve. As I have been thinking about this, I have come up with an idea on where to go with this story. I am going to continue with the main story, but I am also going to try to fill you in with more background information about each character. How am I going to do this? I am going to let the characters tell you about themselves in own words. This week I am going to create blogs for Ronnie, Annie, Anita and Ben. They are the most likely to participate as bloggers. Stay tuned and I will let you know where you can get to know the characters a little better as you read the story. Let’s see who reacts as expected and who doesn’t. Copyright (c) 2006 Paul Gavin. All rights reserved.