Deeanne Gist - www.deeannegist.com - Inspirational Romance Author

Monday, March 27, 2006

Characters Influence

We started a discussion on characters last week, which brought up these questions:

"Do you feel like your characters are friends, or acquaintances by the time you finish a book? People you know well, but maybe not 100%?"

Some characters I become really attached to and some I'm ready to "let go" of. I adored Drew, but by the end of Bride I was rather annoyed with Josh for holding onto his anger. I can't stand that. I'm one of these people that gets angry and then, *poof* it's over and all is well.

When Josh wallowed in his hurt, it exhausted me. ("All those negative vibes, man.") So, even though I am quite fond of Josh, I'm in no hurry to spend a whole 'nother year with him. So ... it may be a while before his story is written, if ever. (Mind you, I'm not saying NEVER, I'm just saying: not any time soon.)

"When you finish writing something do you feel--not like you know your character--but like you ARE your character?"

As far as "becoming" my characters, I don't do that exactly. What I do is I become grumpy when things aren't going well for them (which is most of the novel, otherwise you have no conflict). So for me, turning off the computer is a lot easier than turning off the emotions I've drummed up while writing. (Kind of like when you are reading a book and one of the characters does something that you are not pleased about and after you close the book because it's time to cook dinner your displeasure still sort of hangs around? It's like that.)

Anyway, popping in a CD of praise songs or reading His Word will usually take care of that pretty quickly for me. What do you do when your feelings about a character spills over into everyday living?

Next: Do I know exactly what's going to happen in my novel and when it's going to happen?

posted by Deeanne at 11:36 AM

5 Comments:

Jezreel said...: I agree, Josh's grudge would definitely get a little annoying.

Hmmm...what do I do when my characters or characters I'm reading about get down? I develop new ones to solve their problems :P While the new characters might never actually get into my writing (and definitely never get into the books I read), they help for the time being.

Writers are WEIRD!
Barb said...: I try to figure out the source of my moodiness or grouchiness. If it's fiction, then I can just remind myself that fiction is not reality and sorta reset my head. My husband deals with enuf owly women out in the big work world, so I try to keep owliness to a minimum around here!
Maybe in Josh's book you could start it off by having him coming out of therapy at the beginning of the story. After the loss of so many important women in his life, therapy is probably a good idea anyway, especially if he's gonna move on to have a sound relationship with any other women in the future. Once a therapist has helped him out, I'm sure he'll be a much more pleasant person to write about! :o)
Deeanne said...: LOL, Barb! I'll see what I can do.
EJ said...: I generally brood about it for a while, but then my ADHD kicks in and distracts me with something else, so it's all good. Praise music works for me too, especially when I need some background noise while I'm writing.
Deeanne said...: Who do you like to listen to, EJ? Any favorites?