The other day after updating an interview on a lead female character in a series, I’d written a couple of years back, I received quite the surprise.
Personal questions pertaining to her growth as a person, were foremost on my mind. Not questions any other writer wouldn’t ask. Hey, if she couldn’t answer those questions, then maybe she wasn’t worthy of another book.
Why had she fallen in love with a man she’d known for less than a week, when she was so adamant about never falling in love again? Was she on the rebound? If not, what had made her change her mind? What were her motivations?
What qualities did she see in him, other men she’d known longer, lacked?
Was she sure he was the right man for her? If so, what were her reasons?
Could she accept another woman’s child as her own?
Could she give up her dreams, or would she maintain her own lifestyle while accepting others in her life?
I wanted to delve deep inside her head and heart to satisfy my curiosity, and get on with the next book.
She told me to mind my own business!
Yes.
She did.
Her answer floored me. After all, she wouldn’t even be around if I hadn’t brought her to life.
Would she?
Then she told me she was the one who gave up her story, that I was the vehicle she used to tell it. If there would be more written on her story, I should shape up and stick with the story—not leave her hanging as long as I had.
Now being a nosey writer, all her answers did was spur other questions.
So…who is right here? The writer or the character?
Your comments are certainly going to be interesting reading. 🙂
A Smoky Mountain Wedding – Book Two, coming soon.
My books are available at Barnes & Noble, Amazon, Kobo, Sony, Diesel, Apple and Smashwords.
You can find links on my website, here. http://caroldevaney.weebly.com/my-books
Authors of Main Street 
The character is right! (so the writer is right too by default) Sounds like there’s some hard questions to answer ahead!
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Stephanie, I only hope she’s willing to play the game. I think she will come around.:)
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Sometimes we have to just accept some things from our characters. We don’t know every detail of our friends’ love lives. We just accept them. Everyone has secrets. A big dark secret if it were exposed, might just be laughable to another person. Then again it might be frightening. But people hold secrets for whatever reason and so do our characters.
I took a character to an interview and one of the questions was did I portray him accurately. His answer was no. I made him nicer than he was. I’d left out so much of his anger, frustration, and ignored all the times that he wanted to give up. HUH? I never know anything about any of that when I was writing his story.
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Interesting answer to Carol’s post, E. It made me think about my heroine in my current WIP. I need to understand her more, have her explain herself better. Thank you Carol and E.
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Mona, the first thing I learned about writing was to write from the heart. Sometimes when the story unfolds, I forget that important lesson and stop interviewing characters. How else can we get inside their heads?
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E., you know, many of my characters are so complex, I fail to fully flesh them out. Not good. I suppose until the character is complete in our heads, his/her story is unfinished. Who knows what could happen if we leave them on the burner a while longer? Smolder those babies! 🙂
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I’ve always thought your characterization was very good. I’ll admit I’ve not read everything you’ve written, but that I have has always been excellent.
It’s true, Tina has secrets. I just accepted her as a very private person. I doubt the CIA could get past info out of her.
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Lol, E.The CIA would have a bitter taste in their mouths after dealing with Tina. 🙂 Thank you for good thoughts on my characterization, I appreciate it.
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Lol, E. All the good and bad things really round out our characters. I love it when they talk to us!
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Carol, loved the interview. Did you tell your heroine that you’re the one in charge? *g*
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Yes! I let Tina know it was, after all, my story. 🙂
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Thank you, Joan. We writers are in charge aren’t we? Love those characters who care enough to twist things around,
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