Wednesday, February 19, 2014

Revealing Secrets of Your Characters

One of my favorite things about writing is creating characters. Creating characters is like writing a story. You have blank pages that can be filled with whatever your heart desires. To me, that is more fun than a barrel of monkeys.

Creating characters gives me the ability to make them as sweet or mean as I want. I can reveal things about their personalities, deep secrets, quirks and any number of things that most people wouldn’t know about them.

Several months ago on Facebook, there was a thing going around where someone else assigned you a number and you had to reveal that number of things about yourself – things others may not know about you.

So, today, I’ll list a few of those things that others may not know about me.

1.      I was born on a small farm in Phoenix, AZ around 51st Ave. and Indian School Rd. It was rural Phoenix then. Definitely not rural now, nor has it been for many, many years.
2.     I came from a long line of Pentecostal believers, but was 14 before I surrendered my life to the Lord. I’ve never regretted that decision. Most Pentecostal expressions of worship in early days was, and did appear, bizarre to the observer, the heart was usually in the right place. Sometimes I miss those days of exuberant, passionate expressions.
3.     Although I was always an A student in school, all I ever wanted to be was a wife and mother. Oh, and maybe write books. I always loved to write.
4.     Because of #3, I married when I was barely 16 to a young man someone invited to church. I had a baby 9 months 3 days later, the first of five. It was not a good marriage and ended in divorce twenty-two years later. Divorce is never God’s plan but cannot be helped sometimes.
5    I was forty-two before I got my GED. 

We all have interesting things about our lives that most people don't know about us. In developing characters for a novel or short story, perhaps we give them characteristics or events in their lives that we wished we had in ours. That's the beauty of writing. 


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