I'm Not Alone; I Write

I received an email this morning from a woman who told me she loves the main character in my book.

I get it. I do, too.

When I was young, I wrote stories. I also tried my hand at novels, and I thought I had a solid approach. I came up with an interesting plot and created characters to play the parts in the story. That’s what I thought writing was all about. Plot.

There was nothing special about my characters, though. I didn’t fall in love with them. They were just there, in the story. Maybe they were fashioned after real people I knew, which made it easier to figure out how they would talk and act, but there was no life in them. They weren’t REAL.

That doesn’t mean I didn’t care about them. I did. They were my babies, my creation. They had a job to do, and they did it. As I got more experienced, they became more like real people, with character arcs and goals. They believed in their own lies, and that affected the way they approached the world.

But they were FLAT.

Because I had an idea of who I modeled them after, I thought they were three-dimensional, but they weren’t. My idea of them was.

This is not a how-to article. I’m not an expert at bringing characters to life, and I am not trying to sell a course or a template for you to follow. I am simply sharing what has brought me out of loneliness and grief. My characters are real to me.

We get together every morning, and we explore the world they live in together. They have some great ideas, and I let them go with them.

When my wife was dying from leukemia, she told me that I needed to keep busy by writing, and she was very specific. Write about those ladies.

Those ladies are the women I started writing about when I was attending writers’ conferences and workshops fifteen years ago. Most of what I wrote at the time was short fiction, with an occasional attempt at a novel (the big plot kind I mentioned before).

But there were these two old ladies that I wrote about in the first person, telling their stories. My wife, Kathleen, a voracious reader of all kinds of fiction, loved them. So, when I retired, she told me that I had to keep busy, and these ladies would keep me company.

What began as a single book tribute to my wife is now a six-book series, and I know each of the characters across eight generations personally. Thank you, Kathleen.

One thing I realized when the characters came to life is that the other characters love them, too, or hate them. That happens as well. But they remember them and talk about them to each other and to the reader. So, when I sit down to have a conversation with one, I get an earful.

I laugh when they do something silly, and I cry when something bad happens to them or someone they love. The more time I spend with them, the more real they become.

Now, here is the clincher. I need my readers to tell me what they think. Who do they like? Who do they despise? How do they feel about what just happened to one or the other?

My job, though, is getting harder, not easier. As my characters grow and change, I need to work harder at making sure I remain loyal to who they are and who they have become. I may want to keep my children young forever, but life isn’t like that.

The good news is I can go back and write a story or novella that takes place in the past, and the character can come to life again in a new adventure.

I never expected to write a series across so many generations with so many characters, but as long as my readers want to read these stories, I will write them. But, honestly, if no one else reads them, I will still write them, because I love the characters that much.

So, this is my life now. I live with my cat, and a whole family of invisible people who pop in daily to spend time with me. We work together, go on walks together, and share our thoughts with each other.

We writers are a strange lot, aren’t we?

I am off to two writers’ conferences this year to share my imaginary friends with others. I’ll let you know how that goes.