"Writing is a socially acceptable form of schizophrenia." ~E.L. Doctorow

Tuesday, February 22, 2011

Character Analysis

This is going to be an interesting blog post because I've got a few things to cover today.

First up,I have to thank Kelly from Kelly Hashway's Books for putting me up for my second blog award. (I'm blushing guys honestly and that's not easy to do.)



More to follow on that.


Secondly, this morning while I was perusing Fi's blog I found that she joined a new challenge called the Creative Every Day challenge and I just had to join too. How could I not?! Having an excuse to flex my creativity - what could be better? Fi you certainly know your stuff. :)

Next, I had an interesting thought yesterday and I just had to put it up for discussion. I couldn't help but wonder if we as writers have tendencies toward a certain type of character when we write. Even if they're not the main characters. Do we always stick in the strong, silent hero? The dark and dangerous femme fatale? The sweet romantic? Or the proper gentleman?

Or do you go out of your way to change it up every time? Do you enjoy finding your way around a totally different personality? Well? Do you guys have character preferences? Do you have favorites? If so what are they? I want to hear from you guys!

Anyway, in the mean time I will leave you with two new songs that I love. Hope you guys love them too.




5 comments:

Catherine Stine said...

I always seem to have the protag's best friend be a funny sidekick. And my protag often has an artistic type of talent.

C.M. Villani said...

That's interesting Catherine. Just out of curiosity why an artistic talent? Because you have an artisitc hand or because you just like having that quality in your characters?

Both of my MC are female and they are the type
to stand up for what they believe it. I can't stand the faining flower type of female characters. Mine absolutely have to have a backbone. :)

Kelly Hashway said...

My characters are really different from one story to the next. For my middle grade manuscript I designed a character to fit my story. For my young adult manuscript I designed a story to fit my character. Both characters are likable but in very different way and for very different reasons. They are light years apart in personality. Even my minor characters each have their own qualities. I think I like to give each character his or her own little quirk to make them different.

Katrina said...

I have to admit, I usually start off thinking I know a character really well. As I write, I find I discover things about them that I had no idea they really had. It's disconcerting. In my Badger's Cross WIP, I had no idea that my MC would turn out to have suicidal tendencies. Took me a bit aback, I must say. :-)

However, I think my characters end up being quite diverse from each other. I don't want to be one of those writers who has stereotypical MC's.

C.M. Villani said...

Cat - My Characters do the same thing! (The impetuous little things!) They evolve before my eyes - whether I want them to or not. :)

Kelly - I can absolutely understand that. I think my question was more about archtypes than specific character usage. I would hate to think that any self- respecting writer would use the same characters over again (just changing their names) thru multiple stories. Unless they are very lazy. I was mostly just curiosity about people's use of archtypes in their stories.

Post a Comment