On Writing: Imaginary Friends

I have imaginary friends! There it goes, I say it aloud and I am proud!

I have many imaginary friends.

My first one was Natalie Hartt who was scared and confused about her past. I had to follow her around and ask her a million questions about her life and personality, but she stubbornly refused to cooperate. I sweated a lot in order to make her share her thoughts with me, but in the end I won! She was a pain in the ass though, I'm telling you.

Who said they are bad?

Today is all about the ‘bad’ characters. What do we feel about them?

Every story has at least one, every book and every legend. Those characters who are dark, cranky, mean and full of hatred, those are the backbone of our stories. How Cinderella would be like without an evil stepmother? How Aladdin would be like without Jafar? These stories and many more would be dull without the bad characters to spicy them up. And who doesn’t love a little pepper?

Make the relationships real

Well, the previous post got me thinking. In a book, apart from the story, there are many things that contribute in order to make it realistic and interesting for people to read. I will not talk about techniques or nice writing, but for the important part that the relationships are playing between the characters. So, let’s continue our talk but more generally this time. :)

Secondary Characters

Today’s subject is about book characters. We all know how it goes. The main character in a book is the one whose story we follow, and as writers, the one we try to establish and make the reader care about him or her. He/she is the core of the book we are creating or the book we are reading, but our focus should not be on the main character all the time. A story consists of more characters, which are playing an important role too.