L is for Love, Life, Lust!

Where do I begin? By limiting this topic for starters. (Laughs out loud.) My characters have to fight for life, to love and live in my book.

If I didn’t love my character I would soon write him/her off. I did that last summer kill somebody off! And as I walked down to the bottom of the garden to sit in the last of the evening sunshine, to relax I realised what an idiot I had been in committing this gross act of self sabotage! With one single flourish of my pen I had successfully stopped my story dead in its tracks, the wrong tracks! The glass of wine was left behind on the garden table. I had to go back indoors and rewrite the ending of that story. Killing him off wasn’t pertinent to rest of my plot. I needed to bring him back to life. And with another flourish of the pen he breathed again to fight another battle… Colin was too interesting and I wanted to know how he far he would go to achieve his happiness.

All of my characters lust after somebody or something, it’s human to err isn’t it? I hope my characters end up reasonably well balanced, except when I need then to become unbalanced, to move the story to a different level.

I do believe that the more flawed a character is the more intersting he/she will become to the reader. My men lust after power and women and my women – each has to have her own ‘lust’ – be it money, fame, adoration, or power and finally sex. If one character had all of these ambitions, she or he would become quite formidable, but fascinating to write about.

Getting inside the head and under the skin of each character to develop the voice has happened gradually and I have found this fascinating as the character goes from two dimensional to three dimensional. I’m learning all the time. I find the situation and the story often resolve the conflict in my head as to what my characters next move or decision might be and how this will impact the final outcome. The moment I get the right response I’m off. Nothing seems to stop the flow, except when I commit a single act of high treason, killing off a main character.

Who do I love?

What do I live for?

What do I lust after?

Now that would be telling, wouldn’t it? However I am hoping that from this blog it may or may not become evident. One has to maintain an air of mystery? Doesn’t one? My wish for you personally is to ‘embrace harmony’ but not necessarily in your characters lives.