Know Your Characters

The other evening I was doing some research on owls (don’t ask why), and I came across an interesting question someone had posted: How do you write the sound an owl makes? I thought the answer would have been simple: Hoot…such as The Hoot of an Owl.

I was wrong. There were at least half a dozen ways to write an owl sound, aside from the obvious “hoot”. Hmmm, interesting. And that started me thinking about how many ways to write a scene or an emotion or a reaction.

How do you write about someone who’s had their heart broken? So many ways, but it depends on your character. A sixteen-year-old who has just been dumped by her boyfriend of three months is likely going to have quite the dramatic reaction. Probably with lots of tears and drama and throwing herself across her bed with promises that she’ll never fall in love again. Typical and probably stereotypical but also most likely accurate. Again, depends on your character.

Now take a forty-year-old man whose wife of twenty-five years just told him she that she wants a divorce so she can marry her personal trainer. I doubt he’s going to throw himself across the bed in tears, but hey, it could happen. Your character might just go out and get drunk. He might go for the revenge route and try to cut the wife off financially. How would your character react?

The bottom line is this: know your character and don’t make their actions or reactions out of touch with the person you’ve built through your writing. You can write the most heart-wrenching scene when someone has lost their true love, but if it doesn’t fit your character it will never work.

Happy writing until next time!

Dee

Never Broken, An Unacceptable Truth, Martinis with Mom and Martinis at the Ranch are available on Amazon, Kindle, IBooks and Amazon Paperback Books. 

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