Character Qualities

I’ve heard it said that writers are different. We see things in a way most people don’t. One of the Ten Commandments for Authors is thou shall not be kind to your characters. I struggle with that one sometimes. After all, I like most of my characters. In real life, we’d never think of sending someone sailing off a cliff, shooting them in the leg, or turning an angry bull on them, but that’s what we writers do on a daily basis. And it’s only one example of how different we are.

Artists study faces and scenes to pick up on the little details they want to create. My sister loved drawing from the time she was small. She notices the tiniest details about things. Writing is kind of like that. I never would have thought so until I became a writer.

Now I notice things I never saw before, think of things in ways I never would have considered before I wrote that first manuscript. Hand me a rose and I see what everyone else sees but I also look deeper. To recreate that flower in a story I need to be able to show my reader what I’m seeing. What does it look like? Feel like? Smell like? What is the exact shade of its color?

In the last week I’ve been given a couple of wonderful opportunities to practice those newfound skills. In two very different ways.

 The first chance came when I was presented with a group of men. Now these weren’t just any men. Every last one of them had the potential to make it into one of my manuscripts, either as a hero or as a secondary character. I easily picked out the secondary characters, not giving them all that much attention, after all those characters are pretty easy to write into a story. And they can look any way you want, act in pretty much any manner. But the heroes? Now they have to be the stuff dreams are made of.

No matter their build or height, they have to be strong and morally upright. They have to respect others, love the Lord, and care for women and children. And standing before me was a couple of perfect examples.

So I did what any writer would, right? I studied them. Watched their mannerisms, the way they interacted with others. Put together personalities based on what I saw in a short amount of time. One was a loner, stayed on the edge of the group, strong, silent and intriguing. The other one a confident man that neither seeks attention nor turns away from it.

Was I right in my assessment of these men? Who knows? I did not know them, don’t even know their names.

As for that other chance to pick up on things that most people wouldn’t pay more than a passing fancy to…people are like spices. I overheard a conversation on this very topic. And guess what? Those women were right. Some people are salt, others cayenne pepper.

My daughter and I ran through our family members matching their personalities to spices. Mild, easy going people got labeled as salt. Headstrong, hard to handle people became cayenne pepper. The ones in the middle became garlic powder, lemon zest, and dill.

Which spice are you? Which one do you think I am?