Who is Your Character When Nobody’s Watching?

I’m sure it comes as no surprise that a person’s public face is not the same as who they are in private. The same should hold true for characters in fiction. Merciless crime-fighters are loving parents and spouses when in the comfort of their own homes. The bubbly socialite may prefer to curl up on the couch with a glass of red and a movie when they’re not out making friends with strangers. Often the starkest contrast between the public and private spheres (to borrow the terms from last year’s History class) is when a character is alone with his or her love interest.

A usually loud and brash character may become quiet and gentle, or a closed-off character may become cuddly and affectionate. I myself am a bit of the latter, as I’ve noticed in the past few days when with my boyfriend. The growth of a relationship in my own life has led to me thinking deeper about my characters’ relationships, how pre-existing personality traits will behave when combined with complimenting or clashing traits belonging to the love interest.

Darian, the protagonist of Coldfire (a novel which is also known as my incredibly ill-tempered yet lovable baby), is generally sarcastic and composed when around other people, but due to personal problems is rarely as controlled when alone. As his relationship with his love interest (Valora) grows, I need to think about how his private self is going to manifest when with her. As it currently stands, Darian is often not himself when around her. His sharp tongue loses its edge and he regularly feels wrong-footed. Valora is also incredibly sexual and physical while Darian is more of a thinker. Will he temper her, or will she drag him kicking and screaming out of his barbed shell?

It pays to put some thought into your character’s public and private personas, as they become more rounded and fascinating for it. Superheroes are the most extreme version of a separation between the two. Superman is brave and noble when he dons the underwear and tights, but he always the bespectacled, awkward Clark Kent during his off hours. So who is your character when nobody is watching? Who are they when the only person is watching is, quite often, the most important person in his or her life?

What is Your Most Vivid Teenage Memory?

A lot of YA fiction writers choose to write YA because of how vivid and new everything is to teenagers, how every minor letdown is the possible End of the World as We Know It. Exams will make or break you life, as will asking out that person you’ve liked for weeks. Many writers, myself included, have very defined memories of their adolescence. Tell us a particularly vivid one of yours in the comments if you like so I don’t feel like a complete fool sharing mine.

Here’s mine, originally posted on She Writes in the comments there:

I’m only just out of high school, so a lot of memories are pretty fresh for me. I was involved in every school musical for the entirety of my six years there (Australian school system). One year, when I was sixteen, our school put on a production of Beauty and the Beast. I was Cogsworth. Since I’m a rather petite female, the rented costume was slightly too big for me and I didn’t have the gut to force it into the box-like shape it was supposed to be, leaving it as a slightly squashed cowbell shape. In one particular scene I have to walk on stage with a turning key in my back. The thing was flimsy, made of cardboard covered in golden material and beads on the side. Because of my lacking height, it often fell out of the hole in my back, which had to be tied around my waist before I put the cowbell suit on over my head.

Most of the time, the turning key stayed in place well enough as long as I was careful with it. One performance, though, things didn’t go quite to plan. In this particular scene, Cogsworth is freaking out over discovering the key and is flailing around in circles trying to get a look at it while Lumiere the candlestick tries to calm him down. As I turned, as I had for a number of shows, the key popped out and clunked onto the floor. I had to improvise intense pain and put the thing back in before I could continue with the scene. Luckily, the girl playing Lumiere (we didn’t have many boys) was able to improvise with me with a bit of, “Are you all right?” Then we continued as normal.

But, of course, the key was not done with its machinations. During the final fight scene, Cogsworth screams “TALLY HO!” and starts a swordfight with two attackers. My line was a cue for all hell to break loose, essentially. Another show, after the Show of the Painful Key had occurred, I leapt forward, screaming my line (or as close to screaming as a British male played by a female can get). As I pulled my sword out from my pendulum compartment, I heard a thud and looked down to find the key had fallen out again. So I picked the thing up and used it similar to a scabbard being used to block attacks.

After that, we wrapped bubble wrap around the end of the key that the audience wasn’t supposed to see. It didn’t fall out again. Funny how one small object can cause so much trouble.

And for everyone’s amusement, here’s a picture of me as Cogsworth:

What Book Made You Want To Become A Writer?

This is a blogging prompt from Duolit, a two-person writing team who provide information about self-publishing, although a lot of their information is helpful for writers of all stripes.

I wrote a little as a kid but didn’t read a lot. Teachers just couldn’t get a handle on my tastes, which leaned more towards fantasy than the ridiculous “realistic” stories they tried to shove down my throat. I was more interested in magic and unicorns and princesses than about little boys who went on a journey to find their missing bikes. Reading and writing, while they interested me, were more of a curiosity than a real hobby. I still preferred to play elaborate make-believe games with friends rather than write the stories in my head.

And then, Harry Potter happened. The first movie came out when I was eight and I immediately turned my attention to the books. At this time, only the first four were out, but they sparked an insatiable thirst for the written word that to this day has not ceased. My mother dutifully lined up for hours on the release day of Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix, which was quite possibly my favourite of the books released up to that point. Harry’s struggles with a hostile learning environment, a government and media determined to discredit him, and his own psyche working against him made for a compelling story when Rowling wove in the magic.

Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix was the book that really inspired me to write. My first lengthy works were terrible fanfictions that I wrote a few chapters in before abandoning. Keeping with the pattern of earlier years, the best parts of the story remained in my head. I just couldn’t force them onto the page. When I was about twelve, I started writing a particular fic with an original character stepping in as Harry’s love interest. I never completed the story, but I did come away from it with new knowledge and a lively character I couldn’t stop thinking about.

My brush with the Harry Potter fanfic community taught me some important aspects of writing, like how to correctly write dialogue and the importance of smooth transitioning as to not give the reader whiplash. Writing fanfiction, with the aid of a few moderators on the fanfic website I had chosen specifically for its guidelines, in essence, taught me how to write.

Later, when I was fifteen, I took that original character from my abandoned fanfiction and began to write my own story. Although I’m still working on it now (it’s the one I just had to start over), this book has me in a vice-like grip. I have to finish it, and I will. I’ve come too far to give up now.

So, that’s my story. What about yours?