Thursday, August 12, 2010

Who is your favorite child?

On Writing Thursdays

Your characters are like your children, right?  There's no doubt in any one's mind that J.K R LOVED Harry and the rest of her magically cast.  Watching them grow up, I became highly attached to them, I can't image how hard it was for her to stop playing with them in her head.

I've written four books.  Two books were about the same characters.  I could go into the whole back story about how that cluster happened, but that's not what this post is about.  It's about characters.

In every book I write, I have characters I LUV.  99% of the time it's not the main characters.

Don't give me Buffy and Angel, give me Xander and Willow or better yet, Giles and Oz.
Don't give me Scully and Mulder, give me the 3 Lone Gunman.
Don't give me Bella and Edward give me Alice and Seth. <--yep Seth..my all time FAVORITE character in the twilight books, because he sits in a how full of vampires and eats lunch there.  4th book. Read it.

Minor characters is VITAL to the story and 78.974% of the time more interesting.  (BTW in case it doesn't need to be said, I'm making up my stats)
Not only do they have to deal with all the crap the main character has to deal with, because let's face it, they tend to be in the scenes when sh*t goes down anyway, but they also have to put up with the MAIN CHARACTER.

Let's face this fact too, the main character has some pretty deep flaws and can be kinda annoying.  Bella, I'm looking in your direction.  But I''m willing to put up with it because Alice likes her.  And I like Alice.

 The minor characters tend to have the best lines, call out the MC's when needed and sometimes do something so heroic you can't help but fall in love with them.

In my book, recently renamed, How to Pwn Noobz and Become a Rock Star, my favorite character is Dave.  I love him so much I gave him the house I grew up in.

On the other hand there are characters I don't know as well.  There's a character in How to Pwn Noobz, who has been around since the first draft of the first book and I still don't know him very well.   He's kinda like that friend you have that you're sort of indifferent to.  They have a car, and they don't really annoy you very much but you could take them or leave them.  For me that's Jason.  He's  important to the plot and needs to be in the story,  but I'm not as emotionally attached to him as others.

What about you?  Do you have favorite children/characters?  Do you have character's you don't know or like as much?

7 comments:

  1. I totally agree with this whole blog post (and you know I'd be the first to say "HEY!" if I didn't xD). The minor characters are always awesomer than the main characters. I wouldn't really say that Xander and Willow - especially Willow; most of Season Six was about her ^_~ - are minor characters. But Buffy's pretty cool... she was super annoying in Season Four, but before and after that she was cool. Except when she's beating up Spike, 'cuz that's not okay. What was I talking about again? Oh, yeah.

    I'm so happy xD I can't believe you took my advice and changed it to a "Z." I feel special now. xD

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  2. I love to love secondary characters too. I think it is because we often get to be more quirky with them. In a MC it might get too annoying with a catch phrase, for instance, but for a supporting character it can be great fun.

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  3. I have this one character in my book that's so off the wall, you have to love him. I haven't got him figured out yet in my mind because he's so weird but it's one of those relationships where I'm always surprised. I love it.
    CD

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  4. In The (Absolutely, Positively) True Adventures of a Religious Prophet, I love God and Michael the most. I think because I love the interactions between the two of them and how they communicate with each other like a couple but they're not a couple because God doesn't think it's "professional".

    In "Weather Girls" it's Carolina, the grandmother because she's brash and opinionated and not afraid to tell Abby when she's got her head stuck up her ass.

    And in the "Skeletons" novella, it's the main characters, Joe, Maggie, and Amos. The dynamic between the three of them is something I'm really proud of - these two police officers and a psychologist and how they kind of circle each other all the time.

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  5. I think you've inspired me to go back and reread my two novels ... I think you're really onto something with the fact that minor characters have to "put up with" the main characters and are often there for big events as well. Interesting ...

    Oh, and I LOVE Seth, too :-)

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  6. Minor characters are mighty awesome. Hello, Merry and Pippin! Just read The Sky is Everywhere and I wanted to get to know the brothers of the love interest, bigtime. Mmm hot older brothers in bands, every high school girl's first love.

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  7. All of the above. I recently created a character I loved but I had to kill him off for the benefit of the story. I had to wait a week before doing it - just so I was sure it was the right thing to do. lol.

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