Honestly, we make it up
When we write characters who are real and raw and enduring, where have they come from?
This post began at a dinner party, in a conversation with a respected professor of English. It made me remember how my own English degree treated literature as a process of evolution, where one writer’s work influenced those that came after, and those that came after that. While obviously we all learn from each other, where does invention sit in this pattern? Especially the unique brilliance of some of the poets, dramatists and novelists who have given us our most enduring stories and characters?
While we must read in order to be able to write well, that’s not the whole story. Our fiction also comes from more mysterious and remarkable processes of curiosity, empathy, intuition and creation. We make it up - we don’t just process what’s been made before and serve it with new trappings. And where do we get those extra ingredients?
That’s what I’m talking about today on my blog. Where do you get ideas for characters? Why you must look at life, not just books.