“… the heart of any story is its characters. They deserve to be every bit as polished and well-crafted as your plot.”
I KNOW I’ve been a little derelict in posting the past couple of weeks, but darned if that day job of mine hasn’t interfered with my avocation!!! Nevertheless, I’ve THOUGHT often about The Write Groove and wished that I could post telepathically. Just think how cool that would be! As I perused an idea here and another there, I could send the creative thoughts to the telepathy hotline and BAM the clever reflections would ZAP themselves into a unique post.
Enough fantasizing – back to the point ALREADY!
Okay, a day or two ago as I was working on my WIP, I decided the mother should be a single parent, but I didn’t want an ex-husband OR Disneyland daddy around to complicate the plot any more than it already was. Nor did I think a deadbeat dad was needed because even when fathers abdicate their roles and responsibilities, they are still a big part of their families’ lives because of the baggage they leave behind.
So, presto-change-o, I killed off the poor dad in a trucking accident thus making his wife a widow and his children fatherless, BUT it was NO FAULT OF HIS OWN! So sure, there would be other problems, but feeling UNloved and abandoned by the papa wouldn’t be one of them.
No sooner had I buried the poor guy when I decided: “No, I think the main character’s basically happy personality and fun sense of humor may be too dramatically affected by the death of her parent – even 4 years after the accident.”
This means when I tackle the work tomorrow, a resurrection will occur: Daddy will be back! Now that’s going to produce a different set of challenges, but right now he will be a good father who is on the road a lot. The mother will still be one focus of friction for the MC, and that may be exacerbated because Mom is forced to shoulder most of the parenting responsibilities.
But who knows? All that could change by chapter 15.
Oh, what a rush to have such control over people’s lives! Wahahahaha!
Evil Author! A Flickr Image!
Writing My Life 
September 30, 2010 at 9:11 AM
I had to laugh. You are writing about my WIP, right now I brought him back but he moved to Alaska to become a bush pilot and his wife just couldn’t bring herself to live there. Now I have to address the feelings of the MC in emails and phone calls that are becoming strained because they don’t have things in common to discuss. Maybe it was better to kill him off…
October 3, 2010 at 12:56 PM
Decisions, decisions, decisions. Is there really anyone out there who thinks writing is easy???? This is the hardest writing I have ever done.
Author and friend, Carol Lynch Williams, told me that’s why so many novels are started and NEVER finished. I DON’T want mine to be part of that pile. Even if it’s never published, I want to finish it!
Thanks so much for your comments. I ALWAYS love them.
October 2, 2010 at 7:40 PM
Hmm, yeah, it seems like any way you go might have repercussions on your character’s personality. My dad was a trucker when I was younger. There were times when he was just a funny postcard to me. And even though he was a good dad, I think I had a lot of emotional issues because he wasn’t around. It is funny though, that any time we change our character’s life, we have to think about how it would change them. They totally are real people with real reactions to things (when we get it right :).
October 3, 2010 at 1:00 PM
I LOVE the idea of funny postcards! May I have MY trucker dad send my MC funny postcards? You will be in my “acknowledgements!” Seriously, it fits in with what I’m attempting to do.
Maybe someday we’ll end up in a writing group of sorts and you can read that part of my manuscript!
Let me know if I can steal this idea!!! And as always, thanks so much for your comments. They are very helpful!