Characters
I'm a person who really enjoys characters. I like getting to know the characters in books. If I don't like a character, I will not read the book at all which led to me not wanting to read Nora Roberts when I was in my late teens and major romantic phase. I also like creating characters. I just have one problem: making characters is easy enough, I just hate when characters come out of the blue in my head. I've had a few cases of this over the years. Sometimes, it's a sudden inspiration. Sometimes, I wake up in the morning and there's this new character entering a story I'm working on that I don't really remember putting there.
No, I'm not on drugs, but I keep my computer by my bed. Sometimes I wake up in the middle of the night and type or scribble a bit of something on a notepad and the idea is actually good. (Hint: most of those ideas are CRAP. I'm glad I'm not trying to turn them into book series; it'd be really embarrassing...)
One of my favorite of my many randomly created characters is Porfirio. He was born around 2008 when I was taking a creative writing class at Southern State Community College. I'm not sure where he came from or why my brain came up with him, but I think he may be the masculine expression of my natural tendency toward insanity... or maybe he's just a character my brain came up with because I was taking a creative writing course and I had writer's block.
One thing you should know, most of my randomly created characters will never be main characters. I don't know why, they just always strike me as tertiary characters who would move the main characters around like little pawns.
If you know me personally, you'll know that Porfirio is between six and seven feet tall (around two meters) with purple eyes, clothes, bowtie and top hat. His hair may be purple as well or acid green. Really, that depends on how he feels. And he has the freakish ability to appear and disappear at will wherever he chooses... also he can make doors appear that go anywhere. Then there's his cafe, the Lilac Cafe which is basically a spacial expansion of him where people meet and gather between universes. The Lilac Cafe is decorated almost entirely in purple with random splashes of magenta (in honor of the six-armes barrista, Magenta). Don't overthink all of this, it's pretty confusing and out of this world... the way it should be.
I swear to God that I wasn't on drugs when this character popped into my head. I would swear on a Bible if it were presented to me. I promise.
However, I did occasionally take certain steroids for asthma as a child and I've heard that doing such a thing can have a strange effect on one's brain chemistry.
Whenever I write, Porfirio tries to find a way to pop in... or, rather, if I'm working on a project, my brain will try to incorporate Porfirio into the story for reasons my subconscious mind hasn't really explained to my conscious mind yet. That's why I'm telling you, poor reader. Because I'm not going to fight it anymore. My brain wants a 6 1/2-foot-tall freak in my stories, who am I to argue with it?
As a sign of throwing in the towel, the blog I'm thinking of working on will be about a girl who is forced through a series of extremely unlikely circumstances to move into the apartment above Porfirio's cafe. So, the extradimensional space acquires an apartment (called Apartment Seven because these things don't have to make sense) on the second floor. Oh yeah, and the character is forced to have a roommate, another random character that popped in my head one day a year or two ago that I keep ignoring who goes by the name of Iphigenia Potts... or Genie.
But... characters, characters, characters... they're kind of the bane of my existance and one of the main reasons I read all rolled into one. I'm not sure why I like character so much when half the time I feel like I do so badly with real, existing people. One of my favorite things about the Discworld Series by Terry Pratchett is that he has such a colorful a diversified cast of characters. True, he's been writing these characters since the 1970s so Mr. Pratchett has had time to build and create each and every unique one from Rincewind the Wizzard to Granny Weatherwax to Moist Von Lipwig and everyone in between. One of my least favorite things about reading most romance novels is that the characters are so repetitive. Especially with some authors, the female protagonists are all supposed to be different, but it never comes off that way to me. They just sound like the same cookie-cutter thing... Then again I feel that way about a lot of Stephen King protagonists too...
Huh.
I'm terrified of doing that with my writing actually. I try to diversify the main characters, but I'm still at a stage in writing where my tertiary characters tend to be more interesting than my main characters. I'll just have to keep writing and living life until I'm on Terry Pratchett's level.
Here's to you, Pterry!
No, I'm not on drugs, but I keep my computer by my bed. Sometimes I wake up in the middle of the night and type or scribble a bit of something on a notepad and the idea is actually good. (Hint: most of those ideas are CRAP. I'm glad I'm not trying to turn them into book series; it'd be really embarrassing...)
One of my favorite of my many randomly created characters is Porfirio. He was born around 2008 when I was taking a creative writing class at Southern State Community College. I'm not sure where he came from or why my brain came up with him, but I think he may be the masculine expression of my natural tendency toward insanity... or maybe he's just a character my brain came up with because I was taking a creative writing course and I had writer's block.
One thing you should know, most of my randomly created characters will never be main characters. I don't know why, they just always strike me as tertiary characters who would move the main characters around like little pawns.
If you know me personally, you'll know that Porfirio is between six and seven feet tall (around two meters) with purple eyes, clothes, bowtie and top hat. His hair may be purple as well or acid green. Really, that depends on how he feels. And he has the freakish ability to appear and disappear at will wherever he chooses... also he can make doors appear that go anywhere. Then there's his cafe, the Lilac Cafe which is basically a spacial expansion of him where people meet and gather between universes. The Lilac Cafe is decorated almost entirely in purple with random splashes of magenta (in honor of the six-armes barrista, Magenta). Don't overthink all of this, it's pretty confusing and out of this world... the way it should be.
I swear to God that I wasn't on drugs when this character popped into my head. I would swear on a Bible if it were presented to me. I promise.
However, I did occasionally take certain steroids for asthma as a child and I've heard that doing such a thing can have a strange effect on one's brain chemistry.
Whenever I write, Porfirio tries to find a way to pop in... or, rather, if I'm working on a project, my brain will try to incorporate Porfirio into the story for reasons my subconscious mind hasn't really explained to my conscious mind yet. That's why I'm telling you, poor reader. Because I'm not going to fight it anymore. My brain wants a 6 1/2-foot-tall freak in my stories, who am I to argue with it?
As a sign of throwing in the towel, the blog I'm thinking of working on will be about a girl who is forced through a series of extremely unlikely circumstances to move into the apartment above Porfirio's cafe. So, the extradimensional space acquires an apartment (called Apartment Seven because these things don't have to make sense) on the second floor. Oh yeah, and the character is forced to have a roommate, another random character that popped in my head one day a year or two ago that I keep ignoring who goes by the name of Iphigenia Potts... or Genie.
But... characters, characters, characters... they're kind of the bane of my existance and one of the main reasons I read all rolled into one. I'm not sure why I like character so much when half the time I feel like I do so badly with real, existing people. One of my favorite things about the Discworld Series by Terry Pratchett is that he has such a colorful a diversified cast of characters. True, he's been writing these characters since the 1970s so Mr. Pratchett has had time to build and create each and every unique one from Rincewind the Wizzard to Granny Weatherwax to Moist Von Lipwig and everyone in between. One of my least favorite things about reading most romance novels is that the characters are so repetitive. Especially with some authors, the female protagonists are all supposed to be different, but it never comes off that way to me. They just sound like the same cookie-cutter thing... Then again I feel that way about a lot of Stephen King protagonists too...
Huh.
I'm terrified of doing that with my writing actually. I try to diversify the main characters, but I'm still at a stage in writing where my tertiary characters tend to be more interesting than my main characters. I'll just have to keep writing and living life until I'm on Terry Pratchett's level.
Here's to you, Pterry!
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