{"id":554,"date":"2011-05-17T12:41:27","date_gmt":"2011-05-17T17:41:27","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.ajaalto.com\/?p=554"},"modified":"2011-05-17T13:03:49","modified_gmt":"2011-05-17T18:03:49","slug":"theyre-all-there-under-your-skin","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.ajaalto.com\/?p=554","title":{"rendered":"They’re All There (Under Your Skin)"},"content":{"rendered":"

“The humour made Agent Chapel\u2019s eyes intense in a way I\u2019d never seen before. Maybe part of\u00a0him had loosened with the removal of his tie. His top button was still firmly fastened, but baby steps, right? Already I trusted him less to fix my computer.” <\/em>–From “Touched”, Book One of the Marnie Baranuik Chronicles.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Any writer will tell you, character development is not only crucial, it’s also a fuckboat loaded to the gunwales with barrels of\u00a0undistilled whoopie!\u00a0(side note:<\/em> I hear\u00a0one can acquire\u00a0tickets to the fuckboat for a Sunday afternoon sweep up the Welland Canal.\u00a0Miiiiiight want to glance at\u00a0THAT itinerary before signing up.) <\/em>Even the most minor<\/strong> character in your story–be\u00a0it a short story,\u00a0novella or\u00a0a novel–deserves the\u00a0conscientious sweep of his or her creator’s attention.\u00a0 Hey, that’s you! Why are you a writer, again? Right: you enjoy sweating from the eyeballs, pulling your hair out one strand at a time, peeling your face back\u00a0a la\u00a0Poltergeist,\u00a0and talking to canned\u00a0salmon in Aisle 4 of the grocery store\u00a0while the stock boy with the cowlick gives<\/strong> you the crook-eye. Also: you might be\u00a0borderline insane. Glad we’re in the same boat, here. Hold on …\u00a0is this boat\u00a0sailing toward <\/em>the Canal?\u00a0*panicked blink*\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n

(The author apologizes for being\u00a0distracted by the\u00a0prospect of screwing strangers on a boat and talking to canned fish …\u00a0which<\/strong> is clearly ridiculous, as\u00a0she doesn’t\u00a0even like<\/em>\u00a0salmon)<\/strong><\/p>\n

If you’re going to put a person on the page (and make no mistake about it, unless you’re writing unpolished turds, you should be\u00a0putting a person<\/em> on\u00a0the page) does that person not deserve moulding, fleshing, and sensitivity–mindful, loving strokes of the artist’s brush? That rough-hewn character, newly\u00a0fashioned one day by the<\/strong> casual toss of your writerly hands, can only go as far as you take them. If you\u00a0fling him in there and let him gamble about raw and unseasoned, he will be 2 dimensional …\u00a0worse yet, he\u00a0will come back to haunt you in the wee hours of the night, possibly wearing a ski mask (<\/strong>but not if you were<\/strong> so<\/strong>\u00a0thoughtless as to never describe clothing, then he’s a naked angry character, and those are the worst),<\/strong><\/em> possibly driving your bedsheets up the crack of your ass in the most<\/strong> frightening cotton-to-ass\u00a0disaster in history. No? OK, maybe he’ll just flounder around making your story crappy. But, which is worse?<\/strong><\/p>\n

Sacrifice a few hours to the quiet contemplation of one of your underfed characters this week …\u00a0and yes I did say hours.\u00a0Take\u00a0your dog\u00a0for a walk, but take your character with you. Do your shopping, and\u00a0be cognizant of\u00a0your character’s\u00a0suggestions. (<\/strong>Would Agent Chapel eat bananas? I’m thinking a big ole yes! I hate bananas–what am I<\/strong> gonna do with three bunches? *shrugs and tosses them in her cart anyway*<\/strong><\/em>) Heed their wishes,\u00a0their desires (oh yes, those too<\/em>), listen to the quiet whisper of their requests. Why not let them write themselves?\u00a0Sure beats folding them in two and cramming\u00a0them around your\u00a0designs. You’ll know when you get it wrong, because if you’ve trained yourself to hear them, they’ll tell you. The old saying goes, “give them an inch and they’ll take a mile”, but oh boy does that work in our favour, fellow writers, when it comes to character<\/strong> creation.\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n

*offers a hand, palm up, to her imagination* Does he swagger when he approaches, or is he a no-nonsense strutter? Is he accustomed to walking the halls of a court house, shoulders back, chin up, eyes scanning for the important people to whom he ought to nod?\u00a0Does he\u00a0hunker down behind a desk, massaging the fingers he uses more than any other part of his body? Does he dance like Fred Astaire in sock feet when he thinks no one’s watching, late at night, in\u00a0the pale<\/strong> glow\u00a0of the open fridge, while he’s trying to decide on a mixer for his rye, crooning beneath his breath? I sure hope so, cuz that’s friggin’ adorable, and makes me wanna squeeze his tushie. *gives a special someone the fluttery-eyelash routine, hoping she looks seductive, and not so much like she has a scratch on her<\/strong> cornea*<\/strong><\/p>\n

So give your character an inch; when he takes that mile, chase him down the street with a pen and paper (don’t mind your neighbour’s\u00a0goggling stares–that just means you’re winning! Wheeee!)<\/em>\u00a0and mark down every detail. His\u00a0unexpected flights of fancy.\u00a0\u00a0Her grim determination. His unfortunate but familiar whinny of a laugh. The way her fingers never stop moving, even when they’re just making busy work of the empty gum wrapper in her pocket.\u00a0 The aged-to-yellow bruise on his chin. It’s a lot more work, I will admit, and it\u00a0tends to encourage\u00a0your friends to discuss<\/strong> the pros and cons of institutionalizing you. And your work will be so much richer for it.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Even if you do <\/em>have to publish from the Funny Farm<\/strong>.<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/embed><\/object><\/p>\n

(AJ Aalto is the author of Touched, Book One of the Marnie Baranuik Chronicles, launching summer 2011, and is currently wrangling toward completing the last draft of Death Rejoices, Book Two of the same series.\u00a0Please note: AJ Aalto\u00a0has never actually <\/em>seen the fuckboat, but\u00a0is confident that\u00a0it exists, if only on the fetid\u00a0sludge\u00a0pool\u00a0of her imagination.)<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

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“The humour made Agent Chapel\u2019s eyes intense in a way I\u2019d never seen before. Maybe part of\u00a0him had loosened with the removal of his tie. His top button was still firmly fastened, but baby steps, right? Already I trusted him less to fix my computer.” –From “Touched”, Book One of the Marnie Baranuik Chronicles. Any […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-554","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-writing"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.ajaalto.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/554"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.ajaalto.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.ajaalto.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.ajaalto.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.ajaalto.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=554"}],"version-history":[{"count":19,"href":"http:\/\/www.ajaalto.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/554\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":571,"href":"http:\/\/www.ajaalto.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/554\/revisions\/571"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.ajaalto.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=554"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.ajaalto.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=554"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.ajaalto.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=554"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}