More Help With Characterization

A few useful and different questions to ask when developing your characters:

·       What did your character’s mother tell her/him never to do? What happened when he/she did it anyway, and he/she will.

·       Tell about a secret your character did not keep and why? What happened? Regrets?

·       What is your character’s biggest regret? What does he/or she not regret one ioda?

·       Describe the first time he/she was ever felt humiliated?

·       What would be the theme of your character’s life?

·       What inanimate object is your character attached to and why?

·       If your character found out he/she only had one month to live what would he/she do with this time? What would he absolute not do?

·       What is a guilty pleasure for your character?

·       Is there a reason your character is glad a prayer wasn’t answered. Or was it and that wasn’t such a good thing?

·       Give an eulogy about your character.

·       What out-of-character thing would your character do. What would he never, absolutely ever, do?

·       What are the rumors going round about your character? People will talk. Are they true? If not, how did they get started?

·       What animal would describe your character? (I mentioned before that Anson Mount from Hell on Wheels used this method to help him with his character. He thought a horse and the way a horse thinks and reacts worked for visualizing his character.) Or tree a la Barbara Walters?

·       Your character is lost or stuck somewhere. What does he do? Wonder if he’s stuck with someone he loves? Someone he hates? Someone he doesn’t know?

·       What would your character do if he needed to apologize? Do it? Avoid it? Never apologize? How would he? What reasons would he or not?

·       What is your character’s phobia or fear. Like Indiana Jones’ fear of snakes, we all have things we do not like, will not do.

Blood Memory? Or Writer's Mind?

The West, Western movies, Western books have more than the characters that people them that I love. The moral code of the West, the unforgettable characters in the old Western movies and books tap into something deeply ingrained in me, but the landscape washes another facet over me, too. A recognition, emotion, peace.

Maybe, it is in my DNA. I wonder, is it true about the theory of blood memory—Wikipedia describes blood memory as memory stored in the cells; or genetic makeup of one’s body. (Also called historical memory or heart memory.) It is why something calls to us without explanation., a déjà vu, of sorts, a recognition, that goes deeper, it feels.

Did my ancestors ranch, farm, love horses, shoot guns and rifles? Were they steeped in the smell of leather, manure, sweaty horses, hay? Are the stories that crop up in my head based on some deep memory in the sinew of my body, or soul?

I like to think so. I like to think the stories I hear in my head are whispers in my blood. Maybe, not of my own ancestors stories, but stories they witnessed, gossip they heard. I like to think there is a reason why I see a scene so clearly, it’s hard to tell whether it is serving memory or imagination.

What other explanation could there be? Why else do I see the scene so clearly, hear the voices, know the characters?

I like to think emotional memory holds sway in my stories. Emotional connection adds a layer to my experience as a writer. How do you explain that hush I heard standing at the top of Virginia City, Nevada looking down through series of cemeteries there, or the feeling of coming home as I look out across the lines of the Uintah Mountains? That certainty I’ve seen that tool, that brooch, that dress somewhere else, some other place, or time.

Maybe, it is only imagination, Maybe, just a writer’s mind. I wonder.

How cruelly sweet are the echoes that start
When meory plays an old tune on the heart. -Eliza Cook

Maybe,that explains it. Maybe, these stories are only echoes coming back at me.

The leaves of memory seemed to make

A mournful rustling in the dark.

                                    -Henry Wadsworth Longfellow