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| Seuss & Muffin on alert |
The other cat was actually born on the floor of the kids’
bathroom. He’s grown up with our family. Our house is a safe and happy universe—full
of food on demand and large hairless cats, clearly put here to do his bidding.
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| My cuteness is irresistible! |
“But I want to walk on the counters!”
“I want to eat that butter!”
“I’m hungry NOW!”
“I want to eat that butter!”
“I’m hungry NOW!”
Sometimes, I think my cats represent a real life psychology
experiment: “Effects of early childhood on personality.”
This got me thinking about my characters. I spend a lot of time working out what’s going on with them within the time frame of a particular story,
but I realized, I didn’t always take time to understand their childhoods.
So one day, when I was feeling kind of stumped, (procrastinating? Nooooo,
not me!) I decided to imagine the main character's childhoods in detail. Who held them as
a baby? What food did they eat? Turns out, the image I found most useful was picturing
them around the age of 6 or 7, the age when you first start to have strong memories.
I personally think that’s when your sense of the world gets firmed up.
.JPG) |
| Muffin supervising productivity. |
I got some really interesting details out of that bit of procrastination. And it helped get me over the hump. (Off the stump?)
Anyone else ever tried imagining a character’s childhood? What's your go-to childhood image--a toy? A food? What age do you see when you think of childhood?
9 comments:
Great blog. I think a lot about my characters but never went that far back. By George! I'm going to try it.
Love the kitties! We rescued two a few years ago, then two more this past summer. Never thought I'd be a 4-cat household. Then again, I never thought I'd have 3 kids either. LOL
I have a masters in Counseling, so I can't seem to resist delving into my characters' childhoods. The more I write, the more I firm up my view that parents, teachers, and childhood influences play a strong role in who/what a person becomes. (And maybe that's why writing villains is so interesting to me, too?)
Great post!
Fabulous post, Jules!
Thanks guys!
Yeah, Anne Marie, I know what you mean. How did we end up with 2 cats? We're dog people!
And I find the childhood thing really helps with villains. I seem to have loads of images of my central characters' childhoods. But struggle with the baddies.
Getting a mental imagine of my antagonist as a kid makes me so much more empathetic.
Interesting post -- I'm with you, I need to work harder on understanding my villains/ antagonists than I do on the the heroes. But it's worth taking the time to figure them out.
Great post Julie!
Childhood is where it's at! You don't know what happened as kid you don't know your characters.
Yeah, I think you're right, Rita. Finally getting the hang of this writing thing. :)
Marcelle, you have such interesting antagonists! I'm surprised it's something that doesn't come easy!
Interesting idea!
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