[Link] When Characters Won't Leave

by Bobby Nash

Don’t you just hate it when guests don’t know when to leave?

I’ve had this same issue crop up with characters before and why not, eh? I mean, when I create and write characters, they become real to me. Sometimes too real. Eventually, they stop listening to me until finally, they start telling me what they’re going to do.

As a writer, this is a great thing.

It’s also a pain in the butt.

When my characters become real, they have character traits, foibles, and personalities just like real people. At the best of times, those character traits will elevate the story and gives those characters that added oomph! (that’s a technical term) that helps the reader connect to them. Have you ever fallen in love with a fictional character? I know I have. This is why.

Way back in the previous century, sometime in the late 1990’s, I was writing what would become my first published novel. It was called Evil Ways (Shameless plug #1: you can still find Evil Ways at your favorite on-line retailer). Evil Ways is a mix of thriller, mystery, and horror. I once described the book as “imagine if Die Hard’s John McClane found himself in a horror movie setting.” Sounds fun, right?

Evil Ways stars FBI Agent Harold Palmer and his brother, small-town newspaper reporter/owner Franklin Palmer (Shameless plug #2: Evil Intent is coming in 2021. It is also currently being released as a serialized novel at www.patreon.com/bobbynash). The brothers are on the trail of a killer while reconnected after many years apart.

As a newbie novelist (I had already been published with comic books and short stories), I set about creating a fictional town and county called Sommersville, Georgia (before I realized there was a real Summerville, Georgia. Oops!). The action took place in this fictional county. I needed a local cop to interact with the Palmer brothers and that was the first time I met Sommersville Sheriff Tom Myers and his deputies, Benjamin Dooley and Christopher Jackson. They were important to the story, but were not the main characters. As luck would have it, they all survived the novel, although not unscathed as I had put them through the wringer.

In all honesty, I never planned to write these characters or fictional county again.

What did I know, huh?

Read the full article: https://bobby-nash-news.blogspot.com/2020/12/when-characters-wont-leave.html