This week: Have you chosen the right character? Edited by: Joy  
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“She is pure Alice in Wonderland, and her appearance and demeanor are a nicely judged mix of the Red Queen and a Flamingo.”
Truman Capote
“When most people are caught lying to the police, they cave in pretty quickly. Emma's response was to tell another lie. It might have been planted in her head by her brief, but even so that's not a common reaction.”
J.P. Delaney, The Girl Before
“I never got a good look at Dr. Tuttle's eyes. I suspect that they were crazy eyes, black and shiny, like a crow's. The pen she used was long and purple and had a purple feather at the end of it.”
Ottessa Moshfegh, My Year of Rest and Relaxation
“Mackay had just failed to tip the coat-check girl and was now blinking and working his arms into a too-small trench coat; he looked like a seagull trying to lift up out of an oil spill.”
Isabel Fonseca, Attachment
“She was not just a wild creature, she was a wounded creature.”
Iris Murdoch, The Message to the Planet
Hello, I am Joy , this week's drama editor. This issue is about being aware of who our characters really are.
Please, note that there are no rules in writing, but there are methods that work for most of us most of the time.
The ideas and suggestions in my articles and editorials have to do with those methods. You are always free to find your own way and alter the methods to your liking.
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Welcome to the Drama newsletter
Sometimes, an idea, a theme, or an event inspires you for a story. Then, at other times, you want to write a story about a person you know or have just met. In any one of these cases, there are questions to be answered before you even pick up a pen or sit in front of a keyboard. For that, to ask yourself three general questions may help.
 What kind of a story will it be as to its genre, historical, adventure, inspirational, mystery, horror, romance, etc., although at the beginning you might not have a distinct decision on that?
How many characters would the idea need, as to protagonist(s), antagonist(s), villain(s) or saint(s), and/or secondary people?
What about the theme, conflict, premise and a very rough outline.
As for the characterization, in the hands of a skillful writer, any kind of a character can go into any story. Yet, what if the story is your first in the genre and you don’t feel you have enough experience to write it?
Well, you have to start somewhere, don’t you? After all, maybe it is a good idea to have the character fit the plot or the genre. To do that, if you have a character first, you’ll need to test this character in several genres in five or ten micro-fiction pieces of about two-to-four paragraphs each, just to see how that character will perform in a situation within the genre.
A caveat here: Don’t knock the idea of putting characters in situations against their make-up, such as a priest in a brothel. You’ll never know what strong or comical scenes will pop up for you. The best scenes are when the characters are caught unawares, like a deer in the headlights-so to speak, such as Jane Eyre in Thornfield.
This tiny excerpt is from when Jane first hears the crazy first wife’s laugh from the attic. Of course, at this point she doesn’t know of a first wife or anything else.
“The laugh was repeated in its low, syllabic tone, and terminated in an odd murmur.
“Grace!” exclaimed Mrs. Fairfax.
I really did not expect any Grace to answer; for the laugh was as tragic, as preternatural a laugh as any I ever heard; and, but that it was high noon, and that no circumstance of ghostliness accompanied the curious cachinnation; but that neither scene nor season favoured fear, I should have been superstitiously afraid.”
If you have the plot or the general idea first, choose a character without much self-awareness, strong though he or she might be. This will ensure his/her change by the end of the story. Yet, more than anything, the character’s motivation in relation to all the elements of the story matters.
The next step could be to fill up your character sheets. Try to steer away from angelic heroes and overly rotten villains. Then, if you want your characters to gain flesh and blood, include several virtues and flaws in all of them. Plus, don’t neglect to observe their relationships to the settings in the story and the specific ways they speak and carry on a conversation. Are they big talkers or those who say a little but their words have depth? Do they have favorite phrases, a speech impediment, or a certain way of pronouncing words?
Then, ask yourself this question. How do I put this character in adversity? Should it be against another character, the setting, or a conviction? Some of the adverse situations could be--off the top of my head--a mysterious action or event, an accident, an abduction, a competition, a sudden invention or a realization, a sickness or madness, a crime, a supernatural occurrence, conflict with a deity, odd people, and mistaken judgments and their results.
Above all, through your planning, don’t let yourself think that what you have is an insignificant story, or not a big plot, or too big a plot for you to handle. If the character or some other element in it feels important enough to you, that story is important enough to write it.
Until next time! 
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 Enjoy!
The newly risen flowers had a soft, warm glow. The glow would intensify as the season progressed. By Summer they would be a painful glare. Everything was different now. The experiment went wrong, catastrophically wrong. What had been a habitable planet was now a death trap.
The Wizard grabbed his staff, stormed out the door, and headed for the graveyard. The unrest has been brewing for a while, now it was time to put a stop to it before it truly got out of hand. It seemed every other full moon or so the spirits got restless.
First it was the overturned headstones. Every one of them, upside down. It had to have taken some powerful magic to do that.
Then it was the fog, so thick you couldn’t move through it. Again, powerful magic.
Oi broke the surface of the water and gasped for air. The exercise was good for his lungs, though he'd occasionally wondered if one day he might not reach the surface in time. He cupped his hands and paddled to shore. The chilled water felt warmer now, but he knew the fire Sahrn had built would be welcome. His pupils were dilated from lust and darkness. Sahrn was Oi's life mate. She just didn't know it yet.
"She paced. Quick steps. She kneaded her hands in front of her, drawing in long breaths, exhaling short puffs. Soon. It should be soon.
A chill from the window sent goose bumps down her arm..."
So I walked up to her, she was sitting at a desk, writing up her papers for some English essay she had to finish up. I watched, memorizing her features for the last time, noticing the way she flicked back her long black hair when it fell into her eyes, and the absent-minded push of her glasses up the bridge of her nose. I watched her catch her lower lip between her teeth as she got stuck on a particular section of her writing, the way she tapped her pen restlessly on the notebook before blowing out a soft 'whoosh' of air, making a cute pout on lips I had kissed a million times over.
Damn. This was going to be harder than I thought.
“Your daughter called, Jack. She says to let you know, she and Alan will come to see you tomorrow. That will be nice won’t it?”
He didn’t want to see anyone, he hated that visitors sat in the room staring at the bed feeling sorry for him, making him feel he should be the one to put them at ease.
Reaching toward my titebag I suddenly realised my car keys were missing. They wasn't where I thought I'd put them. Where had I lost the car keys? I sat my bags on the car trunk. After sifting through the contents of my purse and my bag twice, I looked through the car window at the ignition. Nope. Not there.
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Tanis eyed all green that seemed to go on for miles. It looked to be all clover.
“So much for getting a four-leaved one for luck,” she sighed
Rays of light reflected off the pool of water in the middle of the cavern. From all directions, rocks jutted out like fingers reaching for some unknown object. Olivia stood in front of the portrait, puzzled as to what her mother ever liked about it.
“When did you get here?”
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EXT. The outside of Merseyside General Hospital, County Mayo, Ireland-Day
Pan the scene of an old, dilapidated hospital of red brick and stone walls, and the surrounding area which consists of a stone fence and some cows that look somewhat emaciated grazing in the background.
CUT TO:
INT. Inside the reception area-Day
Clerk MARIAN AMERSHAM is quietly typing at the computer. Next to her is DORIAN BOLLSING who is sitting reading the race paper, eating a crumpet. In the room is a series of chairs in random arrangement where some people are sitting, most of them elderly. DR. MILES GORIEY enters and looks around
MILES GORIEY
I say, who’s next in line? Do I have to send the bloody nurse to get anyone to look at today?
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Drama: March 31, 2021 Issue [#10680]
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