Writing.Com General Discussion

Thanks to one of James Frey's books on fiction writing, I picked up the habit of sitting my characters down and making them write about themselves, in their own voice and words. It is incredibly useful, and sometimes I will repeat the process with the character a few times as I write the rough draft of the story, to sort things out as the story evolves the characters.

Here is an example from a modern fantasy story.

My name is Casey Tanner. Most of the kids at school call me “Coach” instead of “Ms. Tanner”, and I have to admit, I like that. Even the human kids who only know me as their government teacher call me that, even though I stopped coaching soccer before they were old enough for high school.

The Human kids usually don’t know who’s in the Nocturnal faculty, but they hear the Terrestrial kids calling me “Coach”. That could be why the title stays with me. Or it could be because I do still help out with a local Women’s U17 club on the weekends. A couple human girls on that team go to Lorenz. Anyway, it’s a lot less prissy than being “Ms. Tanner”. More personal. So I like being “Coach”.

I’m the head Field Test coach for Lorenz High School. I had to turn the soccer team over to a human coach when I got that position. I’m also assistant coach on the Street Test team. Brad Weiss, the Street Test head coach, doesn’t do cavalry, so I think my main reason for being on his staff is my dragon. The head of the Skill Trials squad is the flying instructor at Lorenz, so he can’t always be on hand as a safety marshal at Test Matches.

Some human teachers tell me they don’t get it; I’m too tiny to be an athlete. That pisses me off a little, but I just grin and tell them I was a terror on my college team as a sweeper (it's true!). They look at all 5’-0” and 98 pounds of me and just shake their head.

I get why they say it. I really do. I have this little chin and heart-shaped face that just screams “save me”. I have a dragon tattoo from my old days in the Black Dragon Company on my shoulder blade that looks like a fragile girl’s futile attempt to look tough instead of the badge of honor that it is. I wear baggy athletic clothes because I hate getting ogled, and I just make myself look even smaller that way.

But the sweeper thing is no lie. After I dropped out of college on my first try, I Hunted with the BDC for a while. When I went back to school, I was ten years older than everyone else and still walked on to the soccer squad. As a starter.

Yeah, I know. I it isn’t really fair for a Terrestrial to play human sports, but my lack of size kind of offsets that, I think. In Hunting, I could never be Infantry. I ride a dragon because it’s the safest place for the girl who is the smallest adult Terrestrial I've ever heard of.

She's a supporting character, so I only wrote that much. A main character would get a much longer self-description. But this gives you an idea.

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Regards,
Eric Fretheim

"It is perfectly okay to write garbage-- as long as you edit brilliantly." ~C.J. Cherryh

"Success is the ability to go from failure to failure without losing your enthusiasm." ~Winston Churchill