Pages

Saturday, August 25, 2012

Giving Life To the Character I Hate by guest author



So, in The Vampire Hunter’s Daughter… I wrote about Trevor, Chloe’s father. I wrote the scenes and sent them to the editor. She sent it back and told me “This doesn’t work for me.” She told me that Trevor was flat, and that I needed to give him some more depth.

Basically, she was saying that we need to give the readers a reason to like him.

Honestly, I had the hardest time with this because I literally hated the guy. You, the audience, don’t know his background yet, the true terrible being that he is. But, I know these things. Because I knew these things, I found it hard to write about him.

So. I made myself go back over the manuscript over and over again. Hoping that I could give this guy some kind of reason for Y’all to like him. I know that sounds strange, that he is the bad guy and you are suppose to like him, but think about it, in any book you read you will end up feeling some sort of emotion for the bad guy, just like you do for the good guys.

What it finally took, was me  having to do some serious character development and giving him a rather complicated back story. Most of the back story I kept to myself, it’s not in the book…but me knowing is all that really mattered. Since I knew what happened to him in the past, even though it wasn’t told in detail, it gave me the emotion I needed to bring this guy to life.

Really… this was one of the best lessons in character development for me. I learned a lot, thanks to my editors.

So , that is how I gave life to a character I hated.

About the author:  
Jennifer Malone Wright resides in the beautiful mountains of northern Idaho with her husband and five children. Between the craziness of taking care of her children, whose ages range from fourteen all the way down to six months, and being a homemaker, Jennifer has little time left for herself. The time she does have left, usually leading far into the night, is spent working on freelance work or her beloved fiction.

When she grew up, Jennifer always had her nose in a book. She has been writing stories and poems since grade school. This love of the written word and her strong interest in the paranormal is what has led to her first novel “The Birth of Jaiden.”
In addition to being a mother and homemaker, Jennifer is also a very proud military wife. Moving around the country for the last ten years has made her a bit of a nomad and she finds it difficult to be in one place for too long.

Jennifer is also the author of The Birth of Jaiden, a paranormal novel filled with action, suspense, and even a love story.







No comments:

 
Blog design by Imagination Designs all images from the My Midnight Dreams Danced Among the Stars kit by Tangie