No, I'm not going to quote the song any further, I promise, but it seemed like an appropriate title for this blog.
When I started Camp NaNoWriMo this month, I was planning on writing thirty-one blogs about writing over the course of the month, but then this blog has always been a bit of a blend between my life, my writing and mental health issues, so it seemed natural to veer off into that, but this particular blog is about writing and it's about characters. I'm going to specifically talk about characters we write to inspire attraction in the reader.
Inevitably, the kind of people we are attracted to is probably going to translate into a novel even if we try and avoid it, though writers in historic fiction will research and look at what was attractive at the time, common hairstyles, how people were built and how they dressed. It would be illogical to write a female character in the Victorian era who was upper class and extremely chaste, then have the Love Interest (LI) or MMC (Male Main Character) be most attracted to her ankles or something which wouldn't be on display because of the clothing that chaste Victorian women wore. Whilst there is diversity within attraction, it's possible to borrow from the Peter Kay joke about Manfred Mann's song Do Wah Diddy Diddy, a girl snapping her fingers and shuffling her feet looking good, and that not seeming to make any sense.
Some things are timeless classics. The tall, dark and handsome thing seems to have stood the test of time pretty well, even if the understanding of it has changed a little over time. Mr Darcy has always been a good MMC for the tall, dark and handsome thing, but more modern audiences struggle to connect with the idea of his pride and arrogance, and it can be difficult to forgive that, despite it being a product of the time and social context that he lived in.
There are characters now where we think in the book, yeah, he sounds beautiful, and then they are lost when translated to screen, such as Edward Cullen. I was disappointed at best when Robert Pattinson was cast in that role, even though I like him in other things he's been in. Maybe it was just everything else that was wrong with those movies that didn't help, but I've even seen descriptions where I question what the author was thinking making someone a love interest in a story because I don't and can't relate to the main character (MC) for finding them as irresistible as they do. It's as though someone wrote Joe Exotic as an MMC in a romance novel; I just wouldn't get it. Anything with a mullet and that's me done though, I guess.
Then again, that can be a difference in culture - perhaps in the Deep South in America, he's seen as a hot option - and also to do with time periods. When you say tall, dark and handsome to women of some generations, or even just different women, they might think of someone with rippling large muscles and body hair as thick as a gorilla's, whereas I might think toned, solid shoulders and tone down the hairiness a lot of degrees.
We have to accept that readers are going to have a different image of our characters in their heads to what is in ours, and that's okay. We have to accept that the MMC or LI character is not going to be considered an attractive description by everyone, but it's why looser descriptions aren't always a bad thing. If the reader can flesh out some of the details themselves, that can be helpful in some ways.
Of course, there's no right answer though. There was a time when a ginger character, like Annie, would have been seen as the most undesirable orphan, and yet now people love ginger hair. I'm a bottle ginger because it suits my skin tone better than the flat chestnut brown I am naturally, but also there are people like Prince Harry and Ed Sheeran, whose ginger hair is seen as a massive asset. Things will change, people's tastes are different and if not, well the world just wouldn't work, would it, but it's something to think about as you paint a picture in the head of your dear reader about the different characters in your novel. It's also okay to write about a character as the LI who wouldn't be considered physically attractive, because physical attraction is only a part of what makes us fall in love, and it doesn't have to be a very important part. In the Netflix film Tall Girl, the Main Female Character has a very specific idea in her head of what she wants, physically, and yet the *SPOILER ALERT* ending shows that she sees that as far less important.
So, this is my last blog from Camp NaNoWriMo and must be the first time I have ever achieved my Camp NaNoWriMo goal, so I'm really proud of that. I'm also really thrilled with the number of people who have been reading my blog as this month is currently my second highest readership ever, and it's on track to be the first by the end of today. I'm crossing my fingers a bit because that would also feel like a pretty huge achievement, so we'll see.
I've made changes throughout the month, like remembering that a lot of people who read what I write don't actually hang out on Twitter, so whilst it's become my favourite spot, I need to remember that Facebook is still a thing and share links across the both of them. I've also realised that posting late at night just to make sure I get the blog for the day posted doesn't really work out so well, so I've been making an effort to write and post at more civilised times of the day.
I'm not sure I'm going to be able to keep up posting one blog a day, especially as there have been times this month where I have stared at the blank screen and wondered what the hell I was going to write, but I am committed to making more of an effort to continue writing on the blog and hopefully also launching the charlieswrite.co.uk website soon, though that will depend on how well I get through every other thing on my To-Do list as well.
It's been a really interesting month because making time for writing isn't always easy and having the capacity to write is not always easy, but actually, it's okay to hold your hands up and say I can't do this right now, and I have done that once this month. Most of us don't have the luxury of being able to give up our full-time jobs to solely focus upon writing, not that I think I would if I had the option, so fitting it in around every other thing in life is always going to be a struggle, but what has been really valuable to me this month is I have found that I can do it. I can find the time, I can find the energy, most of the time anyway, and I can make my writing a priority, even in the middle of a house move, work chaos, life chaos and a mental health lapse that is still not completely resolved. It is possible, it's not painful and it's good for me, so I'm going to take that lesson going forward and hopefully remember it in November as well so I know I don't have to do things like twenty-four hour marathon sprints on the first day to write as much as I can whilst aiming for finishing in less than my previous personal best. I'm not saying I won't do that, but I am saying I don't have to.
A lot could change over the next few months, but what is extremely exciting to me at the moment is having the time to figure that out, think of a plan and exactly three months from today will be a Saturday, getting ready for one of the weirdest NaNoWriMo's ever. I'm going to have to educate my mum on Annual Pizza Day.
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