Member-only story
How to Find Your Characters
It’s not creation; more like saying “Hello”.
As someone who spends a lot of time talking to authors, there’s this clear divide in my life between people who are authors, and people who aren’t.
I suppose it’s like any job, really. There’s a lingo that you pick up, a common vernacular. Ideas and concepts that other people haven’t learned — they haven’t needed to learn it!
Some jobs have really cool lingo. Sometimes, I think half of my fascination with astronomy and space is the lingo that astronauts and cosmonauts get to throw around. I could spend hours just listening to their radio chatter.
Like astronauts and truckers and musicians, writers have their own secret language, their own bed of words and ideas that the uninitiated get to learn. Get a group of writers together and talking about writing, and I’m sure that we sound bat-shit crazy to any non-writers who are listening in.
Yes, I know, that’s because a disproportionately large number of us are bat-shit crazy. But that’s beside the point.
All of that is to say that my idea about discovering characters sounds strange to anyone who isn’t a writer. And, probably, to some writers as well.
