Brenda Youngerman - Fiction With a Purpose: Building Character

Brenda Youngerman - Fiction With a Purpose: Building Character

Building Character

When someone asks you how to describe yourself what do you say?

I normally say I am an observer of life and shy away from crowds -- now that is not really a description of myself, is it? A description can be simple or complex, depending upon the person and purpose. I can say I am five foot four, slender, long brown hair, brown eyes, and have a bump on my nose. That paints a picture of what I look like - that's a description. But do you know anything about me? No, not really.

So, what's next? I'm quiet and shy when there are a lot people around, or if I'm somewhere I'm not comfortable. I'm self conscious about my flaws. I'm a clutz, but I'm a good cook. I will lay down my life to protect my children. I'm a giver and a people pleaser. I hate to disappoint anyone and will do everything in my power to see that it doesn't happen, even at the expense of not getting my own way. I LOVE the ocean and when I go there a sense of calm takes over my senses. When I'm comfortable around a person I laugh from my belly - when I'm not I probably don't laugh at all.

NOW do you get a sense of who I am? Better - I suppose - and now you are asking what is this all about? I just demonstrated how difficult it is to get to know a character in a novel. How do you take everything I just wrote about myself and portray that through actions in a novel? BUT make them sympathetic and real? (Oh yeah, and keep the story moving?) I guess that is what is called building a character!

So.....how would you describe yourself?

Edit and Tease

While I sit and wait for the final edit to come back for a finished manuscript I write the teaser for the new book. That has been my pattern for the past four novels. Something is different this time. I don't want to mess it up! If someone actually went back and looked at the teasers and compared them to the beginning of the novels they would see that they don't match! What actually happens when you are writing a book is that it evolves over the period of the process and what you start out thinking you are going to write is not necessarily what you end up with. In most cases that means the beginning needs to be altered to make it fit with the end.

I am currently writing Disrupted Lives and I know what I want to say and I know where it is going to end, but I am trying so hard to make sure that the beginning is true to where it needs to be.

I am also, for the first time, having a hard time developing these characters. I want to make them real - in a real time frame. I have been researching the history of when they lived and what they must have been feeling, and I feel this ominous responsibility to not mess it up. Strange, considering it's fiction!

Motherhood

I received a letter from a reader asking me if I had ever considered writing a book about a mother giving a child up for adoption and then reconnecting with her child later in life. She then went on to tell me her story about what had happened to her in the late 60's and how she had been sent to a home for 'unwed' mothers. I tried to reconnect with her when I began to work on the book (Disrupted Lives) but to no avail. So, again, it is my internal characters and me doing all the work. With Mother's Day right around the corner it makes me think about all of those women who go through the thought process every day of giving up a child that they cannot take care of, for one reason or another, and my heart goes out to them.

Motherhood is a full time job that lasts a lifetime. You don't get to call in sick, or take a vacation day. You are always on call and need to be able to drop what you're doing in a moment's notice. It is not an obligation that can be taken lightly. Or at least that's the way I look at it. I'm not really sure that all mothers view it the same way.

I have been a mother for twenty one years - WOW! I look back on it and I still remember the first time he told me he loved me, or the first time he called me mommy. There is nothing quite as rewarding as the hug you receive from your child. But there is nothing as hurtful as the pain that a child can give either. I cannot even begin to imagine how difficult it would be to give birth to a child and then give it to another mother to raise. My hat is off to every woman out there that has had the courage to know that it is in the child's best interest to let another woman raise your child!