Living the Fictional Dream

When I start a story, I’m not the type to fill out endless character profiles. I have a basic idea for a character, and then start writing. Afterward, though, when the first draft is done, those kinds of tools are invaluable. The help me to make the character more consistent. This is for novels. Short stories… character consistency is a little easier to get… or at least to see when you don’t have it.

The more realistic the characters are, the better the story is. Over the years, I’ve found help with smoothing out those fictional personalities in what might seem, at the surface, a couple of unlikely places.

The first one was a book called What Color Is Your Aura by Barbara Bowers. Now, I don’t know much about auras and I’ve definitely never seen one, but it has an interesting way of categorizing and describing different personality types.

When I read the descriptions of the different personality types, orange jumped out at me. I didn’t know it when I wrote the first draft of a novel-in-progress, but I had created an orange character — a minor character who was a physical being, an adrenaline junkie who lives for physical challenges like fighting. Realizing that about the character, I was able to refine him. Even more, I was able to understand why he did some of the inexplicable things that he did. Understanding his motivation made me better able to write from his point of view. And the aura book helped me do just that.

The Birth Order Book by Kevin Leman gave me more insights into familial relationships, especially sibling relationships. I found it an interesting read as a sibling myself, but it was also fascinating as a writing resource. It helped me get out of the older sister compliant point of view and to understand some of the other possibilities.

So, I guess the point of this post is that you never know what’s out there that can help you better your writing. Neither of these books is about writing per se, but both have helped me in that area. So, as writers, we should keep our eyes and ears open. Anything might be just what you need for a particular story, even one later down the line.