Do It Write!
Care About Your Characters

I started writing Inventing Vazquez in March of 07, and finished it in December of that same year. During the last few months, I went on a real writing binge. Since I juggle a full-time job during the day, the marketing aspects of promoting Solstice during the evening, and still throw in guitar/band practice here and there, I didn’t exactly have a lot of free time to do my writing. I tried to stick to the one-to-three-page a day rule, and every now and then, I’d write five or six. But over the last few months, I wrote more than 250 pages, and completed the first draft of the novel at a whopping total of 850+ pages. My girlfriend called me a writing maniac, and wondered how I was able to churn out so much in so little time.

My answer was simple. I love my main characters, and because I genuinely care about them and what happens to them, I wanted to write their stories and move them along.

This might sound like a weird, lovey-dovey concept, but it’s really not. As I mentioned before, part of making fictional characters work is to make them believable, and a big part of that is conceiving them as real people with a full range of personal characteristics. Now take that a step further. If you’ve gotten to know your characters, and you’ve bothered to flesh out their every motivation and quirk, then chances are you’ll start to feel something toward them. It could be empathy (if it’s a downtrodden or tragic character), it could be hatred (if it’s a character who gets on your nerves), or it could be compassion and love (if it’s a character you find particularly endearing). If your character can elicit any kind of emotional response, chances are you’ll be more inclined to work with them. Not to mention that, if your characters are strong enough to elicit an emotional response from readers, then you’re on your way to writing success!

With Solstice, I made a very personal investment in the main character, Io. In many ways, she served to express some of my frustrations with the legal system, with the political process, and with social apathy towards critical matters. But I also wanted her to represent the danger of falling into despair, and the importance of keeping hope. I wanted her to learn to be a better person, because I think we all can strive to be better than we are. The story arc follows her own maturation process from reckless, cynical vigilante to remorseful heroine. As I kept writing, I found myself caring more and more about helping her find the light at the end of the tunnel. I wanted her to see the error of her ways, and learn to be a better person. And I wanted people to be able to sympathize with her despite her early antagonisms.

Not everything has to be about hoping your characters redeem themselves, of course. My current novel, Inventing Vazquez, features a mousy, soft-spoken protagonist named Liliana Vazquez. She’s got a bit of a problem. She works as a sensitivity issues consultant with a major film studio, but she doesn’t have the assertiveness to voice the many problems she finds with the studio’s portrayals of Latinos. The story is about Liliana finding her voice (literally and metaphorically, because the subplot involves her learning how to sing for a rock band).

I went on a tear with this novel because I found it very easy to write Liliana’s story. But more importantly, I found myself genuinely caring about her coming of age. I wanted to see her succeed. I wanted her to learn how to speak up for herself, and put the people that put her down in their place (including two bigots she regularly runs into in the elevator). I wanted her to speak out, for herself and for Latinos. I wanted her to find resolution with her overbearing big sister, her insane, incompetent boss, and her good-natured boyfriend-to-be. In short, I wanted to see her get to her happy ending.

That’s what I mean about caring for your characters. If you create characters that you genuinely care about, then you’ll find it that much easier to want to write their stories. You’ll want to write, because you want them to get to their respective endings. You’ll want to nurture their growth, and in so doing, nurture the growth of your writing.