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What comes first? The story or the character. To me it's a no-brainer. Let me find the story first. But once you have that, then comes the charactors. OK. You have your protagnoist and your antagonit and all that stuff. But what about those small, but crucial parts. They need lives and histories and back stories too.
I had an encounter today. A shoelace broke. I stopped into my neighborhood shoemaker (where I've never gone before) and found not a mail shoemaker, but a woman. And she was attractive and fairly young, maybe late 20s.
I told her I needed shoelaces. She asked me what size. I said I didn't know. I showed her my shoe. She said "Number 30." She reached behind the counter, pulled out a basket of shoelaces, found the right size and proceeded to put it on the shoe with the broken lace.
I noticed that her hands--very small and feminine--were covered with shoe polish. I immediately wanted to use that for a character as yet to be created. How will I use it? I don't know yet. When will I used it? I don't know.
But the image is there. In my arsenal of stuff that I've picked up over the years. I have a lot of stuff in that arsenal and I pull from it whenever I'm having trouble putting flesh on a new character.
How much stuff do you have in your arsenal? |
