Redefine how your Characters feel, So that readers emphatically can relate to them.

Originally I was going to try to write a blog each week. I have come to realize that with all I do on a daily basis that is going to prove impossible. So I will do my best to write these at least twice a month.

 For my second blog in the series,  I am continuing with character creation but taking it to the next level. I discovered the most amazing book. It is called; "Breathing Life into your Characters." by Rachel Ballon, Ph.D. this book is intense as a writer because it takes you into yourself, the deepest emotions and teaches you how to translate that to your fiction. Each chapter ends with a free-write for fifteen minutes, this takes you into your sensory memories, and those emotions. I can honestly say this has been the most crying, I have done in a long time. The character I am working on currently lost her grandmother at young age. I also lost my grandma at a young age. Until I read this book I didn't understand how much that one major event had effected my life as a child, and now as an adult. This book is a valuable tool to use to give your character that extra edge. That something that no one else has. "The secret to having your characters stand out from the rest is to put your heart and soul into them, you cannot write effectively until you are able to experience your inner self in the process of creating characters" as quoted from Chapter one.

I could spend many more hours on how valuable this resource has been to me. I am serious when I say this is a therapeutic session that only costs the price of the book! That has been the most powerful thing about this book all those memories were inside me already, I just used my sensory memories to recall them and add them to my two dimensional fictional character. This is something that I appreciate as a reader. To care about a character, to want them to succeed, and strive for there happy ending.

Above is an example of how great writing can get you to care about a character even an animated one. Stitch is created by an evil scientist bent on world destruction. Stitch in essence is a weapon sent to destroy, he has no other function. Yet, as his friendship with Lilo proceeds he begins to be a lonely guy with no family, he is lost, he learns, and he is accepted and loved by a girl who lost her parents.
It is a beautiful story. In the end when he says "This is my family, they may be small, they make be broken, but still good." Tears, you have experienced empathy with this alien aka Stitch, this weapon. Who is not longer either of those things he is just a dog that is loved by his family.

Good writing is creating something that is fiction, yet it doesn't feel like its fake. While you are immersed in that world you are part of it, you are all in all the way to the end. That does not come from a good plot, or good setting, that comes from a character, you can relate to and emphasize with emotionally with. So readers we must look inside ourselves, dig into those memories, feelings, smells, sights so that our fictional world is real. So that those characters become real to those readers.

See you again soon readers.
As I always say; "Writing like life is a work in progress."
=) Jess