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REMINDER: If you asked any questions in the comments on Thursday, you'll find your answers in Friday's Mysteries Revealed post, and if you asked questions on Friday or during the weekend, you'll find your answers in yesterday's Further Secrets Revealed post. Enjoy!
And, I'll keep this post short, since the last two were epic.
Thank you again to everyone who took the time to vote in my First Friday October Poll! The poll is closed and the results are in and my Excel spreadsheet and pie chart are complete.
I was right in my original guess that most of us -- 74% -- are writing about characters who are the same age as ourselves or younger, but I like seeing that for each slice of the pie, things aren't too skewed in favor of any one age range! (Nice to know we aren't all competing for the exact same audiences, too.) Still, I may have to take this as a personal challenge to branch out myself... maybe for book #3...
So let's move on from age and talk about other character differences and similarities. Writers, please post in the comments one way in which your main character(s) are different from you, and one way in which they are the same. No comparison is too big or too small! The main character of my novel drinks coffee -- I don't -- and she loves unagi (eel) sushi -- I do, too.
My character is athletic--I am not. I don't have that much in common with her because she's twelve but we both have brown hair :)
ReplyDeleteCoffee is a secondary character in my books, as are coffee houses. The protagonist, his friends, and the bad guys drink a lot of coffee. In fact, food in general and even beer and wine are secondary characters.
ReplyDeleteStephen Tremp
great poll...i must have missed when the questions were asked. but i fit right in with the majority.
ReplyDeleteas for differences, my MC has a traumatic past i could never personally imagine (however, due to being a therapist, it was too easy to base on some real examples).
jeannie
The Character Therapist
In the last short story I wrote, the MC was an office worker, and I've always been retail/blue-collar. In my book, one MC is very Imperially-motivated, while I'm more 'left.'
ReplyDeleteFor years I've written myself into my stories. So this year I've attempted to make my characters completely other than myself.
ReplyDeleteI am a skinny blonde with blue eyes. One character is a female goth with black hair and likes mortuary science. The other is a middle-aged woman who's pleasantly plump and is a scientist. I am none of these things.
However, both these characters have a taste for adventure, are willing to flow with life's bumps and bruises, and don't quite pick up social cues as good as other people do. That's totally me.
My MC is an ex-soldier, I've never been in the military. I barely drink at all ( I used to be a bouncer, ruined it for me) and my main character's a borderline alchoholic.
ReplyDeleteAs for similarities, we both like cats, martial arts and books.
Hey! My mc is a drama major. I majored in English. But she has a vivid imagination, which is very much like me!
ReplyDelete