The Character is Always Right...Ugh!

When I first heard Kim Woodhouse say that good authors talk with their characters, I thought she was crazy. Characters aren't real people, right? Wrong!

Ok, so they're not really real. But my characters are alive in my imagination. Remember when you were a little kid and playing house? Maybe you were always mom, Joe was dad, Bob was the little son...but who was the nosy neighbor? Your imaginary friend Susie, of course! It's the same idea with book characters.

For the first eight years of my childhood, I was an only child. Whenever I got lonely, I would play with an army of made-up people. Even after I got siblings, I kept contact with my pretend friends. Those habits stayed with me, only now they are much more than friends.

In the teen novel I am working on right now, there are two main characters. One is Nillah Clark, an average American teenager. The other is Leila Nejem, a Palestinian refugee. After writing ten chapters, these two girls are almost as real to me as my real friends. So real, that they argue with me.

Nillah is actually pretty well behaved. She mostly does what I tell her to do. It's her personality that we disagree on. I want her to be a model Christian: respectful, obedient, close to God, and very selfless. But Nillah has decided she is actually the opposite! She keeps astounding me with how selfish and naughty she is. But, at least she follows my plot.

Leila, on the other hand, frustrates me to no end. Originally, she wasn't supposed to be a main character. She wasn't supposed to be a Christian. She wasn't supposed to be pretty. But, of course, after hours of stalling and arguing, I had to agree she was right. I also had to agree she was right when she decided to turn my plot upside down and not get kidnapped. So much for advance planning.

So what did I learn from days and weeks of fighting with my characters? The same thing many men advise each other about their wives. She is always right. Even when she's wrong, she's right. But what do I care about being wrong? As long as the story is good, I'm happy!