L.Y. Levand's Blog, page 7

Character Development For Authors, Part Four: Character History Details

Now we're moving on to history details. In this post, however, the history details are also mixing with aspects of personality, which you may have noticed in the last one as well. This is because personal history has a huge affect on how personalities develop, and the way your character reacts to things in their past tells you about their personality.

If you haven't been writing down the decisions you've been making, now would be an excellent time to start, since many of the details you'll be adding to your character's history will also have bearing on their personality, and you may need to reference them.

Friendships:

Your character's friendships can be a vital part of how they interact both with their world, and your readers. Can you imagine Harry Potter without Ron Weasley and Hermione Granger? Or Sherlock without Watson? Your character's friendships not only give you other people to use to complicate the plot, add subplots, or promote conflict, but they also give you a way to show your character's hidden personality to readers. It even gives you a way to, through conversation, introduce past experiences or current events within the world of your book.

Your character's close friends may need special treatment, such as a character profile much like what you're doing now, in order for them to interact properly and have a personality with depth. The way your characters became friends offers a rich source of conversation material, as well as background information, potential sources for conflict, conflict resolution, and subplots, among other things.

Why they became friends, perhaps even more than how, can give great insight to both characters. Maybe they met someone exactly like them, and needed that kind of friendship. Maybe they met someone the opposite of them, and liked the new experiences this friend offered. Maybe they became friends because they were both picked on in school, and needed some kind of support. The possibilities are endless, and also offer many great story opportunities in their own right.

Past Jobs:

Maybe your rich CEO started as a cashier at a fast food place. Maybe they've never worked as anything less than a manager. Maybe they've never worked at all. Whatever past jobs your character has had, they give this character more depth, and more to their story for you to draw on when you start writing. Their past jobs can explain everything from why they hate the sight of broccoli (working in a grocery store's produce department, perhaps?) to why they treat customer service reps badly (never had a job=don't really understand what it's like dealing with difficult people, maybe?). This can also be used to explain how they met friends or acquaintances, and why they know how to make homemade pizza or catalog a library.

You want a character that people can relate to on some level. And this can involve past jobs, their experiences on those jobs, and how they led to the job they have in the time frame of the story. It might be helpful, at this point, to write out a timeline, especially if you have a character that has had many different jobs, and you need to keep track of which ones they had when. It might also be helpful for you to know why those jobs are past jobs. Did they get fired? Did they quit? Were they laid off? Why?

Motivations:

This particular section delves pretty deeply into character personality, but it's also within the scope of the history theme for this post. Many real people have motivations deeply seated in past experiences, which is why it's included here.

Your character needs motivation for what they're doing, and you need to know what that motivation is. Many fantasy characters go out to save the world. But why? Because no one else will? Because they were manipulated? Because they love their family? Because they have a hatred for the power trying to destroy everything?

They want a different job. Why? Do they have dreams of being rich and powerful? Why? maybe in the story they go to medical school. Why do they want to go to medical school? Is it because they want to save lives? What made them decide they wanted to save lives enough to go through the difficulties and hardships of medical school?

Do they want a relationship with a particular person? Why? is this person the epitome of what they visualize as the perfect mate? Where did that vision come from?

Do they want a promotion at work? Why? Is his wife pregnant, and he wants to be sure he can provide for them? Do they have a rivalry with a coworker, and they want to rise higher and faster? Why?

This is one of the more complex things you'll need to think about when working on your character. Whatever your character does, there is a motivation for it. These motivations can be intertwined in complicated ways, or one motivation can stem from another. There can even be several motivations that are in conflict with each other, and this can be a huge part of your story as well.

Traveling:

The places your character has been can help you flesh out their history and their current setting in a number of different ways. If your character has done any traveling, you can add mementos of those trips to their current setting. Maybe while in India your character developed a taste for curry, so a stock of it can always be found in their kitchen. Perhaps they visited England for an extended period of time, and adopted a slight accent. Maybe while in Scotland they discovered that, strangely enough, they love haggis.

The things you can choose from present you with endless combinations to add detail to your character. You can pick different elements from various destinations to add to the setting; fossils from an archeological dig in a desert, seashells from a beach, carvings from Africa.

This also adds more detail to your character's personality. Why did they go to those places? What did they experience? How did it affect their lives and perceptions? Did they make new friends? Experience something life-changing? Discover something new about history?

But, they don't have to go anywhere for this to still be an important aspect of your character. Maybe they've always wanted to travel, but haven't been able to. Maybe they have souvenirs, ordered online, to decorate their house or office because they want to go. Or, maybe they haven't gone anywhere and never wanted to. if that's the case, then in part of your story perhaps they're forced to leave their comfort zone and go someplace new, someplace they never really wanted to go in the first place.

The possibilities are endless.

Good/Bad Memories:

Good and bad memories, like the past traumas in the last post, can have huge bearing on your character's attitude through the story. Both shape how real people grow and develop, and both can have good and bad effects on your character, depending on what you need from them and how their personalities are shaping up.

Bad memories can cripple your character, make their lives harder, or give them motivation. Good memories can give them a reason to keep going after you've finished making their lives difficult, something touching to share with another character that develops the relationship, or further the plot. You can get more creative with them, too, by making a bad memory something that you turn into a positive one through the story, or turning a good memory on its head.

Whether a memory is considered good or bad by your character depends on their personality and attitude. So this is another part of history that mixes with personality. By choosing memories that your character perceives as good, you are telling your readers what they see as good. You do the same when you choose memories that your character perceives as bad. A character that sees a memory of a field of butterflies as a good thing, for instance, can be an easy way of telling us that your character likes butterflies, that positive emotions are associated with that memory for some reason, or, if you want to go more deeply into symbolism, that they are free-spirited, flighty, or innocent.

If a different character views that same field as a bad memory, well. Most people would assume that some unpleasant variables are at work. That character might have negative feelings associated with that field; perhaps something terrible happened there. Maybe they're frightened of insects, and butterflies are no exception. Maybe they dislike bright colors, or, to them, the erratic nature of their flight reminds them of a disapproval of people that live erratically.

Good and bad memories can manifest as fears as well. A bad memory of the day a mother or father leaves the home, for example, can manifest as a fear of abandonment, or they might attach the feelings they had in those moments to an object in the room, the way the light seemed, the type of day it was, and a recurrence of those conditions can bring with them the same mood as when the memory first took place.

Medical History:

If your character had scars in the second step of this series, then this would be the place to attach a story to them. This is where you would put the times they were hospitalized, if any, their injuries, surgeries. This is also another way to make a character seem more real.

If you have a character that gets hospitalized in the course of your story, it might be a good idea to have worked out if they've been in that position before. If they have, then they may know or recognize doctors, they should be aware of reactions to medications, and will know more about what to do. If they haven't ever been hospitalized, then chances are, they won't know as much about those things. Either way, it's a great opportunity to add conflict. Misplaced medical records, the wrong medication, drama with the doctors or nurses, there are many things that writing down a little information on their medical history can bring to your story.

This is also something that can be mentioned casually in a conversation with a friend, especially if a hospital has a key place in your plot. Past medical history can give you an easy way of bringing it into the story early, and without having to work hard or drop an info-dump on a reader.
Coming up next week, we get to step into personality!

Character Development For Authors, Part Three: Character History Basics

So now we're moving past the appearance, and moving into more detail-work. Your character's history will directly affect their personality and their actions, so it's important to keep in mind the part you need this character to play, and to shape their history in such a way that doing what you want them to is a natural result of the personality you give them.

You are in charge of your characters. You decide what they do and do not do. But it can sometimes be difficult keeping your character's actions consistent with their personalities. For myself, if I want a character to do something specific, but they wouldn't ever choose to do it on their own, I have to then manipulate the circumstances around them until they would make the choice I desire.

So identify the role you want your character to play before getting started. This will help you when it comes time to start writing.
Parents/Parenting Styles):

The way your character was raised will play a huge part in how they behave and see the world. If your character was raised by parents, either birth or adoptive, then those adults will have had a parenting style that did or didn't work for your character in many ways. If they were an orphan, or raised by other family members, this will also have an impact on their worldview.

How these things affect your character can differ widely. What may negatively affect one character may have a positive affect on another. For example, one character may have loved a freewheeling lifestyle with few rules, while another may have felt lost in such a life, because of few boundaries. One character may have had strict discipline growing up and therefore enjoys having a lifestyle that has never involved the consequences of rule-breaking. Another character in the same situation might grow up resentful of that discipline, and act out in rebellion.

Perhaps your character grew up in foster care, and that caused them to develop a hoarding mentality in adulthood, because they had so little. Or maybe growing up in foster care and having so little caused them only to greatly appreciate the things that they have. You'll need to decide how their upbringing still affects them at the time of the story, and why.

You can choose at this point to write a basic outline of your character's parents (or who raised them), or just outline the dominant parenting style in their life.

Siblings:

Siblings also play an important part of your character's development. Maybe they wanted a sibling and never got one, so that makes them feel like they were cheated. Perhaps they had a multitude of siblings, and spent much of their time feeling neglected by their parents. Maybe they lived in an orphanage and adopted some of the other children as siblings.

If you decide to give them siblings, now would be the time to decide birth order, and what kind of relationship your character has with them. If your character is the oldest, then maybe they take on the part of second mother or father. Maybe a protector, or maybe a tormenter. If they're the youngest, they could be the baby of the family that took too long to grow up, and was babied by older siblings. Or they could have been picked on constantly by older siblings. Perhaps the middle child/children always felt left out, or envious of their siblings because they were always stuck in the middle. Or, conversely, maybe the middle child/children was always thrilled to be the middle because they received less attention and therefore were able to get into more trouble with fewer consequences. An interesting article about birth order can be found here.

You don't need to go into a huge amount of detail here, although you can, especially if your character's siblings play a part in the story you're telling.

Schooling:

This section is a little broader. This can cover elementary, middle, and high schools, as well as college, special courses, home schooling, and many other things. If your character is a businessman, it might make sense to have him either go to business school or take some business courses. An artist might have taken specialized art classes at some point; if your character is a doctor, now would be the time to figure out what's necessary to become a doctor and decide what schools/hospitals they were involved with on the way there.

Adding schools to your character's history gives you the opening to add other characters to advance the plot in the form of schoolmates, school rivals, old friends, and teachers. It can also give you the chance to further expand on your character's parents, since they would have (usually) been the ones to choose what form their schooling would take. Maybe your character's parents chose homeschooling, but your character then went on to go to regular college, and found it a culture shock after learning at home.

Past traumas:

Traumas in your character's past can offer a rich source of motivation for them, and can also make them seem more real. One of my characters experienced an attack by a wild cat at a young age. This manifests later as a fear of cats. Another character (from this book, incidentally) suffered the trauma of being taken away from her parents while her parents did nothing to stop it. This resulted in her becoming angry, bitter, and resentful of her parents, as well as giving her a thirst for revenge.

Past traumas are particularly useful when designing a villain or antagonist. Many authors have a tendency to just make an antagonist generically evil, without giving them a real story with purpose and background. This, however, presents a very one-dimensional villain. A quick, easy way to fix that is to give them several traumas in their past that cause specific responses in the current time frame of your story. As an example, one of my antagonists grew up without knowing who her father and mother were. She survived on the meager scraps given to her by a miserly cook. She had no real room, she lived and slept on the floor of a dead end hallway, by herself. She grew up with a single-minded passion for power. She kidnapped children that were "lost" and took them to her home, where she brainwashed them with her version of love, because she didn't want them to be homeless and alone like herself. Her villainy was the result of neglect as a child, and the trauma of having no real home, and no one that cared for her.

Protagonists often suffer from the opposite problem. They are too good. They have no bad qualities or character flaws. Simply putting a trauma or two in their past can cure this issue. A good character, the hero, might hold a grudge against someone he otherwise loves because of how they mistreated him once. Perhaps they were made fun of in school, or embarrassed, and this gives him or her the desire to get back at the people who laughed by making them feel the same. This doesn't mean your character has to act on these desires, but giving that added flaw to their character makes them seem more real.

Past accomplishments:

This can also allow you to add both character flaws, and positive character traits. An antagonist, for example, might have won an award in school, and they brag about it and exhibit prideful behavior. A protagonist might also feel pride and act boastful, if you want them to have that as a character flaw. But if you want to turn it into a positive trait for them, you could have it be a subject that they never bring up themselves. You could even do this for an antagonist to give them a positive character trait.

These accomplishments can be high grades in school, getting into a great college, awards for various things, getting in the newspaper, breaking a record - the possibilities are endless, as are the places they can earn them from. Maybe they earned a first place in a sports championship, or a certificate of appreciation from a business, certification for specific duties, a belt level in a difficult martial art, a prestigious scholarship.

The accomplishments your character makes can tell readers a lot about them as well. If your businessman character has a black belt certificate framed on his wall at the office, that tells readers he's a black belt. If he has a trophy from a basketball championship displayed on his bookcase at home, you know he played basketball, and he played well. You could have another character find an old box of trophies and medals, and that can tell the reader several things. Maybe they just moved and haven't had a chance to put them up yet. Maybe, for some reason, they're ashamed of them. Maybe they're just very modest and hid them away in the box so no attention would be brought to them.

In another possibility, perhaps your character hasn't made any accomplishments. This can be very telling as well. Maybe they never competed or made the effort. Maybe they always lost. Either way, the accomplishments your character has or has not made can tell your readers a lot of things about your character.


Childhood dreams:

While these may or may not come into the story itself, it may very well be just the inspiration you need to get through a sticky spot, or explain behavior that otherwise doesn't make sense. The childhood dreams of any character (or even a real life person) often have lasting impact on their choices. And sometimes, those dreams persist into adulthood, even if we can logically dismiss them and label them as unimportant. It can also be a way to add some realism. If you have an otherwise stuffy character, to make them a little less stiff you could give them the childhood dream of having ice cream for breakfast. Perhaps they denied the chances to do it because it's not healthy or some other reason, but in your story they finally get to try it.

These childhood dreams could also be used to show a certain vulnerability. Say you have a character that's in a relationship. To show that this character is opening up, you can have him/her tell their significant other their childhood dream. You can then use this dream to create conflict by making the significant other betray them in some way, or to create a bonding experience that furthers the plot.
Next time we'll be going further into character history; if there's anything you'd like to see, let me know in the comments!

Character Development For Authors, Part Two: Appearance Details

Now that you've sorted out the appearance basics (see the first part of the tutorial here) you should have a vague picture of what your character looks like. It won't be too detailed yet; you have just a basic outline. But now it's time to start adding the details that give your character more life.

This is the part of the your character's development where their past and their personality start to come in and influence how they look. Clothing, for example, is one of the most obvious forms of self expression that exists. Tattoos speak of a past written in permanent ink, and motivations that you perhaps don't yet understand. Birthmarks are a reminder that this character, despite the fact that you're making him/her up, was, in fact, born.

Here is where your character's personality starts to form. That can make this aspect of development either a joy, or the most difficult thing you've done so far. The thing to keep in mind here is that the physical details remain consistent with whatever ideas you have for their personality. Again, these things may change, so unless you don't have a problem with fitting a character's personality to physical details, be prepared to alter them.

Clothing

As I said above, clothing is one of the most obvious forms of self-expression there is. This is something you need to keep in mind when dressing your character. Whatever bits and pieces you connected to this character's personality in the last part of the tutorial are things you need to be aware of now.

You need to keep in mind the location of your story, the time period, the culture, and the weather when dressing your character, as well as their age, their gender, and the face they choose to present to the world. A young woman, for example, in 2015, in the spring or autumn, might wear fitted skinny jeans, a hoodie, and sneakers. A young woman from the Victorian era, however, would wear no such thing.

And this doesn't take into account the many colors and patterns you could also choose. The number of combinations are endless, and the meanings you could apply to each one could bring depth to any story, as well as more knowledge of your character. As an example, maybe your character is a budding fashonista, but she also has a pair of ratty pajama bottoms patterned in yellow ducks. Perhaps she keeps those pajama bottoms because it was the last thing her father gave her before he died. Or maybe she has a secret love of ducklings, one that she developed as a youngster when she really, really wanted a pet duckling at the store but her mother said no.

Accessories

Much like clothing, accessories are a popular form of self-expression. Unlike clothing, however, most accessories can be worn every day, if their owner chooses to. This opens up the possibility of one specific accessory that your character is particularly attached to. Maybe your older male character wears a woman's ring on a chain around his neck, because it belonged to his high school sweetheart, who died before they had a chance to get married. Maybe your ten-year-old girl wears the same plastic ring every day because it's her favorite color, and she wants to wear a ring like her mother.

Maybe you have a character that's into piercings, and wears body jewelry every day. Perhaps they have so many piercings because physical pain is preferable to emotional pain. Or maybe it's because they feel closer to the earth when they wear ornaments of metal or wood through their flesh.

Conversely, you could have a character that eschews the very idea of accessorizing, and refuses to wear so much as a pair of earrings.

Voice

What does your character sound like when they're angry? Do the scream? Do they yell? Do they get so quiet you can barely hear them?

Do they sound like a big bear of a man, or a little girl?

There are many, many different things to wonder about how your character sounds. You can start with how their voice sounds when talking normally. Much like with the height and hair/eye colors on the last post, this is a chance to either present contrasts, or matches. If you have a young woman, you can make her sound like a young woman. Or, you can make her sound like a man. Perhaps you have a young man that has a rather feminine voice, but when he laughs it's a deep man-laugh. Or a woman with a deep voice who sings soprano.

Posture

The way your character holds themselves can present them as competent, frightened, bold, or any number of other things. A character that slouches can be seen as lazy, while a character that stands straight with shoulders back appears confident.

If you have a character that becomes, or has been in the past, a victim, a posture with head down and shoulders hunched may portray just that. The image presents the viewer with the idea that this person is afraid. Many attackers choose victims that already appear to be victims. Changes in default posture can include one shoulder being raised higher than the other as a result of carrying bags of heavy books or medical issues. A stressed man or woman may hold their shoulders higher due to the tension in the muscles.

Posture is, often, something unconscious. So while you may have a character that acts bold, confident, and in charge, you might decide to have their real feelings of inadequacy and fear show through their posture. Or you might have a character that really is bold and confident, but spends most of their time hunched over books or electronics, resulting in a hunch that causes other people to mistake them as being frightened. Maybe you have a character that has perfect posture, but that's the result of rigid discipline from parents, or some kind of physical training. Perhaps they walk straight because they're involved in martial arts and their instructors trained them to hold their shoulders back.

Movement

Like posture, movement is usually something unconscious that was developed due to outside factors. A dancer may have a certain grace that others lack. A martial artist may walk faster, taking larger steps or moving with more purpose and power. An artist may walk slowly, savoring the sights around them for later use in artwork. A thief may scuttle around much like a mouse, afraid of being caught. A successful businessman, for whom people getting out of the way is an assumed perk, may move fast through a crowd, not pausing to worry about people between him and his destination.

The way your character moves can bring attention to new aspects of their backstory, pieces that can cause or resolve conflict, or explain the actions of a character. Maybe the dancer from above is currently out of work, but the reader doesn't know what her past job was. Her graceful movements can be used to introduce the reader to her past as a dancer at a theater that went out of business, or tell them that she lost her job at a theater because of an injury.

A woman might walk down the street with her hips swinging because she's confident and feels sexy, or has a desire for male attention. A man may strut for the same reasons. A young girl may have jerky movements because of a growth spurt, and an older man might move slowly because he has problems with his balance.

This is another aspect of your character that brings them to life. If you need to, you can visualize how they walk down the street. This can be very important if you need to show, for example, a woman who is considered very attractive and knows it, without telling your readers that in so many words. You can simply set her on the street, describe how she walks, and then how the men who see her react.

Markings

This would include things like freckles, birthmarks, tattoos and scars. These things give more depth to your character, as well as presenting the reader with evidence of a backstory. The presence of a scar could be used to start a conversation between your character and someone else, during which your character explains how they got it. This can move a plot forward, or shed light on the character's motivation.

A tattoo is usually representative of something important that happened in the life of a character. Simply giving your character a tattoo can give you a way to add backstory. Because tattoos are permanent, either your character didn't think it through and now will have this tattoo annoying them for a long time, or they thought it through carefully. Either way, it's a piece of their past that can be placed in the story as a way of letting readers get to know the character.

Perhaps your male character got in a knife fight when he was young, and he has the scars the prove it. Maybe he was involved in a rough crowd, and the fight is the reason he's now a businessman instead. Maybe your female character hates her freckles because she was teased about them in school, and that's why she uses so much makeup to cover them up. Maybe your older male character has a tattoo on his wrist from his time in the army, the initials of his best friend who was killed. Maybe that female character has stretch marks on her belly from being pregnant with twins, or that little kid was born with a birthmark on his forehead.

Physical markings give you a way to let your character interact in their world and show their past without you having to tell it.

Physical Imperfections

This can be a previously broken nose that set crooked, teeth that are chipped, a problem with acne, broken or black nails, a limp - the possibilities are endless. These things, like the markings, can be used to give your character ways of interacting with the world around them. It also gives you a way to bring up their motivations for actions, the cause of personality traits, and move the plot forward.

Many writers hear "show, don't tell" a lot. Physical imperfections are a way to do that. Instead of telling your readers that your character had a broken nose, describe his face as having a crooked nose, and have another character ask them about it. A problem with acne can be used to tell your readers that they're dealing with a pubescent teenager. Perhaps those chipped teeth are a result of a family not being able to afford a dentist. Maybe that limp is from a bad knee that needs surgery.

Let your character's appearance tell you, and your readers, about them.

Scent

This can refer to perfume or cologne, as well as the general scent of a person. A man who works outdoors may, for instance, smell of grass and earth, while one who works in an office might smell like paper or ink. The kind of other scents, like deodorant, perfume, cologne - all tell you about the character's preferences. Perhaps that female character is allergic to cherry blossoms, so she avoids perfumes with that scent. Maybe that male character finds floral fragrances too strong, so his wife wears vanilla perfume. Maybe that character dreams of a vacation in Hawaii, so they use tropical scented deodorant and perfume or cologne. Maybe they grew up with a mother who used a lavender soap, and they miss her, so they use the same soap.

Defining a scent for your characters also enhances your description of them, and allows you to describe them using a sense besides sight, in addition to making them seem more real.

Mannerisms

In Harry Potter and The Goblet of Fire (the movie, this didn't happen in the book - beware spoilers, those who haven't seen the movie or read the book!) Barty Crouch guessed that Mad-Eye Moody was really his son, Barty Crouch Jr. after the way he licked his lips. This was a mannerism that revealed him for who he was. Mannerisms are another way to give your character more life. One of my characters, for example, would rub the back of his neck when he got anxious or nervous.

This also gives your character a physical habit to do through the book that remains constant, and can be a connecting thread through the plot.

You could have a woman that compulsively crosses and uncrosses her legs when she's nervous, or a man that runs his fingers through his hair when he's excited. Maybe you have a character with an eye twitch, or one that clenches their hands when they're angry.

Once your character has one of these, this also gives you a default reaction for them when the situation is appropriate; if they flail their arms when angry, you know how to show they're angry. Flail their arms. This enables you to use body language and show, rather than tell.
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Character Development For Authors, Part One: Appearance Basics

I've decided that, since one of the parts I love the most about writing is the idea-forming phase, that I'd like to write a series of tutorials on the subject. This time around, we're going with character development. Each section of the overall topic will be further broken down into parts; for example, the first section, Appearance, will be broken down into Basics and Details. There may also be a third part, Other, if we don't cover everything in the first two.

The first section of this series is Appearance, since that's where most people start when they're designing a character, whether it's for a roleplaying game, a short story, or a full-on novel. The appearance of a character is the easiest thing to set up, because it doesn't require a whole lot of thought or planning to set the basics. But the first thing to keep in mind is that your character's appearance will probably evolve as you go along, so that it matches more closely what you're going for in later sections. What we're doing now is setting you up with a basic template, something to go on so you can fill in the blanks.

A basic outline for character appearance usually looks something like this:

Name:
Age:
Gender:
Height:
Weight:
Hair/eye color:

Feel free to copy/paste this template if you'd like something to work with in your own document.

Now, with this template it's very basic, and everything is open to change. It's important to not get too attached to any aspect of this character yet, since the appearance of them may change significantly as their development continues. But you do need something to start with.
Name

If you're planning a fantasy book, this is one of the areas where you can get really creative. The name doesn't have to be one you've ever heard, it doesn't have to be one that you've seen used before; in fact, in a fantasy world, it might be better if it's one that hasn't been heard before. But you need to make sure it's still easily read, and, more importantly, pronounceable. You don't want someone reading your work to stumble over the name, or spend several minutes trying to figure out how to say it. One of the benefits of naming a character in a fantasy world is, if you have the time and are so inclined, you can name them using a language from that world. (If you want to do this I have a basic guide for language building available on Amazon to give you a push in the right direction. Prime members can borrow it for free. )

If you're writing a book where you can use a normal name, then have fun. There are many, many names out there to choose from. There are many sites you can use to search for a name, like
But your character's name is often one of the things that changes. I had a character once who had their name changed three times before I was finally satisfied with it, and it matched both their character and their culture. That name may change again in the future, as my knowledge of their story increases.

Age:

Depending on the type of story you want to write, you can choose any age you want. But you do want to consider who's going to be reading it. A seventeen-year-old will probably want to read about another seventeen-year-old, or someone a little older, rather than an eleven-year-old. This isn't a rule, of course (think Harry Potter) but it is something you want to consider.

This is also something that also changes pretty regularly. This can be altered if your character is acting too mature for their age, or too immature for their age, so it better fits them. It can also be changed to better serve the story, or offer more options for conflict within the plot. For example, romantic conflict is more reasonable with a fifteen or sixteen year old than an eight or nine year old.

Gender:

Pretty self-explanatory. I've never switched the gender of a character, but as long as you don't randomly switch from she to he or vice versa in the middle of the book, you'd be fine doing this while in development as well. That can also be done to add more complexity to the plot, or better fit a personality or role. It can also be changed if you want to contrast gender with role. A protector, for example, is typically portrayed as a male, but if you are so inclined, you can make it a female, and so on.

Height:

Height can complement a personality, or contrast it. This is something to consider when choosing a height for your character. Are they going to be tall and have a big personality? Are they going to be small and have a big personality? Are they going to be small and have a small personality, or tall and have a small one? The physical attributes of your character give you an opportunity to present contrasts with their personality. If you want to do this, then height is a big way to start.

If you decide you want a tall character, you then also have to figure out what "tall" means to you, and there are many different heights in that range. The same for if you want a shorter character. What is "short" to you? And how short are you thinking? There are many, many options, and, again, if you want to play with character and appearance contrasts this is a great way to do it.

Weight:

This has been one of the harder things to choose, for me personally. I have a challenge with measuring things like height, weight, and distance just by looking at them, which presents a difficulty for me. There's also the fact that weight isn't always an indicator of health, since someone who is technically overweight could easily be carrying most of that excess weight in muscle. I've found that a good way for me to get some idea of how much a character appears to weigh, if not how much they really do weigh, is by taking a look at a
Weight is something that comes to play in the lifestyle of your character, as well. If you're writing about a woman with unhealthy eating habits, you can portray her as overweight as a result of that, or you can portray her as a thin woman that shows a healthy face to the world but has a secret junk food addiction. You can have an overweight man that doesn't care about what he eats, and simply eats whatever he wants, disdaining any efforts made to help him halt heart-disease or diabetes in its tracks.

On the other side, you can have a couple that is extremely healthy, exercises, eats good food, and that causes conflict at, for example, family get togethers, where there's pressure to eat unhealthily. You could have a normal weight woman that has an addiction to health food (that can happen, believe it or not). A character's weight can be just a background thing that doesn't really come into the story at all, or it can be a major point of contention, depending on what you're looking for.

Hair/eye color:

If you haven't picked an ethnicity for your character, now would be a good time to start thinking about it. If your character has naturally blonde hair and blue eyes, then it wouldn't make much sense to make them of African descent. Otherwise, this is one of those things that, in my experience, rarely changes during the development of a character.

This is another chance to present physical contrasts, this time in colors. You can do dark hair and light eyes, or light hair and dark eyes. If you want your character to be particularly striking, you can choose an unusual eye color, or give them a different color for each eye. You can also be more creative with hair; in a fantasy world setting, you can give them a strange color of hair. In a real-life setting, you can have it dyed. You can even give them no hair at all.
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The Perks of Being the Neatfreak

Okay, so, sharing a house with my new in-laws wasn't quite what I dreamed of when I imagined getting married. And it's had some challenges. One of the main ones being the fact that clutter seriously detracts from my peace of mind, and my new family is very relaxed about clutter. Meaning, there's a healthy collection of it.

Being me, it drove me crazy that the sink wasn't empty of dirty dishes. And that there was always a stack of towels waiting to be washed. None of which is bad, I'd like to point out. Obviously people live here, and things get dirty. But at first, it seriously bothered me. I'd been dreaming about having my own home for a long time, and being able to arrange things how I wanted, to run a successful household the way I wanted. It wasn't going to happen that way, since there was already an established family here when we moved in.

It took me a while to get used to being the person that cleans up when no one else will. It annoyed me mightily for a good long while, too. But now that I've settled in, I've discovered that there are some perks to this.

1: If no one really cares where stuff goes, you get to pick where it belongs.

If they're okay with just dropping that blanket there, then it's a pretty safe bet they don't care if you fold it up and place it nicely across the back of the couch, either. If they're okay with dropping their shoes in the middle of the floor, then why would they complain about you moving them two feet in one direction, onto a rack, with all the other shoes?

2: You get to decide when/if to do the chores.

If they don't get done every day otherwise, that means you can pick if you do them that day or not. No one's going to complain, because they're used to it not getting done every day anyway. If you want to take a little day off, you can do it without getting nagged at for it.

3: Being the one that cleans up gives you a kind of power.

If you're feeling vengeful that day, you can decide to let them wallow in their own messes. Let them clean it up or deal with it for a while. (Not saying this is a good idea, FYI - you probably shouldn't do that.)You also know where everything is, because you put it there. If they want something, but don't know where it is, they kinda have to ask you.

4: Being the cleaner-upper makes the place you live yours in a way that no one else can lay claim to.

You do the dishes. You keep up with laundry. You clean the kitchen/living room/bathroom. Caring for this place is your responsibility, since it won't get done the way you want otherwise. It gives you a feeling of ownership that you just don't have when someone else cleans it. You scrubbed that counter - your counter. You wiped down that faucet - your faucet. You organized those cabinets, that shelf, cleaned out that refrigerator, rinsed the sink, ran the dishwasher - your blood, sweat, and tears went into this. It's yours, in a unique way.

5: Knowing what you've got and where you've got it saves money.

Instead of buying another box of that cereal, you already know that you have an unopened one in the back of a cabinet. So you don't waste money on something you don't need. You know how much food you have, and what kind, so you know what needs to be eaten up before it goes to waste. There's a frozen chunk of meat in the freezer that's going to get freezer burned if you don't eat it soon, so you don't buy that fresh piece at the store.

6: It makes you feel more at home in a strange place.

It really does. At first, I only hid in the bedroom, because that was the only place that felt like it was mine. I still do that a lot, but since I started taking over care of the bathroom and kitchen, I'm almost as comfortable in those places. I know where things are, I know where they go and what needs to be done, and because I'm spending more time there, I'm more comfortable.

7: And last, but not least - you may be able to guess that I ate the ice cream, but you can't prove it.

Yeah, the level in the carton may be different, but you don't know that I ate it. Why? Because I did the dishes! If there was ever an incriminating bowl and spoon, they've long since been washed, and probably even put away. So, if you eat ice cream, and leave your dishes where you sat, or in the sink, I'll know you ate the ice cream. But you may never know if I did. 

How We Met Pt. 4

Okay, it's been rather longer since the last post than usual, but that's because we've been working on a double-length one. ;)
Laurel Most of our conversations continued on Facebook; in fact, we only exchanged a total of nine messages on the site where we initially met. We met in late September, and I was cautiously happy with my new friend, despite how worked up I would get over our disagreements, until December.

I had seen that he was building a new computer, and trying to sell his old one. I got a message from him Christmas Day, telling me that he wanted to give my family a gift, and wondering if we would like a copy of The Sims 3, since he'd gotten a free copy with the parts for his new computer. I protested at first, partially because I really didn't think it necessary for him to give us a gift, and partly because I would have to give him our address in order for him to do so. Eventually, after mentioning it to my parents, I gave him our address. He said he would send it, and some workout videos that he hoped would help me with my martial arts training.

In the weeks leading up to the arrival of the game, he grew very concerned that there might not be someone to bring the package inside when it arrived. I assured him that someone was always home; it was why I never had a house key. But he persisted, and I warned my family that the game was coming, and he wanted someone to bring it in when it got there. I thought it seemed strange; he was generally so relaxed about everything. I dismissed it, though it did make me wonder.

So when the package came, no one was more surprised than I was. My mother, when she let me in that night, demanded to know why it took a fifty-pound box to send a game and workout videos. At that point, my brain slowed to a crawl. When we opened it, to reveal his old computer, along with a packet of papers titled "Seth's Manual To Your New Computer (Well, Sorta) my brain seemed to stop entirely.

Up to that point, I'd known, in a vague sort of way, that he was a real person. That he wasn't just text on a screen. But when that box was opened in front of me, he suddenly seemed very real. And that was when I first recognized that I was truly afraid.

This wasn't some abstract person that only existed in our conversations. This was a real, live person. A person who I'd met on a dating site, and who had just sent my family, who he'd never even met, an expensive gaming computer.

At that point, I realized what was going to happen. I knew enough of him to know that he wouldn't shy away from commitment to a relationship; we'd met on a dating site, he was looking for a relationship. I knew he'd ask for some kind of commitment from me, sooner or later, if our relationship continued to progress. I didn't realize, until his old computer, covered in stickers, and a copy of his first book were right in front of me, what that meant.

It scared me spitless.

And I didn't know what to do. I didn't know what I would say when that moment came. I wasn't sure of anything - except that if he did ask me to take the next step in our relationship, then I needed to know what I was going to say, and that I hadn't the foggiest idea what that answer should be.
Seth I didn’t send the computer as an attempt to flirt or ‘buy’ a relationship, honest. I fully intended it to be a gift and a gift alone (albeit a surprise one), and I did actually send that copy of the Sims 3, even if it wasn’t alone in that box. I was actually surprised when she told me her family now thought I loved her, or something to that effect; that certainly hadn’t been my intentions, and it hadn’t even crossed my mind that the gift could be taken that way. Moreover, I was actually beginning to fall under the impression that Laurel was… less than interested in me.

See, over the last month or so we had been talking back and forth, and during that time we had encountered some… heated disagreement. In fact, heated might not be a strong enough word for how those discussions had gone. She had been mad. Very mad. Surprisingly so. And because of that I had come under the impression that she was, perhaps, not as into me as I had hoped she would be. There were even a few times I thought she was the exact opposite: very much not into me and possibly even in a full on dislike of my person. We had begun disagreements about nearly every major aspect of life, from fashion to church to even writing itself; relationship was the furthest thing from my mind at that point, I just didn’t want her to hate me. So, when I sent that computer out I did so with the purest intention of doing something nice. I did not expect it to be a jumpstart to our relationship. There was no way I could have known that, some months later, that computer would become the very lifeline between us as we talked long distance.

At that time Christmas was upon us, which, as luck would have it, is the busiest time of year for me at my job. I didn’t have much time to talk to Laurel, and because of that I felt we were… growing apart. Or, perhaps more accurately, not growing closer. It was not that I was ignoring her or anything so callous, but that I simply did not have time to talk, and when she messaged me I could often spare only a few minutes at a time. Whether that was frustrating her or not, I didn’t know, but I did know it was not helping our chances of becoming more than friends. That’s why, as soon as Christmas was ended, I tried to renew our talks. I still didn’t know if we had any chance at being more than friends, but I had spent too long in the online dating world, and taken up too many dead end talks to simply give up because things did not at once look sunny. So we started to talk again, and I did my best to keep our conversations light and friendly, and far from the more difficult topics we had encountered. I was not always successful, as she had a habit of pulling me back towards those topics that caused friction, but the more we talked, the more amicable our disagreements became. For the time being, at least. Laurel I've always had a tendency to get worked up over things that other people dismissed easily. That combined with my fear made for a very interesting dynamic. One that, I now know, confused Seth mightily.

Adding still more depth to my already muddled mind, was the fact that I thought I might want a relationship with him someday, and predicted that he would, too - possibly before I was ready for it. At this point in our friendship, I knew he was one of my closest friends. I knew I was already growing very attached to him, and I missed talking to him when he was busy. And because of the way our personalities clicked, I knew there was a much better chance of a successful one with him.

I began evaluating him as a possible mate in the only way I knew how. Purposely bringing up the things we disagreed on. Probably not the best of plans, to just randomly spring an emotionally loaded topic on him first thing in the morning. But that was what I did, and rather frantically, too.

What I didn't realize at the time was that the reason I was so adamant about dealing with those subjects, and so dogged about bringing them up and hashing them out to the very end, was because a part of me wanted him to ask that question, and wanted to say yes. I, however, was very active in squashing that. I refused to admit that I was developing feelings for him, or allow them to influence my decision, because I knew what a mistake it would be if my heart was captured before my mind was convinced.

But my feelings did influence other decisions.

It might have been a mistake; I knew I was taking a chance, doing it. But I'd seen his books, and realized that they didn't have artwork for the covers. His birthday was coming up, and I wanted to do something for him - as a gift. So I spent weeks on a piece of digital art, intending to give it to him over Facebook on his birthday.

I blew my cover, of course (pardon the pun). I was talking to him about cover art, trying to make sure his blank covers weren't deliberately absent of art, when he mentioned commissioning artwork for his books. I told him not to do that, and then had to explain why. For a man who claims he misses subtleties (he does) he picked up on that at once. Seth She was insane. Or crazy. Or some parts both, I wasn’t sure; but she wasn’t normal, and I was sure of that. See, I had been doing my best to carry out a friendly dialogue with Laurel, something where we both could be amicable and without strife; but no matter how hard I tried, it seemed like every conversation was, eventually, pushed into some huge hot-button topic that invariably ended with me leaving her in a steam. Not on purpose, of course. I only became aware much later of certain personality traits that triggered those responses (and that I was only partially at fault for them); but at the time, it seemed like she truly was a ticking time bomb, waiting to go off if I said the wrong thing.

This led me to believe (wrongly) that she either disliked me very much, or, at the least, considered me an antagonistic friend. You know, the sort you keep around because they’re a challenge, not because you truly enjoy being around them. I did not in my wildest thoughts imagine she was considering me for more than friendship. I wasn’t even sure she wanted to keep talking to me.

That is why I was so confused when she suddenly started talking to me about cover art for my book, and subsequently told me she wanted to make one for me as a birthday gift. It may seem innocent enough to an outsider, but to me, it was like hearing the sky was green or the ocean was red. This was a girl that I had, on multiple occasions, infuriated so much with my debating her that she actually ended entire conversations in anger, and sometimes was mad for days at a time. Hearing that she wanted to do something nice for me, and do it from a place of friendship, was almost stunning. It was then that I began to realize that I had been understanding Laurel quite wrongly. That is not to say I had suddenly figured her out or anything, but that I began to see all those debates and heated words in a different light. Maybe this wasn’t a girl looking for a fight. Maybe she was looking for more than a friend.

How We Met Pt. 3

Laurel I don't remember much about waiting for the second message, except that I was excited and I was hoping he'd keep writing to me. When it came, I was even more excited. I felt like I knew him. It felt so much like I was talking to my best friend, or a male version of myself. And I was scared.

I knew, even after only two messages, that there was more potential for a relationship there than I had expected to find. At all. Ever. I knew that I got shaky and a little cold when I thought about it, but I wrote that off as excitement. And I was excited. But I now recognize just how much of it was fear. At first, fear that he'd stop talking to me, and this chance would slip away. There was far more to it than that, but at that moment, that was the only one I had a label for. It would take me a long time to put names and explanations with the others.

My excitement grew as I wrote back, a longer message than before. I had a feeling, even then, that that would be the template for our communications. And our messages grew longer and longer. It started taking several days for me to respond, there was so much to respond to, so much to say. Our conversations quickly went into deeper subjects, subjects where we had differences.

It was around that time I discovered that I was afraid. I could see where our relationship could go, and it frightened me.

My ex-boyfriend and I had had many major differences. Any differences frightened me at that point, especially in someone I was considering as a possible future mate. Even if I wouldn't admit to myself that's what I was doing. So we debated, argued, there was even a section in our messages that was dubbed "the debate section." I would get worked up and angry while writing my half of that section. The subject didn't matter - I wasn't defending it because the subject mattered to me, although it did - I was defending it because I really liked him, a part of me wanted it to be more than a friendship because of how we clicked together, and the idea of differences between us terrified me. I wanted the differences to vanish so I could relax and not be afraid.

We only exchanged nine messages over the site where we met. I tried to send a message one day, and the site wouldn't let me send it. I didn't know what to do. I didn't want him to think that I was ignoring him, but my message wouldn't send. So my best friend suggested that I find him on Facebook.

One of my cardinal rules of online dating was to not friend random people on Facebook. I'd had creepy people I had just met ask me to friend them, and I didn't want some stranger knowing so much about me. I'd also made myself a rule when I joined Facebook - never friend someone I hadn't met in real life.

But I didn't have much choice. And besides - it was just a message. So I looked him up. I knew what his first name was; he'd told me that and the titles of his books, so I looked up his books to get his last name, and matched his dating site profile picture with pictures on his Facebook page. and then I sent a message, telling him what was going on. Not long after, we became friends on Facebook.
Seth Long messages are not a common thing in the online dating world, in my experience. Most people, whether by habit, or lack of knowledge, or simply being too shy, respond in the manner similar to texting, with short responses and curt replies that leave much to the imagination and little to the task of actually learning about someone you’ve just met. That is why I took not just a short time in my responses to Laurel, but went beyond that and perhaps entered the realm of ‘Gee, this guy sure does talk a lot’; because I knew that, were I on the other end of the computer screen reading a message, I would want those long, detailed responses.

So it was that, not even a month after we met, our messages had bloomed well beyond the average chapter length of a novel, and often took hours, sometimes days, to respond to. That is why I wasn’t worried when I didn’t hear anything from Laurel for a couple days. After all, it took me at least two before I could finish a full response, and I made it daily habit to write; I had no idea if she did the same, and I certainly wouldn’t expect anything quicker.

What I was surprised to find, coming home one evening after a long day of work, was a message waiting for me on Facebook. Now, I had learned Laurel’s true name before that message was sent, so it’s not as if I wondered who it was that had messaged me; but I had also gathered from our messaging back and forth that Laurel was an extremely private and quiet person, and that something so bold as sending an unsolicited message on Facebook was not quite in her character. I did a double-take when I saw it, then perhaps a triple-take, if there is such a thing. Immediately I wondered if she had fallen to some sort of hack, so out of place it seemed. But when I read her message, still written with the same thought and elegance that her others had been, I knew it was genuinely her. I immediately accepted her friend request and got to work on my own reply, promising that I would send it through Email from then on.

Now, here was where the tricky parts of our back and forth began to arise. We had, as it were, reached a sort of ‘known’ stage in our talks. That is, I knew a lot of ‘stuff’ about her, and she knew a lot about me, but we didn’t really ‘know’ each other. I took this engagement on Facebook as a chance to change that. We could use the IM system to message each other in real time and fill in that lack of personal flair that pre-written messages brought.

I was both parts nervous and excited. That first conversation can be a very stressful thing. Would she still be detailed in a regular conversation? Was she nice and patient? Or was she completely different when the situation become more personal? I would be lying if I said Laurel ended up being exactly the same as I had envisioned her through our long messages, but that is not for the worse; she was much more engaging and friendly than I had hoped, and she made up for lack of detail (which no one could sustain in one to one conversation) with intelligent response and questions. I was excited! She was more than I had hoped for, and she seemed genuinely interested in keeping our conversation going. I immediately ceased most of the ongoing messaging I had on the dating site with other girls. Few of those conversations were promising anyways, but even had they been, Laurel was proving herself more interesting than any I had met in my online journey and I knew she deserved the most of my time.

So it was that we moved over to Facebook and our talks became more interesting. We had our differences, but through all our messages they had seemed minor. That, however, was soon to change.

How We Met Pt. 2

Laurel I didn't realize it at first, but I was looking for something when I decided not to message first. I predicted that he would message me, and when, and why it would take so long. I was prepared to be wrong. But my prediction was based on two things - his profile, and my own assumptions. Based on his profile, I assumed he'd be like me. And since I felt an unfamiliar prickle of excitement when I saw his profile, then surely he would have felt something, too. I'd spent months trying to find what I saw in his profile. We were so alike, even in how we presented ourselves to the world. I knew precisely how rare this type of person was; and if, indeed, we matched in that, then surely he would recognize it too.

It was a rather faulty way to make a judgment, but when I saw the message in my inbox, my instincts were proven right - at least to some extent. And something else, too. If I was right about how he would go about contacting me, then that meant I was right about something else. He was like me. A lot like me.

I pulled up the message, and the first thing that struck me was the length. It wasn't a short "Hi" or "How are you?" it was a full-length message, with actual questions. Questions that told me he had read all the way through my profile, and was paying attention when he did. Intelligent, thoughtful questions, using the information I'd already given in my profile as a starting point.

This was the kind of message I could respond to. It was the kind of message I'd been hoping for. This one could communicate, and well, through text. He thought before he spoke, and when he did speak it wasn't mindless drivel or dead-end questions. He asked because he wanted the answers, not just because he wanted to talk to me. This message was proof of what he said in his profile - he was a writer. I'd spoken to others before who claimed that, but whose writing skills informed me that, if they did write, they weren't very serious about it. That meant he was also telling the truth. Another point in his favor.

I knew when I saw how long the message was that I was going to respond. I suppose I could even say that I knew I'd respond when I read his profile the first time. The sight of the message didn't surprise me. What did surprise me was the fact that he was three hours ahead of me, and he hadn't sent anything before I went to bed the night before. And I had stayed up later than I intended, hoping. That meant he had thought long and hard about something. I guessed it was what to say, since his message was so well-written.

I dismissed that from my mind, except for the determination to answer in a way that meant he wouldn't have wasted his time. And I wrote back, in the few hours before I had to leave for work. I've never been particularly good at asking other people questions about themselves. I've always done much better when they volunteer such information to me, and all that's required of me is to sit and listen. But I noticed right away that he seemed far more interested in asking questions about me than he was in offering the same information about himself. In that, he was also different. And that made me curious.

I read my message several times, checking for punctuation and spelling errors, and then clicked send.

I went to work that day feeling excited, and a little nervous.
Seth In all honesty, I probably should have been more excited to wake up the next day. After all, the chance that I had sent a message to my future wife is an exciting prospect. But when I woke the next day I had nothing more than the general ‘everyday’ feeling on me. I had sent dozens of messages that never got returned on various online dating sites; the odds weren’t in my favor that I had received a response. That is why I didn’t check my email that morning. I should have, surely, but I did not. It was a game, almost: how long could I hold out until I saw whether my time had been worth its spending? I lost that game more times than not, but… I also had a feeling about this one, a feeling that she was a little different from all the others I had messaged. When I at last checked my email that around noon I found… nothing. Nothing at all.

I was disappointed. I wondered if she might not have thought the message worth responding to, or maybe had not even read it all. What I did not think of, at first, was that she lived in Oregon and I in Ohio, which meant that she was three hours behind me. That was why I, if I had waited just another hour, would have had a much better start to my day than I actually did; but I had work to do, and I was off before I ever received her response, wondering why exactly it was I wasted my time on the online world.

It wasn’t until much later, when I finally got home, that I realized my mistake. I had a message waiting for me! I was excited! But not all of my apprehension was gone. Why had she taken so long to respond? (Or, long as I thought it was, though it had been only a short while for her). What if she had just replied that she wasn’t interested? What if she had written a snarky reply? These may sound like unfounded, pessimistic fears, but I had experienced them all at least once during my time. Expecting the worst had become a sort of second nature when dealing with these unknown faces. I finally logged in to my account sometime that evening. I was a little nervous to check my messages, as I had received not just Laurel’s reply, but a few other messages as well (you would be amazed at how many people send strange things on the internet). I recognized the other messages as being unworthy my time right away, for they were all titled with some variation of ‘hi’ which was a universal sign for ‘not trying too hard’. Then there was Laurel’s. She hadn’t changed the tag of the message, so I had no inkling as to what was inside. I prepared for the worst as I opened it.

What I found, instead, was everything I had hoped for in a response. She had answered, as best she could, every question I had sent her, even adding a couple of her own; her responses had been detailed, thoughtful, and she had added things I had not even asked about to offer more info of herself; and she had done all of her answers and questions with proper grammar! She wanted to talk! More than that, she knew HOW to talk (or write, more appropriately) and had not felt the need to hide that from me. That was exciting! My heart jumped a bit. After all, I had sent dozens of messages out with similar detail to the one I sent her, only to receive limited, one line responses to my questions, or short responses that had nothing to do with the questions asked. Having them all replied to properly, and with thought, was something I was not used to at all.

I did not at once know what to do. She had replied with a message just as long as the one I had written her; it was practically a chapter of a book on its own, without my adding anything new to it. But I knew that, if this girl was really something special, then length wouldn’t matter to her. She would reply anyways. So I began the process of answering, hoping that I could come up with new and interesting inquiries for her, without sounding like I was listing off a checklist of requirements to date me. Though, knowing her now as well as I do, I doubt she would have been so offended by that. When at last I had come up with a reasonable amount of new material to give her, I had passed into an entire second page of a Word document. Two pages and we had only just met! If she hadn’t been scared by the length of my first message, I was going to give it at least one more try. I do not even remember what time it was when I sent off that second message, only that I had worked on it for a couple hours, and that I had ignored some of the work I ought to have done… and that I did not care for either, because I had found a girl who might yet fill the great yearning in my heart. I think I spent the rest of that day smiling, though when anyone asked why, I could not give them a great answer beyond: “I found a friend”.

How We Met

As requested, the story, told from two viewpoints, of how we met.
Seth Five years. That’s how long I’d been ‘online’ trying my hand at finding that perfect someone, a someone that had, up until then, eluded me at home. Five years of meeting nice (and not so nice) young ladies from various parts of the U.S., and even a scammer or two. There were dozens of attempts at conversation, a handful of friendships, and even two full blown relationships, both of which failed after some months. I had been hurt a couple times, I had been happy a few more, but over five years of trying without any lasting success… I had become tired. Tired of starting over, beginning conversations with someone I’d never met before, trying to learn about a new person only to have it lead to nothing. I can only imagine the number of ‘first messages’ I’d sent out, many never to be responded to; and of the few that garnered a response, most were of the single sentence kind, which often left me keenly aware of how incompatible we would be.  It was an exercise of failure, and failure that was made more disheartening by the fact that, should I succeed, in theory I would become very happy… and it eluded me.

So there I was, tired and somewhat weary of dead end conversations with nice, but not right, girls that would never lead anywhere. To give some backstory of my journey, understand this: I began my search within a 50 mile radius of my home (which is in Ohio) and moved out from there, checking out various profiles and young ladies in an expanding ring. By the time I came to Laurel’s profile, I was searching in Oregon. Yes, Oregon. I had expanded all the way from Ohio to Oregon. I was very, very near to the point of just giving up; after all, there wasn’t much more ‘land’ left to expand in.

To say I was hopeful when I clicked on Laurel’s profile would be lying. I had clicked through dozens, if not a couple hundred profiles that day. I had not found a single one worth sending a message to. I assumed this would be yet another one. But I was wrong.

The first thing that caught my eye was how eloquent and well-spoken her profile was, and, as a writer myself, that drew me in a way that pictures never could. Moreover, her obvious faith and strength of conviction, combined with how much we had in common (both homeschooled, both writers, both prone to introversion and many other similar things) made me pause. Had I found someone? Had I found someone worth messaging?

That may sound crass. After all, there was a person on the other end of that profile; but after so many messages and so many profiles without any luck, I was beginning to have trouble seeing it. Still, this one was different. It drew me in, and, despite my pessimism, I was actually seeing the person on the other side, even if the picture was incomplete.

But there was a problem. It was late at night, almost midnight in fact, and I was tired from a long day of work. A part of me wanted to simply say ‘this would be another wasted message’, close the computer, and then go to bed. But another part of me, a stronger part, one that I perhaps can’t even explain, said that I needed to send a message, even if my hope was small that I’d get a return. For about an hour I let her profile sit there open, staring at the words, trying to decide if I ought to write a message to this interesting, thoughtful young lady that had obviously put so much time into making sure everyone who viewed her profile could get as much info as possible about her life and who she was. Finally, after some deliberation (and perhaps an episode of Supernatural or two) I decided I would write her.

The message I wrote was not incredibly long, though it was longer than I usually would do. I had reached a point where I, being a writer, had simply given in to the fact that a woman would either accept my long-winded writing, or else was not for me; so I was detailed in my explanations, lengthy in my questions, and did my best to scare her off (assuming she was not quite so eager to write as I). After reading, re-reading, and the reading the message again to be sure I had not missed anything or made any mistakes. When I was satisfied, I clicked the send button, quickly closed out the profile, and headed off to bed, both parts nervous and subdued, because five years of online dating had made me less than hopeful that she would respond. I went to sleep that night completely unaware that I had sent the message that would change my life forever. Laurel
I joined the dating site at the suggestion of my best friend. She said she'd met some nice people on there, even if none of them had become the kind of relationship she wanted, and thought that might be a good start for me.

I was about a year and a half removed from my first relationship, an abusive one, that ended shortly before his incarceration for molesting minors. I was more than a little frightened, although I didn't realize it at the time. I rarely left home, and wasn't exactly a social butterfly anyway. I realized it was unlikely that I'd meet anyone in person, and family members were pressuring me to meet random guys they thought I'd like, so I went ahead and joined.

I'd been a member for a few months, with very little success. Most of the men that contacted me sent me a few words, a single sentence, or, if I was lucky, a whole paragraph. I loved to write, still do, and find that it's the easiest way for me to communicate. I knew that if an online relationship were to work, whoever was on the other end had to be similar in nature. So the short messages never ended well. I'd had slightly better conversations with a few, but they didn't seem to be getting anywhere. No one had a personality that clicked with mine, and none of the longer conversations were really bringing me any closer to anyone. I was starting to get frustrated, because even using the search parameters for men who met my standards I found almost nothing. Which quickly turned into nothing, because the one that matched my search criteria turned out to be arrogant and annoying.

I didn't put a whole lot of stock in the search option, because it left a lot to be desired, and didn't cover much. So mostly I browsed profiles. Occasionally I would send a message to say hello if someone caught my interest, which happened so rarely it's hardly worth mentioning. Occasionally I would get a message from some guy commenting on some aspect of my profile, usually my picture, which I quickly learned not to answer. If they couldn't find anything better to say, they must not have read my profile. Surely someone who matched me would read it and find something more intelligent and insightful to say than "hey gorgeous."

I was browsing profiles again one night, on a binge because I was bored and hadn't logged in for a while, when I got the notification. Someone had viewed my profile. As was my habit, I immediately went and looked at his to see if he was interesting.

I knew at once that he was different. His profile was long, though not as long as mine, and (a big deal for me) things were spelled correctly and with good punctuation. I could see his sense of humor come out in places, and I didn't find it distasteful or crude. I sat and stared at it for a few moments, thinking. He was a writer. He was obviously intelligent. He loved Lord of the Rings. And he had a compatible sense of humor. He was on a Christian dating site, so he also had that in his favor.

If it was me on the other side, I'd send a message. But, also if it was me, I would spend some time working on it. So, feeling almost as if I knew him already, I decided that I would give him time in case that was the way he worked. If I didn't have a message from him in the morning, I'd send him one myself. I went to bed, hoping that he'd say something. I knew that if he didn't, I wasn't going to pass up the chance.

The next morning, there was a message waiting for me.

I'm Ba-ack!

Sort of.

The last few weeks have been spent doing things like finishing plans for a wedding, getting married, moving, flying across the country, and meeting new family members. Until a few days ago, I didn't even have access to a computer long enough to write anything. Sad, right?

Anyway, the move is (mostly) complete. And, as promised, I quit my regular job to help my new husband with his, which gives me rather more time than I had before. Now that I'm done opening boxes that I don't remember what I put in them, anyway.

It's all been a rather dizzying adventure. Having my husband tell me to "put this with the X-box" and then ask me if I knew what one was was definitely one of the funnier moments. (I didn't know, by the way.) Another funny moment was when I realized that his idea of decorating means everything in black, white, and a rather boring shade of brown, which, to be fair, looks nice with greens. (He only bought the red sheets when my mother and I visited last year.)

I also met my sister-in-law, a cute little bundle of chattering nine-year-old. Who has proceeded to follow me pretty much everywhere, presenting me with such handmade treasures as rubber band bracelets in every conceivable color combination.

I also met two of my three brothers-in-law, but since they didn't follow me around everywhere talking about Shopkins and Minecraft, I don't know much about them yet. Except that they like sports. Which, if you know me, is a laughable combination. The first hockey game I watched (tried to watch) ended with me trying to figure out which team was which, because they were both wearing the same colors.

I've learned some rather valuable things as well, such as cooking for two people is different than cooking for six; never take a dresser or closet for granted; if you want leftovers eaten, sometimes you have to do it yourself; and if you can't rid of it, organize it so it at least looks decent.

I'm sure I'll have plenty of things to rant about in the future, but that's all for this week! I've got a big, heavy dresser I need to prepare for.