Keepin’ It All Straight

A friend once asked me how I keep all the different characters in my stories straight, how I keep from getting them all confused.

My reply came swiftly.

You have more than one friend, right? Of course you do. You probably have many friends. Each of them have very different lives with many different things going on. Do you get them confused? Do you mistake one friend for another or forget which friend is going through what? No. You keep them all straight. You remember that Pam got a new job while Brian is battling cancer and Joe just got a divorce. You remember these things because they’re real people with real lives. That’s how I see my characters. I created them from nothing so I know everything about them. If I live to be a hundred and create a thousand characters, I’ll always keep them straight and be able to tell them apart because to me, they’re real.