The Joy of Recasting Fictional Characters #AmWriting
My blogging break is over and I’m back!
My festive period was filled with writing, being an unpaid taxi driver to my teenage daughters, eating too many Quality Street chocolates, hugging my dog, reading some fab books and waiting for my new writing desk to arrive.
I have been working on manifesting my own writing desk downstairs in the living room for five years (has to be downstairs as we have a small house) and had given up on my manifesting skills. For five long years I have been writing posts in the bath, in bed, at my dressing table and in the garden. Then my loved one suggested (after a few glasses of wine and whilst wearing a Christmas cracker hat) that I should have my own writing desk in the living room. I could hardly contain my excitement and had to refrain from rushing out into the street to dance. When it came I cried over it and then wrote 3,567 words on it as a mini test drive.
Keep working on manifesting readers!
Happy new year to all of you lovely creative people and I hope you have lots of success in 2020.
I think this is going to be OUR year, BlondeWriteMore readers. Big things are coming for all of us.
You heard it here first about incoming success. In a few months time when you are basking in creative success think back to this blog post.
Today I want to talk about how recasting a fictional character brought me so much JOY over Christmas.
Some of our characters are simply cast into the wrong stories. I like to use the word ‘cast’ as it makes me feel like I am in the theatre world.
In times of creative struggle we fail to see this. It is so easy to reach for the delete button when you don’t feel a character is working for you or your story.
Recasting shelved characters helps to find them the right tale.
Over Christmas I went back through my old files full of shelved stories, took out a character and inserted her into a new story. It was like someone had turned on the lights in my story. She hit the ground running and knew what she had to do with that handsome love interest.
Oh my goodness – it was quite a moment! I squealed from my armchair (my writing desk had not arrived by then) and then cracked open another tin of Quality Street chocolates in celebration. She’d found her story.
Good characters are hard to create and it is a shame to waste to let them gather dust in files.
When I think of my shelved story files I always think of this quote by Thomas Browne,
‘rough diamonds may sometimes be mistaken for worthless pebbles.’
Don’t write off old manuscripts because they might contain interesting and versatile characters.
What was interesting about this character was that when I ditched her original story I knew I would see her again. Back in 2017 I recall a strange feeling come over me as I dropped her story into my shelved story folder. At the time I assumed it was a sugar rush but looking back I don’t think it was. She was trying to tell me something,
I strongly believe we have unfinished business with certain characters.
I will be back on Tuesday with my first book review of 2020.
Lucy x
