Have you ever written a character with physical or mental disabilities? Describe them, and if there’s nothing major to speak of, tell us a few smaller ones.
Yes, I have. One of my characters is blind in one eye (following a rather tragic accident that I continually ret-con), and amongst my sailors I know I’ve got a few missing limbs.
For the most part, my characters make do. The character who is missing an eye hasn’t adapted–understandably. He’s a pilot by trade and has been grounded.
27. Along similar lines, do appearances play a big role in your stories? Tell us about them, or if not, how you go about designing your characters.
I’d like to say they don’t, but they do. Ish. I don’t devote large amounts of description (at once) to describing how my characters look, but I do have specific mental images for what my characters look like. It’s along the lines of, if someone were to play my character, who would it be? I like to have a mental image of what my character looks like, in order to describe some feature.
While I may know exactly what a character looks like, I don’t describe him or her as though you’re looking at a photograph. I prefer to describe in snippets, say, “rain dripped off of his aquiline nose” or something to that effect. Later I may mention the character’s eye color (if important, in one of my stories it is important to mention that several characters have the same coloring) or general build.
My thought is, we are largely visual beings. We perceive our world through what we see–why should our characters be any different?
26. Let’s talk art! Do you draw your characters? Do others draw them? Pick one of your OCs and post your favorite picture of him!
Do I draw my characters? Were the Red Sox cursed?
Well, yes, yes I do. I’ve drawn my characters for as long as I can remember. I’ve kept all of my old sketchbooks, and some, like Geoffrey, pop up every so often throughout those.
Fortunately, I don’t have my old sketchbooks with me, so you shan’t have to view any of those atrocious images. I’ll spare you that.
Alas, most of my favorite pictures of characters are in my sketchbooks, so you’ll have to make due with a few that I’ve got stored on my computer. They aren’t my favorites, but I like them nonetheless.
(C) Beth
Peter (2010)
And I’ll add more later…
25. Do any of your characters have pets? Tell us about them.
Not many of my characters do. Some, like Peter, have (severe) allergies, and thus can’t have pets (a trait I stole from myself) whereas others, like Geoffrey, have numerous ones at various points in their lives.
Geoffrey has a hedgehog named Milton. I’m not sure why, one day I just determined that a) he had a pet, b) it wasn’t a normal domesticated animal like a cat, dog or hamster, and c) it had a funny name. It hit me that he ought to have a hedgehog because it’s vaguely ridiculous, like him.
By and large, though, I don’t focus too much on whether or not my characters have pets. I actually think that Milton’s been left by the wayside–the presence of the hedgehog isn’t intrinsic to the plot, nor is it to Geoffrey’s character.
24. How willing are you to kill your characters if the plot so demands it? What’s the most interesting way you’ve killed someone?
I will kill a character in the first line of a story if the plot demands it.
I have, actually. And guess what? He is a main character, too, of my forever-in-progress RAF tale.
His death is the most brutal one that I’ve written–he dies of burns sustained when his Spitfire is gunned down. I don’t describe his death–no, it’s mentioned as the cause of death, but we aren’t in the cockpit with him as he receives these injuries. We aren’t in the hospital where he dies. We know he dies, we know how he dies, but we don’t see it, like his friends.
When it comes to character deaths, I’m not a ‘kill’em all’ sort of person. If the plot demands it, then yes, a character, even a primary character, will die. But I don’t kill off characters for the sake of killing off characters. I want the deaths to be poignant, I want them to affect the reader.
23. How long does it usually take you to complete an entire story—from planning to writing to posting (if you post your work)?
As long as it needs to.
I’ve written some stories and edited them to a good spot within hours–I wrote an entire story in one night, editing it the following morning. Other short stories take far longer–weeks, even spread over months. I don’t post them online, nor do I submit them for publication. I’m not happy-happy with them, so they don’t get anywhere. Yet.
I find that, in some cases, short stories just come to me, completely intact, so I need to write them out before I forget. Some, I need to coax out.
As for novels, well, I’ve only done the first draft of one, and that turned out rather poorly. I’m working on another, still in the planning stages. I’m always in the planning or research stages…
Ned Wolfe 