Blaze Authors Blog » characters http://blazeauthors.com/blog Red Hot Reads Mon, 06 Sep 2010 10:00:27 +0000 http://wordpress.org/?v=2.8.4 en hourly 1 Voices in My Head http://blazeauthors.com/blog/2009/05/11/voices-in-my-head/ http://blazeauthors.com/blog/2009/05/11/voices-in-my-head/#comments Mon, 11 May 2009 10:00:45 +0000 Joanne Rock http://blazeauthors.com/blog/?p=630 There was a time when my husband made me feel a little self-conscious about my people watching. While I’m more of a quiet observer of life’s dramas, my husband tends to be a main character with a big, noisy role on the center stage. When he occasionally pulls me into the spotlight, I find it hard to shake off the observer role and spotlightjust BE. Sometimes I can’t help but look around and wonder what other people think as he sweeps me off my feet while window shopping at the mall or pulls our family into an impromptu conga line, or bellows a hip-hop song with the melodic cadence of a fifties love tune in the middle of a crowded street. If he catches me peering around at other people during these times, my husband asks, “What do you care what other people think?”

For awhile, I questioned if I was indeed too self-conscious. But with time and the wisdom age brings, I have learned that my caring what other people think is a core foundation of what makes me a writer. In fact, it’s one of the keenest skills I bring to the table. Because I’m not just wondering what other people think when my husband uses his Cheech and Chong accent at the McDonald’s drive thru in San Juan. cheech1I’m speculating about other peoples’ thoughts all the time. When I see an older couple arguing in a restaurant about something mundane—say, a disagreement about where the waitress said she hails from—I’m building a lifetime full of conflicts in my head. Within a few minutes, I’m seeing this little argument in the context of bigger issues that have been threading through their relationship from day one. Because we all know what the waitress said isn’t what their arguing about. They’re arguing about the fact he doesn’t listen. Or that she’s a know-it-all. Or both. Or vice versa.

Surely their argument is none of my business. But a lifetime of discreet nosiness has served me well. I’m sensitive to what other people think and feel. I can read body language from a hundred paces. And that’s a useful skill when I’m pulling together a character out of thin air. I’m so used to imagining scripts for people that I can churn up dialogue for fictional characters with ease.

Of course, sometimes I do take this interest too far. And it’s not while I’m writing the internal monologue for what a small child thinks of my husband as he lopes around the playground doing his Cha-Ka chaka1imitation from Land of the Lost. It’s when I’m tuned into Animal Planet, watching the guy tiger stalk the lady tiger. In my head, I can hear her telling him to back off. She’s got a litany of complaints a mile long about what she’s had to do that day to feed the young and hunt tricky antelope while the male has slept for eighteen hours straight. She’s in no mood for his antics and tells him so with a growl that would have scared off anything else in the animal kingdom… tigress

But when I start penning lines for tigresses, I know I’ve gone too far. Clearly, that’s the time to turn off my dialogue writer for the night and just BE.

***So am I the only one who thinks public eavesdropping is every bit as entertaining as reality TV? And are you more of an observer of life like me or do you enjoy hopping into that spotlight on a regular basis? I’m giving away a signed copy of my February Blaze, SHE THINKS HER EX IS SEXY, to a random poster.***

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