Does it ever happen to you where you’re wearing sunglasses and the sun hits them a certain way that lets you see your eye REALLY close up reflected in the lens? That happened to me today while commuting on the bus. It was like, “HELLO extreme closeup of my eye lash and eye”.
On a completely different note, I read advice that when writing a novel, you should always make your main character suffer…than suffer some more. You may think, “Is it really necessary to make your main character suffer?” Don’t worry gentlemen and ladies, you can not be charged with a felony for making your fictional characters suffer. And yes, it is necessary to make your character suffer. This technique is useful for gaining interest of the reader and making the storyline compelling. Let me give you an example. Read this:
Jonathan woke up on a glorious Saturday morning to find his mother prepared for him Honey Nut Cheerios with milk, his favorite. He smiled when he saw she wrote “I love you” on his napkin. A bird perched itself on the window and began to chirp. He ate a spoonful of cereal and turned on his mounted 130 inch plasma HD television to hear the cheery announcer say that weeks’ lottery numbers, which matched the numbers on his crisp, white ticket. He won 300,000,000 dollars.
now read this:
Jonathan woke up with a headache, feeling hungry. His mother stopped making him breakfast day after he entered middle school, around the time she got her second job. He got out of bed, stepping on a pen cap that pinched the arch of his foot. “Ouch”, he said. The bird that he had seen trying to fly for the past week was perched on the windowsill. Jonathan walked towards it, causing the bird, in effect, to jump. The bird couldn’t fly. Jonathan cried for hours. For days. Until the point where if he cried anymore, he would be morbidly dehydrated.
Now c’mon…which one of those stories is more interesting? Ok, both of those stories are pretty bad, but the second one gets us questioning “why does his mother need a second job?” “where is his father?” and “why does Jonathan have such a sick relationship with birds?”
In college, I also learned situations on sitcoms [situational comedy television shows] never work out. If the main character in a sitcom waits in line for concert tickets overnight, he is going to use the bathroom right before his turn and the tickets will be sold out. That’s just how it’s gunna’ be, yo.
On a completely different note, wanted to remind you that we only have one life to live…and yes I am talking about the soap opera, “One Life to Live” that you can find on ABC. We only have episodes of that show, so if you want to include other soap operas in our TV night next week, let me know.
Great examples! So true, the more we put our characters, the more our readers are attracted to them. I also think the more they go through, the more our readers learn about themselves.
Great post.
That’s really interesting. I never thought of that- that the readers learn more about themselves too. Thanks for reading!