Sunday 29 April 2012

I love you; I love you not!

How many times have you heard people say 'The perfect man for me doesn't exist?' I'd say plenty. With the few lucky ones, who have/live with their soul mate, it's still the exception of the rule.
The beauty of writing fiction is that you can create your characters like you want them to be. Men oozing with sex appeal, humour, intellect and a voice that has you dizzy as soon as they open their mouth. You can create a plot where the most popular girl or the woman in your clique doesn't get the man, but the ugly duckling instead. You can make the arsehole go through hell, for everything people did to you in the past, even kill them if needed. The possibilities are huge.
In No Wings Attached, I created Tom, the perfect man; he's good looking, yet down to earth; he has buckets full of humour, he's smart, warm and caring, he's got a wonderful best friend, he loves cooking and eating and he lives in my dream home. (I hate him for that!)
Candlelight Sinner has Sam, and damn, I adore him! He has this aura of danger around him, tattoos and he's fit. A typical bad guy you can't help but like, despite being obnoxious he's a massive flirt.
It was a lot of fun spending time with both men, as different as they are; they made me laugh.

In my current WIP, I'm making my main characters suffer. It's wonderful and strangely enjoyable having finally the chance for pay back. But there's a pit fall: because I don't like the people the characters are based on, I am in danger of making them unlikeable. Not on purpose, though. It's the closeness to the real events that makes it more difficult. Creating characters you want to see happy in the end, is much easier. I know the characters of this book will be in pain, tortured, end up unhappy, but I need the reader to care for them to begin with. They are victims after all. While writing, I realised that I made one character look like a silly cow, though it's my opinion on her, if the reader wants to slap her, I've lost him or her. Realistic is all very well, but if one can't relate to her, I didn't do a good job.
Then again, I have a soft spot for Gary, who is a shy nerd, and has one of the supporting roles. So here's hope.

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