It’s Tuesday. I’m bloggin’.  What am I gonna blog about?  Characterization.  And in the process I’m going to tell you WAY more about this writer’s brain than you EVER wanted to know.

I blogged over at Southern Fried Chicas yesterday on why I watch so much TV.   I’ll save you the trouble of popping over there (but feel free if you want)…I watch TV because of characterization and good writing.  Ring any bells with anyone?

Yeah, pretty much the same reason we read books.

I’ve said this before and I’ll say it again.  Characterization is KING (and queen and everything else).  If you don’t write characters I care about, I could care less what your book is about. I won’t read it. I won’t finish it (admittedly most books I don’t finish aren’t wall-bangers, they’re MEH which IMO is the kiss of death.  FWIW Voice ranks right up there with characterization in equal amounts).

So what does this have to do with the crazy workings of my brain?

It all started about six months ago–maybe a little longer. I got sick and I spent a lot of time in bed and I was so sick I couldn’t even read.  So I watched a Lot of TV and spent a Lot of time….in my head.   Eventually, this man joined me.  He had a wife and three sons.  He’d been married a long time.  He was a sheriff in a small Texas community.  A man of standing. A man people looked up to.  I spent a LOT of time with him.  I ran different scenarios but in every one, his wife of MANY  years had left him for no good reasons.  Then I spent time with each of his sons, running different scenarios, talking to them.  Getting to know them.  I have to say, most of the time, I HEAR dialogue when I write, I don’t SEE it like a movie.  I did this time though (and with the Bluebonnet stories) Over the last six or so months we’ve all talked…a lot.

*glances around for men in white coats*

I realized on Saturday that maybe if i wrote it all down, they’d stop talking and I could go back to work on my other wip. So I started writing and twenty pages later, they still won’t shut up.  Ahem…..I also realized (yesterday) that over the last six months these haven’t been random conversations.  They’ve been building backstory.  And except for Elle, I know my characters inside and out and inside again  :yes:

So there you have it.  As a reader, I probably coudn’t/can’t tell you the names of my fave characters but I can tell you the books and the authors (Jude Deveraux’s Wishes because even though the heroine is constantly put upon and browbeaten and manipulated she never comes across as Too Stupid To Live.  And pretty much anything by SEP).

So….what are your favorite characters….and why?  And am I the only crazy writer out there?

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