Saturday 16 February 2008

A Writer's Journal (8)

On Creating Characters

„We’re all works in progress on planet Earth, and no one of us possesses physical, emotional, spiritual, and psychological perfection. This should be true of our characters as well. No one wants to read about flawless characters. Since no reader is perfect, there is nothing more disagreeable than spending free time immersed in a story about an individual who leaps the tall buildings of emotion, psyche, body, and spirit in a single bound. Would anyone want a person like that as a friend, tediously wonderful in every way? Probably not. Thus, a character possessing perfection in one area should possess imperfection in another.”
- from: Elizabeth George, Write Away - One Novelist’s Approach to Fiction and The Writing Life, 2004, page 9.

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