When writing my first long story (about 150 pages), the biggest struggle was defining characters. It wasn’t that I didn’t know who my characters were and what I wanted them to do, it was how they engaged each other that made me pause to think.
My writing style is simple, think of things ahead of time, then just write away. I hardly go back over my writing to correct anything, unless it’s grammar. It’s the only way I can write. I’ve tried outlines and those shenanigans, but they never motivated me to write. Then again, I could just be a terrible writer.
There were 2 characters that were quite hard to write dialogues for. The goal was to have them become a team, and the only way was to build up a rapport of trust between the two. This was tricky, because I had gone over more of how they acted once they were friends rather than before friends. Thinking about my own friendships, it takes time to establish that. So I wonder, what if people met who already knew each other?
Seems like a silly thought, considering that humans can’t read hearts. Yet, there’s quotes like “love at first sight” that seem to say the opposite. As a “face reader”, haha I mean being able to tell who a person is quite quickly before knowing them (despite how little years I’ve lived), this logic makes sense, though I would think can also become “judging a book by its cover.” Think, this has already been proven when it comes to parasocial relationships with content creators. People think they know someone because they talk to a camera and show their face, yet it’s easy for some creators to be good actors since the motivation is of making money rather than being genuine. And so the audience is often just fooling themselves into believing what they want rather than really trying to understand who that content creator is.
As I was writing away for my 2 characters, it seemed frustrating how long it took for them to build trust and open up to each other. Especially since this was all on a “mission” assigned to them, meaning they had to do so quickly. Yet, I couldn’t speed up their interactions to be more trusting. Reminds me of a different part of the story I wrote, it was a funny interaction noting how the one character wanted to go to a theater because he hadn’t been since joining the “club”, and they needed to sleuth out bad people in that area, but the only show on was “dark romance” and so I had him sit through it despite being perturbed. All normal interactions that I can imagine in real life, anyway.
Now I have this question in mind. What if people could be best buds from a first encounter? Some extroverts are able to, but mostly the one’s who lack depth and who’s relationship probably isn’t built on trust. Otherwise, it’d be interesting.
As a last point for me to ramble about, there was this song that was on during a performance I was in, when I used to dance Ballet between 6-12 years old (love/hate relationship lol). The song started playing with an eerie ambiance, the singer began, “I… know… you… I walked with you once upon a dream.” Researching this song now comes up with the old Walt Disney movie Sleeping Beauty, and here it is, found it. A strange thing for a kid to watch, I still remember watching the performance on the TV backstage and being in awe because of how different a song it was. Still sounds so eerie.
Oh my gosh, now when watching the video of the sleeping beauty version, it’s exactly what I’m talking about. It’s so funny! How interesting if that were to happen in real life, that would be insenity.
Takeaway
Character build-up includes interactions that establish trust between them. Otherwise a story wouldn’t make sense and may become boring. After all, people have interactions to get to know another every day, so writing a book the same way makes the dialogue relatable. As for knowing someone without knowing someone, it seems like an impossible feat unless you share dreams or whatever.