When your characters don’t like you!
I am giving a talk about crime writing this afternoon, addressing a group comprising writers and readers at a library in the north of the county where I live.
I love such events - libraries are something to be treasured - and developing the themes for the talk brought me back time and time again to the same idea, that the characters I create have to be REAL. That is certainly the case with my central characters, the people with whom I spend so much of my life.
For me, they are real - if John Blizzard were to walk into the room as I am delivering the talk this afternoon, it would not surprise me. He is that real.
And I know they are real to my readers. One admonished me because Blizzard had been rude to one of his colleagues and suggested that he should learn better manners! Brilliant stuff.
Actually, I hope he does not walk into the room this afternoon because, knowing the curmudgeonly old baggage as I do, I imagine he would snort in a derisory fashion, mutter something about ‘poncy writers’ and stalk out.
Still, you can’t please everyone!
John Dean