Current mood:	sleepy
Entry tags:	tigerlilymusing

The Problem Children Prompt
What sorts of problems have you encountered with developing/playing/writing your characters?

I have multiple kids - the perils of having a novel with multiple PoVs. They talk, they argue, etc, etc. They are quite good together, but my problem is keeping their personalities separate instead of winding up with a bunch of carbon copy attitudes with different names, and actually, this challenge starts with the names. I get a lot of names with the same letter, or sometimes several letters and think, "Oh god, I hope this does not get too confusing for the reader!"

How did you overcome these difficulties?

The solution? When I start a character, I try to have a few, base traits that I can go by and hope their voices will wrap around them as they expand and grow. For example: Katazyna and Alpheus are both emotional, impulsive and sarcastic, but Katazyna is more optimistic, more extroverted, and her sarcasm comes from her arrogance. She might be physically six inches shorter and eight minutes younger, but she stands taller, stronger, and has a regal air of comprehension, not age, about her at times.