Telling your lived experience through your artistic works is a nerve-wracking, panic-inducing idea for some, and this is a wake-up call to aspire for more than your fear’s bounds.
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One of the biggest compliments I received as a ghostwriter was that my characters felt “made for each other”.
Reflecting has got me thinking what that really means, how does someone write a character that feels real. Like a real person, so incomplete that they somehow feel whole.
In order to make the audience root for, ship, or cry for your characters, a writer must make the character feel as if they’re true reflections of our own experiences. Humans connect with stories on a fundamental level, and as writers, we need to build the “persona” of the character based on what we’ve experienced with other people.
So, draw from what you’ve seen and what you know. Draw from your own experiences. It is important to project the world accurately for your audience to be able to relate and connect to it. The polluted, fake world of Phillip K. Dick’s sci-fi classic Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep (Bladerunner, for you cinephiles) resonates with audiences today because we see how that could become our reality – hone that sentiment in your own works. Use your voice to actually say something.
Be courageous in your perception and retelling of your existence; don’t shy away from the harsh truths and painful emotions. It’s often in our depictions of these circumstances that we shine the brightest. We connect with characters that have gone through pain, who have experienced trouble and turmoil. We relate to these characters because we all understand what it’s like to struggle in some way or another; to suffer is a universal human experience.
So, embrace it.
Embrace the hard.
Confront the ugly to spool something beautiful out of the benign.
To create something daring from the desolate…
Rising from the ashes, that’s what gives us humans good character, after all.
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