Characters

Every good story needs characters. Ones we can identify with, who often represent we the reader in some way. The story of our lives shape us into the characters we become. I was always a sensitive, daydreaming, pacifist kid: “I’m a writer and a dreamer, not a fighter.” Which, of course , made me the delightful target of every and any bully who ever scented my timid easy-going nature. School, for the most part was utter hell, especially high school, where I was marked out as the sole fag — a powerful word I soon came to understand the meaning of.

It breaks my heart to see the kids taking their lives these days to this same bullying that ground me down day-after-day. My parents were powerless to do anything about it, partly due to me not wanting to worsen my teen fate with a bail out from Mommy and Daddy, but mostly due to a completely broken school system running by Darwin’s Laws and not the Laws of Compassion, Understanding and Support for those who needed it most.

Take heart though, this is not a story about bullies. Although they make for great villains, that is a post for another day. I’ve been taking my power back from them for decades now. This is MY story and they are NOT my editor, so they cannot tell me how to write MY story — I do not give them that power. This is the story of characters, the tests, or quests, or obstacles set before our protagonists that build the stamina of character they need to go on to do great things.

I think one of the most powerful tools for building good characters, no matter how tragic they are destined to be, is to find the humour. A giggly girl by the name of Erica was one of a team of friends who saved my life and my sanity during the hell of small town high school. There were never tears because by god that would be letting the bullies win, but there was an abundance of laughter and that’s what got all of us through that very “educational” — in a character building way — time in our lives.

I just had a reunion with Erica and she is still her giggly self. It’s been 23 years since I last saw her, but that moment in time of her and I having one of our — to me — life saving laughs by the lockers upstairs is locked in the vault of my memory. And you know, seeing her made me realize that while it still sometimes feels like the horrible moments outnumbered the good moments, the good moments were much more powerful. If you’ve ever seen a sword forged, it gets subjected to white-hot furnace heat again and again, then pounded into shape by a hammer, but it’s the cool water bath after that tempers the forging. Water has always represented the emotions, and laughter (alongside love) is the most powerful of emotions. I have been tempered by a lot of good people over the years, responsible in the forging of my character. I’ve been very lucky in that respect.

I’ve always been fond of saying, “I need to see my hero bleed, before I can really care about him.” But I want to add to that statement: “I need to experience his sense of humour, to know he’s capable of surviving the shit being thrown at him.” I believe good characters make a story important — memorable — to me, and to many people. And the forging of them draw us in and keep us coming back for more.