Hello everyone. I hope you are all enjoying your holidays. I hope I am as well. It’s very early December at the moment. I think I should be putting up my Christmas tree soon. I’ve decided to deviate from my regularly planned programming today to talk to you about….my regularly planned programming. Or more specifically my character study series.
I’ve been putting a lot of thought into my blog schedule for 2019. It may not be that visible from the outside, but my schedule is a bit punishing. Mid form essays take a bit of inspiration and can get away from you if you don’t put some time into planning them out. Full series reviews are a bit easier to structure but not necessarily easier to write and demand you watch a full series…. The episode reviews are straight forward but make you stick to a rigid schedule which can get tricky when real life tries to smother you.
Out of everything I post, I would say the top 5 lists are the easiest to put together, but once again, inspiration can get tricky. I have run out of subjects more than once. The toughest to write by far, and some of my least popular posts as well, are my character studies. When I started this particular series of posts I hadn’t seen regular character study posts anywhere, and I felt compelled to do something different. These types of posts have gotten considerably more popular lately, as such the novelty isn’t quite there anymore.
I like characters. I think creating a balanced, interesting person to populate your fiction is difficult and underappreciated. I know a lot of people share my love of characters but I also see that character driven stories are drastically less popular than plot driven ones. As such I’m always afraid fans will forget about everyone except their personal favorites.
Originally, I just wanted to celebrate those characters that had been treated roughly by their own stories and that I believed deserved some recognition either for being so well constructed or for their contribution to the plot, or both. This has proven more difficult than expected.
What I’ve come to realize is that even if a character is decently developed, you still just get to know them within the context of the story. That doesn’t give you very much to go on. And there are only so many archetype variables to go on. After a while people start to look alike. I guess the same would be true in real life as well. If you only talk to someone for a couple of hours then have to write an essay on them, it would probably become a challenge after a couple.
So what am I getting at, other than writing for fun is hard you guys…
I considered dropping my character studies series. I figured I could throw one in with my regular essays a few times a year if I absolutely had to write about someone. However, just the thought made me a little sad. Maybe my tendency to root for the underdog makes me protective of my less popular posts. In any case, I quickly realized that I would really miss writing them. Besides, even though they get less attention than most other posts, the fact that they are so specific means that the people that do go out of their way to read them are usually already interested in that particular character. Which in turn makes for more heartfelt comments.
Still the problem remains. How can you consistently write about people who you don’t know all that well? For inspiration, I turned to the real world. That’s when it hit me. People profiles are certainly one way to go, but hardly the only one. When we think of celebrities, the two most common types of written media are The interview and (everyone’s favourite, don’t pretend) The gossip column.
There you go, endless material that’s completely not fact checkable and can’t get me sued…. I think…. As long as their not Disney characters. Those guys are really protective of their intellectual property! So starting next year, I will shake up my character studies with a mix of profiles, interviews and blind gossip items. Of course, I will be counting on you all to send me those hot hot gossip tips.
Also, if you would like to see anyone get interviewed. I happily accept suggestions. If I can get our schedules to work, I’ll be sure to deliver the goods. I’m sort of half pretending this is real and half acknowledging it’s not which makes it really hard to tell whether I’m actually insane.
This seems like a great place to wrap things up!
I’m not entirely sure I’ll be able to keep this series up but it seems like a lot of fun. Wish me luck!
