The Quirk Factor
Seems like every character needs a few quirks. If you're going to create a detective, for instance, and you're going to compete in the very overcrowded genre, you have got to be able to make your character stand out.
On the flipside, you can read about characters that have such a set of quirks, it feels tacked on. Let me just add this quirk or that in the hopes of making this character memorable. Nothing feels organic. It's quirk overload.
I think, in writing--and my characters are as eccentric as they come--it boils down to digging deep for REAL quirks that are three-dimensional, not a laundry list of weirdness. Even in my more literary fiction, I strive to create a character whose eccentricities are grounded in something real. Because that's how we are as human beings. I am surrounded by statues of Buddha, but if I am speaking of something bad, or I've just avoided something horrible (like a near-miss accident), I always make the sign of the cross--a leftover gesture from my grandparents taking me to Catholic church. Odd? Yes. REAL? Decidedly yes.
In INVISBLE GIRL (coming out from MIRA in June), the mother is a Buddhist. But because of a horrific secret she guards from the Vietnam War (she is Vietnamese), when she marries an Irish-Catholic soldier and comes to America, she decides to, as she tells her two kids, "cover your bases." So each day when the children come home from school, they must bow to the Buddha altar their mother keeps and thank him for their blessings. Then they have to do the same to the Jesus statue. Their Ma wants both sides covered "just in case." Is it odd? Yeah. But the mother has such a deep-rooted terror based on the secret she carries, that it's completely understandable that she would ask for help from whichever faith can offer it.
Anyway, you get the idea. Quirks are wonderful. I've got characters who are drag queens who wear Tiaras on Tuesdays (Diary of a Blues Goddess), and characters who say "Good night, sleep tights, and whatever you do, don't look in the freezer" (the Westies gangland father in The Roofer), and I've got a new character in an upcoming Bombshell who has a brain collection in formaldehyde (he's a scientist). But in each case, I hope nothing about the eccentricities feels anything less than real and human--just like us all.
On the flipside, you can read about characters that have such a set of quirks, it feels tacked on. Let me just add this quirk or that in the hopes of making this character memorable. Nothing feels organic. It's quirk overload.
I think, in writing--and my characters are as eccentric as they come--it boils down to digging deep for REAL quirks that are three-dimensional, not a laundry list of weirdness. Even in my more literary fiction, I strive to create a character whose eccentricities are grounded in something real. Because that's how we are as human beings. I am surrounded by statues of Buddha, but if I am speaking of something bad, or I've just avoided something horrible (like a near-miss accident), I always make the sign of the cross--a leftover gesture from my grandparents taking me to Catholic church. Odd? Yes. REAL? Decidedly yes.
In INVISBLE GIRL (coming out from MIRA in June), the mother is a Buddhist. But because of a horrific secret she guards from the Vietnam War (she is Vietnamese), when she marries an Irish-Catholic soldier and comes to America, she decides to, as she tells her two kids, "cover your bases." So each day when the children come home from school, they must bow to the Buddha altar their mother keeps and thank him for their blessings. Then they have to do the same to the Jesus statue. Their Ma wants both sides covered "just in case." Is it odd? Yeah. But the mother has such a deep-rooted terror based on the secret she carries, that it's completely understandable that she would ask for help from whichever faith can offer it.
Anyway, you get the idea. Quirks are wonderful. I've got characters who are drag queens who wear Tiaras on Tuesdays (Diary of a Blues Goddess), and characters who say "Good night, sleep tights, and whatever you do, don't look in the freezer" (the Westies gangland father in The Roofer), and I've got a new character in an upcoming Bombshell who has a brain collection in formaldehyde (he's a scientist). But in each case, I hope nothing about the eccentricities feels anything less than real and human--just like us all.
posted by Erica Orloff at 4:14 PM
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