Writing, Character Inspiration, and Pinterest

So... I discovered Pinterest...

And now my life is centered on making dinner from recipes I found on Pinterest, emailing my husband funny pics I found on Pinterest while he's at work, pinning people and places and things that remind me of my story ideas on Pinterest... etc, etc, etc.

Now, major time suckage aside, Pinterest is a pretty cool place for writers to be.

I've started following any other writers I can find and they all seem to have at least one Pinboard dedicated to their craft. Maybe it's called "The Writing Life," or "The Creative Life," or "Novel Inspiration."

I have one called IDEA BOX that I am very much in love with.

However, what has become very obvious as I browse these writerly boards and pin more pictures and ideas to my own board is that many writers have ideas of what their main characters look like from people that they have actually seen before.

Maybe it's the lead singer of a band they recently discovered (guilty), that kid that longboards down your street at approximately 3:07 PM every weekday (guilty), or the small forward for your favorite NBA team (guilty). Wherever these people are seen, they can serve as great inspiration as the writer tries to create characters that are well-rounded and interesting.

However, what bothers me about this is that many writerly folks will post a picture of a famous actor or actress, or a beautiful person who is clearly a model, and will write underneath, "This is what Gray looks like," "An older version of Genevieve," etc.

I feel like most writers have done this at some point. Most likely their main characters do not look EXACTLY like the beautiful person from the picture, but the fact that the beautiful person serves as inspiration for most characters is annoying to me.

Because when a reader picks up a book written about a main character they identify with very closely, they imagine themselves in that character's life, as if they were a real-live person. Often, they actually imagine and feel that they ARE that character. This transmutation is such a real feeling and it is one that I love to experience as a reader and that I hope to create as a writer.

However, what if those readers knew that the characters they identify with so easily were created by the writer with an appearance akin to perfection, based on a model found in the pages of Vogue, a character from Vampire Diaries, or another beautiful person who is essentially PAID TO BE BEAUTIFUL?

I feel like this realization would break the spell cast by the writing itself, by the act of reading itself, because the reader finds that they were identifying with a person who, if they were part of this world, would be gracing the pages of fashion magazines and could star in their own reality TV show, if they were so inclined.

Does anyone else see a problem with the way that writer's today portray their characters or love interests? Does anyone else feel that characters should be just as flawed PHYSICALLY as they are personally or emotionally?

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On character: A lesson from author Kate Atkinson

As I briefly mentioned before, I have a weird obsession with author Kate Atkinson. I first read one of her novels (Case Histories, a book that Stephen King called "the best mystery of the decade"), in a Contemporary British Literature class.

I remember being instantly drawn into the novel, sucked in so deeply and so irrevocably that I could not function until I finished the story. After Case Histories, I devoured her other mysteries surrounding the damaged yet lovable Jackson Brodie, One Good Turn and When Will There Be Good News? There is a fourth Jackson Brodie novel out, Rose Early, Took My Dog, but I haven't read it yet. (Gasp!)

Having read three of Atkinson's novels, and a few of them twice, I have come to realize some things about what makes her novels great: character.

The characters in Case Histories and its sequels are rich and real. Their lives are portrayed with such startling intimacy that I am at once terrified and delighted. They are complex humans thrown into amazing circumstances.

As I continue my own creative writing endeavors, I'm trying to learn more about creating rich characters from Atkinson. Below is an excerpt from When Will There Be Good News?, which surrounds the sixteen-year-old Reggie.

What I love about this section of Atkinson's writing is how she manages to create character in such a short amount of time. I could read fifty pages of the average young adult novel and still not have as clear a picture as I get from this short excerpt:
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"Have you had much experience with children, Reggie?" Dr. Hunter had asked at her so-called interview.

"Och, loads. Really. Loads and loads," Reggie replied, smiling and nodding encouragingly at Dr. Hunter, who didn't seem very good at the whole interviewing thing. "Loads, sweartogod."

....

The Hunters had a forty-inch HD television on which she watched Balamory DVDs with the baby, although he always fell asleep as soon as the theme tune began, snuggled into Reggie on the sofa like a little monkey. She was surprised Dr. Hunter let the baby watch television, but Dr. Hunter said, "Oh, heavens, why not? Now and again, what's the harm?" Reggie thought that there was nothing nicer than having a baby fall asleep on you, except perhaps a puppy or a kitten. She'd had a puppy once, but her brother threw it out the window. "I don't think he meant to," Mum said, but it wasn't exactly the kind of thing you did accidentally, and Mum knew that. And Reggie knew that Mum knew that. Mum used to say, "Billy may be trouble, but he's our trouble. Blood's thicker than water." It was a lot stickier too. The day the puppy went flying through the window was the second-worst day of Reggie's life so far. Hearing about Mum was the worst. Obviously.

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From these paragraphs, we learn about the characters by dialogue and anecdote. For example, the way that Reggie says "Sweartogod" is unique, young and probably something she says when she's nervous. We learn from the things that Dr. Hunter and Reggie's Mum say that they are concerned with being good caregivers for their children, even when the situation is not cut-and-dry. We learn from the way that Reggie notices things about her family that she is observant and wise beyond her years.

What do you think about this section? Something I'm wondering about as I write this, is whether or not this particular skill can be adapted in my writing style, or if it is something that is entirely too literary or too character-based to be included in a young adult novel.

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