Love Your Main Character - Exercise 2

I'm still working on learning to love my main character, so won't you join me?

Writing Exercise: Write about where your main character would go on vacation. My response is below.

Danya Larson - Beach
By Dawn M. Hamsher

Danya goes to the same place every year for vacation -- to the beach, Ocean City, New Jersey.

Danya rents the same two-room garage loft. It's small, but has everything she needs. She spends most of her time on the beach, two blocks away. 

In the evenings, Danya walks the boardwalk. She loves Mack & Manco pizza, T & M Monkey Bread and Boardwalk Fries. She loves the book store there, Atlantic Books, where she worked for several summers in college. The owners still welcome her like a daughter and set aside books for her to look through. They know she always takes home at least one beach-type book to remember her trip by.

Danya's father sometimes comes for a day or two on the weekend of her beach trip and they enjoy a nice dinner out, but the rest of the week she is alone (the way she likes it). Free to read, free to sleep, free to take a walk, free to sit and watch tourists. She always finds it amusing to see the tourists coming off the beach, unaware of their angry red skin and the pain they will suffer later.

If there is a rainy evening, Danya will watch the family vacation DVD her father gave her a few years back. It contains old clips of her mother, father and herself at the beach.  

• Danya sleeping on a beach towel under a shade umbrella. Her mother stroking her baby feet and kissing her cheek.
• Danya sitting in the sand, crying and reaching for her mother. Her mother would pick her up. She would stop crying. Her mother would set her back down. Danya would start crying because she didn't like the gritty sand on her skin.
• Her mother holding Danya's hands as the waves came in. Her mother would lift her and her toes would skim the water.
• Danya helping her mother build a sand castle, decorating it with seashells, seaweed, twigs that they had collected from the shore. 
• Danya being pulled on a boogie board by her father. After they dried off, Danya's father took the camera and zoomed in on her mother. Her mother was smiling, telling him to turn it off. Her father held the camera sideways and kissed her mother, getting it partly on tape.  Then Danya joined the fun, jumping on them both, knocking the camera to the ground. The film was still running, capturing a jumble of feet and flicking sand.

It had been 26 years since her mother died in the car crash. The beach was the place that Danya felt close to her mother. Danya felt contented there. After watching the tape, Danya would fall asleep, murmuring, "Goodnight, Mama."

Love Your Main Character - Exercise 1

I love Holly Lisle's Forward Motion for Writers website! Holly gives wonderful insight and advice to new writers. I recommend subscribing to her weekly writing tip.  

In one of her weekly e-mails, Holly talks about the main character:

"You chose this character to be in charge of your story, to have the juiciest role, to be the star of the book, because out of all the characters you're writing in that story, THIS character is the most interesting, the most important...and the one in the most trouble."

 

Holly goes on to say that a lot of writers make the mistake of giving the good lines to villains or minor characters. Holly encourages writers to love their main character and make them #1.

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Wow! It hit me. I had made that exact misake! I didn't love my main character, Danya. I thought that she was boring. Uh oh...I'm in trouble.

I decided to stop working on my book until I could fall in love with my main character. Here's the writing exercise I decided to try.

Writing Exercise: Learn more about your main character. Write about his/her childhood memories.  

My response is below.

 

Danya Larson, memory from 1st grade, age 6 --

Danya stood on a step stool, staring at her mother. Her mother lay there, with perfect make-up and poufy hair. Danya knew that her mother hated her hair like that. She liked it straight, combed back into a ponytail.

Her mama always said, "You look just like me, Danya. See, our hair is exactly that same."

Danya remembered her mother smiling at her through the mirror, their heads together, both with blond hair pulled back into pony tails.

Danya whispered now to her mother, "Mama, you don't like your hair like that."

No response.

"You don't like it like that," she said again, a little louder, her eyes filling tears.

Even louder she said, "Daddy, she doesn't like her hair like that."

Then Danya began screaming, "She hates her hair like that!  Why did they make her hair like that? Why did they..."

Everyone was staring at her, but she didn't notice. She felt her father's arms surround her. She sobbed into his suit jacket. She felt the white carnation crush against her cheek, but she didn't care.

Her father stroked her hair, saying, "Shhhhhh, honey. Shhhhhhhh. It's OK. We'll fix it before the funeral. You're right, she'd hate it. We'll fix it."

He carried Danya to a seat and began to rock her back and forth. He was crying too. She could feel his tears land on her neck.

People were trying to talk to Daddy.  Why don't they go away? She's ours. Not theirs. I don't want them to be here.

That's all Danya remembered from that time. She didn't even remember the funeral. Her grandmother had commented later that she had acted like a zombie. Her father defended Danya saying, "Margaret, she's numb. She's in shock. We're both in shock. Just leave her alone."