People ask me this all the time. "Will you write me into one of your books?"

The answer is no.

Hey, don't look at me like that. First of all, you don't know what you're asking. You wouldn't like it. And secondly, I'm just not that into you. And thirdly, you're just too damn normal.

I hear you protesting already, but hear me out.

What people are asking when they ask to be in one of my books is really this: May I live with you? Can I move in with you for the next four to eight months and sit next to you every single day and drink out of your tea mug and watch you sleep? Because that's what a character does. As an author, I have to look at every single side of them and imagine exactly how they'd react to any given situation and make up reasons for why they act the way they do, and then brainstorm and fantasize about upcoming scenes in the book for pretty much every waking moment until the book is not only written but revised and then edited by my editor. And then live with the consequences of that cohabitation in the form of one million reviews analyzing every bowel movement said character had.

Is that what you really want from me? Is it?

Which brings me to point two. I'm just not that into you. Pretty much unless you're my husband or my immediate family or handful of best friends, I will hate you before that time is up. Because unless I love you like a brother, that sort of cozy space sharing and observing of your personal habits will drive me crazy. It's like dating, but dating when, through intense and undying scrutiny, you know absolutely everything about your significant other's backstory, embarrassing personal habits, crushing secret motivations, and hopes, dreams, and fears.

Basically it's like dating Edward Cullen.

Also, that aside, do you really want me portraying you exactly as I see you, and inventing dysfunctional backstory to explain how you got that way?

Okay, thirdly. You're too normal.

I hear you shouting that this is not true, you're not normal, you have a crazy Star Wars obsession and your cut your hair with a pair of safety scissors and you have named your toaster Monica and you only sleep on your left side on days of the week with E in them.

I get it. You're quirky.

But you're still normal. Now, stop wailing about. It's okay to be normal. Many people are. Most people are. But they would also all make bad characters. Here's the thing about characters: they are larger than life. They're exaggerations. Subtle caricatures -- sometimes not so subtle, actually -- even in the most realistic of novels. Because while gray areas work wonderfully in real life and pretty much keep us all from killing each other, in a novel, there's not much room for them. You want to be 100% certain how a character is going to react to something every time, and that means that they have to be overblown versions of real people. Stoic people become incredibly stoic. Obsessive people become hilariously obsessive. Bitchy people become the most giant bitches the world has ever seen this side of Great Dane factories. I mean, kennels.

In real life, even stoic people are not always stoic. In fact, they may be only stoic in the face of really exceptional situations, and whiners the rest of the time. Obsessive people may really only be obsessive about their kitchen being neat, and the rest of the house can look like crap. Bitchy people may really only become horrid fiends when standing in line at the DMV and otherwise be delicate flowers unable to take constructive criticism. That's cool. Functional. But bad characterization.

Sure, characters can act out of, well, character. But you bet your biffy there had better be a darn good reason and it better not happen again, buster. When that stoic character finally breaks down? Ooooh, that's when you got the reader begging for more. But only if they've been stoic every other second of the book. When the bitchy character is finally nice? What a moment . . . but only if they've been a raving terror for the rest of the book.

Are you that bitchy?

I thought not.

So, I'm sorry, I'd love to help you out, but you just can't be a character in my book.


Also, your name's boring. Sorry.

Sigh. I keep on thinking I'm growing as a writer and that my rough drafts are getting better, but every time I get too egotistical, I get my ass kicked by a character. In this case, it's a secondary character in my work in progress, Still Wolf Watching. Well, Sam's not really a secondary character. He's a co-narrator, but it's supposed to be less his story than the main character, Grace. The problem is that for some reason my secondary characters always turn out better developed than my main characters and I have to suffer endlessly trying to develop the main characters to the same level.

It's something about how they get more time being observed than observing. I wonder if it has something to do with the way we look at the world? We observe other people and after we get to see them for awhile, their activities and motivations become predictable to us. Yet we live with ourselves all the time and manage to miss the most obvious character faults and motivations. So maybe it's actually harder to get to know the main POV character because we're in their heads. I feel like when I read I always sympathize more with the side characters.

Anyone else have thoughts on this? Because I'd hate to have to kill Sam to encourage some character development in Grace. Okay, I wouldn't really, but that's only because I like him better than her.

Grrrr . . . see!

Today, I was at the airport dropping off a puppy who was flying to California. The experience left me older, wiser, and with DNA samples under my nails of all the airport employees that I clawed. Okay, that last part was made up, but seriously . . . it was not a positive experience!

But after I had dropped off the puppy, I was supposed to pick up my brother, who was also flying in that day (my complete coincidence - very freaky!). That left me with an hour and some change to people-watch, though I'd brought a book as well. I've always thought that sitting in airports is free and wonderful gift given to attentive writers. Where else can you unabashedly stare at people? Passengers are so busy missing flights, losing baggage, and generally getting screwed over that they don't notice the writer observing them. And frankly there are so many more interesting people at airports than in normal life. All sorts of people that you'd never see. My brain makes up little stories for each of them, in between delighting itself in one girl's perfectly straight blonde hair down to her butt, an old man's perfect hooked nose, the assassin-looking dude in the trenchcoat.

I live for the people that stand out. An hour of people streamed by me, and 99% of them are vanilla ice cream. They probably have extremely interesting lives and times, but on the surface, they have an aura of sameness. And then WOW BANG, someone walks through with such charisma that you sit up and blink. They pull people's attention, even though they aren't necessarily great beauties or exception in any way. Something about them is magnetic, and as a writer, I want that. I want that for my characters.

I love the airport.

Not shipping dogs from the airport, but the airport itself.

Well, I'm about a third of the way into my current work in progress, the weird werewolf book (weird because I don't do werewolves and weird because my werewolves apparently don't do werewolves either)(in all sense of the word "do"), and I've discovered that my main characters are in love.

The fact that they're in love isn't the problem. It was written right in the synopsis "they fall in love." Well, not that tactlessly -- there were literary dinner and drinks that got them to that point -- but the fact was that it was written. Nope, the problem is that they're already in love. Not like, ah, we met, love at first sight sort of thing. Like they came prepackaged that way. Due to a plot foible, it's somewhat kinda possible.

But I find myself at a loss. I've never actually written characters who were already in love before. How do I establish chemistry for the reader? Do they have to argue and throw pans to look like a realistic couple? What am I going to do with all the plot space where they were supposed to be falling in love?

I think I might be writing the first ever young adult urban fantasy where the main characters start out in love. Well, at least the first ever werewolf young adult urban fantasy that is kind of not about werewolves like you normally think about them fantasy where the main characters start out in love.

Hmm. I must go meditate, somewhere away from the kissy noises.

During the course of my revisions for my still unnamed novel, I was really pleased to discover a Truly Evil Character waiting in the wings to complicate the plot. She was sort of there in the first version, in a sort of how-do-you-do-I'm-slightly-worse-than-a-employee-of-the-IRS way, but now . . . wow. She, as Monty Python would say, has fangs. Well, not literally (I have to put that in because so many of my fellow genre writers have evil characters that literally have fangs).

Evil + beautiful = awesome. Well, for a character, not for a future spouse.

This is like a small gift from the plotting Gods. I must sacrifice a young paragraph to them so they'll continue to grace my pages with cool characters.

I must go make preparations.