I finished editing
my current draft of Bonded recently. I wanted to reward myself. It was a tough
edit, so my prize had to be something really really good.
Books are the best
thing in the world, so to celebrate my finished-current-draft, I’d
read Possession by Elana Johnson.
And it was a fabulous book!
I loved especially the characters. Vi has such a unique voice and Jag . . . he
is awesome in every way possible. I think the best part about them is that they
are very much imperfect. Now, you might be thinking that’s a negative, but
actually it’s not.
Perfect characters
never get on our nerves. They never do what we know they shouldn’t. They never
disappoint us. In essence, perfect characters are boring.
For writing, this
doesn’t mean you should just stick any old flaw on your characters to make them
less boring. Readers will see through that Band-Aid so fast. The key is to
create a character that feels like a real person with all of their
imperfections.
Pure genius is the
writer that can create a character that we adore, even when they are annoying
us. Those are the characters that will stick in the reader's mind.
How do we do that?
I don’t know, but if you want to read a book by someone that does: Elana
Johnson’s Possession.
And note: The
sequel to Possession, Surrender is being released on June 5, 2012. (That’s in
six days!)
