Character threads

Fiction bulges with characters. Some fleeting glimpses, some holding our attention for pages. They wander and, at times, race between the lines gluing scenes together — constructing a world of your design, piece by piece.

Who will be the chosen ones you decide to bring to life and supply with an individual adventure package? More importantly, how do you paint their picture?

As a writer, your picture will not be a two-dimensional masterpiece resting quietly on a wall waiting for an ogler but will hold both the visible and the invisible and explore myriad dimensions in its fullness.

You ask, “Did you notice the couple drinking coffee in Berlin, smuggled in with the tourist throng and sitting just fifty metres away? When you saw them again huddled, barely visible in an icy storm on a beach on the Isle of Skye, was the Berlin image made clearer?”

Of course, but maybe not. Maybe you did not want to reveal that key link just yet.

Carefully placed phrases attach landscape to your characters, always influencing your traveler in some way. Otherwise, why mention it in the first place? Your characters are the needles sewing the threads of your fantasy, absorbing me into the new creation they so deftly tailor.

I missed Berlin altogether and the clue you so carefully implanted on Skye. I hope you slap me in the face with it later so I too can unravel the mystery, albeit in another time, place, mindset.

Remember to care for the threads. Their multi-dimensional properties ever fluctuate, but they cannot be broken or the characters, times, places, mindsets they join become a lie. It falls apart and I am confused. It dims our friendship.

Why do you think I picked you up among all the other tempting delicacies? Take me with you into the depths of the ocean, rarely visited icy peaks, into secret places where only the most daring venture. I want to be there. I don’t want to watch from a comfy seat in a gallery, looking on from afar.

Weave me into your tapestry.