My neighbor invited us to come and pick apples last night and we happily took advantage of the offer. My kids were so excited and we had a great time talking about eating fresh applies, apple pie, apple cobbler and applesauce as we filled up bags of the delicious fruit.
As we were chatting, my neighbor kept warning me that there would be spots to cut out once I began working with them in the kitchen. Checking over the apples, I understood his warning of some, but I didn’t really believe him about the perfect ones. They were too…perfect!
My neighbor was right, though. Each apple that I have sliced into has some inner blemish. Every. Single. Apple.
This morning, I even chose one as carefully as possible–there wasn’t a single thing wrong with the outside of the fruit. But I sliced into it, and behold! Several brown markings, quite a bit like the apple pictured above.
Apple-wise, it’s fine. I’ll chop out the bad parts and the chickens will love it.
But my mind that often needs to be kicked out of the thinking-of-the-deeper-meaning pool, went for a swim. I couldn’t help but think about how profound it is that, like the apple, people–and the characters of our written design–need to be thought of with inner wounds and blemishes that we often cannot see.
For the sake of those non-fictional characters that we live with, we certainly need to give the benefit of the doubt. I can’t say that I know a single person that hasn’t had some tragedy in their life that wasn’t a factor that molded and shaped their mind and character. On the flip side of that, I have experienced the occasional burn of a person that looked nearly perfect on the outside but ended up showing different colors upon better acquaintance.
On writing, though, we need to make certain that our characters have blemishes and bruises that can be shown at the right time within our composition. Otherwise, our characters are unbelievable and difficult to relate to.
When I trashed 95% of the first manuscript of my first novel, I spent time a lot of time on character sheets. One particular character had me feeling just awful for the poor thing and if I remember correctly, I pathetically shed a tear or two for the figment of my imagination. But I honestly didn’t really care about this character until I gave the person dimension and obstacles that had been overcome…or not.
While I wish I would have given my characters more depth in the first place, I learned. And learning can be powerful. May yours and my characters be as three-dimensional as possible in the First Draft. And may we remember that people are pretty much never what they seem–a heart or possibly a shield are usually necessary.
