As I mentioned in my previous blog, I never know where the muse for a story is going to spring from. It can be from casually observing someone I see sitting across from me in a cafe, or from watching an actor play a role, or from envisioning a familiar friend so far out of their element they become someone else; but one thing is for sure, wherever these muses lurk they eventually make themselves known.
My friend once asked me why I can't just imagine these characters from scratch. Why I don't just make them up like I do with all the other aspects of the story built on imagination and dreaming. My answer was simply, "I can invent places, items, gadgets, fashions, animals, etc, but to give my characters substance I need a face. I need to regard how they smile, how they move, how they sound, and what gestures they make. At that point I have my reference point to refer back to when describing a look, a dialogue, or a movement. From then on the characters proceed to take on a fictitious life and dimension of their own.
That is why I am continually mesmerized by the characters that appear every day in: tv shows, plays, and movies. I'm still trying to figure out where the writer of a character leaves off and the actor picks up. I think classics are produced when these two elements meet and blend seamlessly. Sometimes the writer has a person in mind when they write the character of a story. Sometimes casting agents have to produce a long grueling list of potentials in order to find an actor who fits the vision of the character the writer has created so well it lives and breaths.
I've decided I am going to start making a list of all my favourate characters. I don't mean your every day well acted parts. I mean the totally fictitious characters that step out of the book or walk of the screen and take you by the heart as if they truely live and breathe.
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