The reason I was thinking about this is a story that you might find rather boring. I was at the chiropractor yesterday and we were chatting as she worked on my back. For some reason I remembered a conversation I had years ago where I first realized why I tend to sit on my left foot when I'm working at the computer or sitting in a really cushioned chair or couch. I was in my young 20's at the time, and it was a well established habit, but not one I had ever consciously thought about.
Well, after talking for about 5 minutes I realized that I sit on my foot because my lower back doesn't hurt as much if I do that. I'm sure I had figured that out years before, but by that point it had become such a subconscious habit that I really had to think to remember why I do it. Mulling it over last night I started wondering why I don't ever sit on my right foot (yes, this is the random type of thing my mind does when I'm trying to go to sleep). Well, that has a good reason too. I was in an ice-skating accident when I was 16 that messed up my knee. If I sit on that foot for any length of time my knee will start to ache.
Like I said, a rather mundane store right? It still got me thinking as someone who loves to both read and write fiction. There are many elements in a story that will snag my interest, but one of them has always been good character development, especially when we get lots of interesting (not like my foot sitting story) details as to why the characters are that way.
I started to wonder if I include those kind of details in my own writing? The answer is, well, sometimes! I think that in my story "Aria's Quest" that I'm publishing in this blog I haven't gotten very deep into the personalities of the characters. A large part of the reason behind that is that I'm finding it challenging to write a long story in small chunks. Each chunk needs to be a complete piece of the story after all! I'm going to challenge myself to deepen my characters a little in the story though.
I do have a longer story that I'm working on off and on, and in that story I think I have done a pretty good job of giving my characters very definite personalities full of their own identifiable quirks. The length of the story helps with that though. So far it's over 50 pages! Which is why I haven't shared it on here. Well, that and I've been too busy to work on it recently.
So what about you? When you read a book do you love getting to know complex characters who have lots of their own personality quirks? If you write fiction, is that something you try to include? I'd love to hear your thoughts!
