Thursday, March 17, 2011

Jailbait

Yesterday I was perusing Facebook and came across an intriguing status.

You and I wake up in jail together... Using only four words, what would you say to me?

If anyone was going to get me in jail this would be the guy, so I knew exactly what I’d say to him. However, I’ve been spending far too much time with fictional people, so once I read this I started to wonder what I would say to one of my main characters if I woke up in jail with them. Then it occurred to me that in this host of hypothetical situations all it would take would be two words “not again,” and what’s worse I probably wouldn’t be all that surprised to find myself in jail with one of my main characters.

Every last one of them has anger management issues and criminal tendencies. At the end of the day they’re all thieves, con artists, or killers and in at least one case all three. They aren’t bad people they’re just all criminals.

It shouldn’t have surprised me that my characters weren’t upstanding citizens, but it did. I saw all the warning signs that they weren’t good girls, but I didn’t put two and two together until that moment.

Oh well, I’ll just have to face up to the fact that my inner bad girl comes out to play in my writing.

What about you, do your latent personality traits come out to play in your writing? Let me know in the comments.

- Aaron

2 comments:

Unknown said...

Aaron, you come up with the coolest character exercises, I love it!

I joke that my characters are my "kids" and they have, unfortunately, inherited some of my less flattering traits. My impatience. My refusal to pander or humor people for the sake of showing good manners or sparing hurt feelings. My obsessive nature. And, my complete inability to sleep :).

The Blogger Girlz said...

Thanks, I don't know if they're cool or just strange, but they help me write.

Huh, you just listed two of my favorite things about you.

- Aaron