Well I am afraid we do. Obviously. One of the assignments for the screen writing course was to come up with a character description of a character you would like to use in your story.
Now out of a class of 14 people :
- 14 people chose a male as their main character!
(We are about 6 girls and 8 guys in class) - More than half of those 14 chose to have the family of this man either out of the country or no longer in contact with the person.
(because we want to avoid describing all those family relations) - And here is the most odd one: More than half of the people decided that their character didn’t have any sex drive. No romance, no problems with broken hearts, no mess, and no love actually. And if you ask me : no life actually either. I wasn’t in that half.
I am guilty as charged for picking a man as my main character too, but hey I am a girl, and I happen to have a certain interest for a certain type of men. I might publish the story here, as soon as the battle between the three story ideas is settled. Or not, if it is really bad.
I also accidentally stumbled over him again, they even named a street after him. He seems to be haunting me. Or maybe I am just unconsciously looking for him.
The best title for a book I have spotted recently:
Love and other near death experiences.
And if you like halloween: find them. All 50.
Three out of 50 that’s not bad…
I was actually a little surprised that you, of all people, should not choose a girl for your character ;-)
Oh don’t worry that girl will be there to mess things up :-)
(In a rom (maybe com too) piece both the man and the woman are the main characters, I just happened to deliver my man first – the girl is there)
@yak : it isn’t my genre either
Ah, ok, that makes more sense now :-)
So a lot of people, when asked for a character description, came up with somebody without much of a character. Hmmm, a hermit eunuch in a coma would be nice…
I’d be terrified about writing a female main character, as I’d feel like I didn’t have any insight. Then again, I’d probably feel the same about chaps who weren’t much like me.
@Edwinek : that’s interesting. You consider men not having a lot of character ?
@Paul : it is absolutely allowed to base characters on your own life and experiences. Actually if you don’t do that you can have a hard time making them believable, unless you do a lot of research of course.
Er, no, I consider (as you mentioned already) people with no relations or relationships lacking in character. But of course, women have lots more character anyway, that goes without saying!
Indeedio, gotta write what you know. Although a hermit eunuch in a coma sounds like fricking genius.