How I Turned Blog Posts into a Book About Character Creation

I call the process, BYOB: Blog Your Own Book

By Marilyn Flower

Not your typical way to create or develop characters which usually involves a list.  A long list of striking visuals, quirky tics, personality traits, bio, and even their CV.  Comprehensive yes. Fun, not so much.

If fiction is creative, then, gosh darn it, why can’t crafting characters be too?

So when it came to creating and elaborating upon the characters in my satirical novel, Man Pregnant!, and my comedy-fantasy Noir spoof, Long, Hard, & Twisted, I went playful.

For Man Pregnant! – wherein a white pro-life minister ends up pregnant from a tryst with his black choir director – I had all the main characters write blog posts for their church newsletter. Including the teens. They had a great time blasting each other.  I discovered their idiosyncrasies while hearing their unique voices as I wrote.

For Long, Hard, & Twisted, I created a series of retro, Noir-ish collages and then read them, like oracle or tarot cards, using a process called SoulCollage®.

Finally, I invoked the Enneagram’s nine personality types for casting my Crafty Cozy Mystery Series, Clues in Collage, which happens to have nine main characters. The Enneagram offers clues to fatal flaws and lies characters tell themselves, which every fictional character needs, unlike us real folk.

I wrote a series of blog posts describing these techniques and how I applied them to my novels in progress. Those became my chapters. Next, I added an intro and a conclusion.  A writer friend added the forward.

Then I created my cover on Canva.com.

Searching there, I found a font I fell in love with–Comodo Stamp.  As usual, I got carried away with graphics until an artist friend intervened.  Nixed the typewriter. Kept the text and characters.

In other words, KISS—Keep it simple, Sweetie.  I did. And love the results.  Now up on Amazon and Goodreads, I call it, Developing Characters: Fun Ways to Cast Your Fiction.

If you find it helpful, let me say thanks in advance for any honest reviews you care to write.

Marilyn Flower

Marilyn Flower is an author, playwright, poet, and proud resident of Oakland, California. Humor is her first and favorite language. Be it social satire, or zany commentaries for Medium.com, laughter keeps her in physical, emotional, and spiritual shape for crazy times such as these. Besides “writer,” Marilyn answers to “sacred fool” and “prayer warrior.” She studies clowning and improv at Stagebridge.org, the premier senior theater school located right down the street.