Real Life Character Defects - A Writer's Treasure!

Wow, I can't believe it's almost a month since I last posted! Unfortunately, I was deep into everything but fiction - triple net leases, real estate syndication, marketing, etc.

That's the life of a freelancer, though. I write (and have written) about everything under our young sun as long as it's not too technical like...urinalysis machines...food for zoo ungulates and worms...stocks, bonds, joint ventures, entrepreneurship, gears, plastics, crops, cows, hogs, and on and on!

The reason I mention these subjects is a) they keep a writer humble and grounded) and b) they're all potential sources for short stories and novels - novels in particular!

By nature, novelists are omnivores; they digest anything within reach because it provides such a treasure for stories, plots and characters. For me, it's been real life characters in particular.

For example, there was my co-worker, "Johnson," a man whom I silently called "Quite Frankly," the reason being that everytime he was lying to you he'd begin the conversation with the phrase, "Quite frankly." He never knew he was doing it!

Then, there was "Bob," our 80-some-year-old landlord in my younger days. Bob was an alcoholic and an unfeeling man, in some respects, because periodically he'd say of his dead wife, "Yup, I was married to that woman for 50 years. God, I hated her."

Then there was "Sally," the hypochondriac who carried around a small wooden case full of the medications she suppposedly had to take and who - of course - just had to go through everyone of them for you. By the time she finished, you were convinced hell existed and you'd just landed in the middle of it.

Finally, there was "Leon," a man so afraid of making a mistake in his work that he would actually stay up all night correcting commas, semi-colons and the like - even though he had an expert editor at hand.

Well, you get my drift by now. The sources for fiction lie in your own life and experience. Just apply patience, persistence and hard work, and a story will arrive!