The Character Gabriel

October 21, 2010 at 9:21 pm (Character Blogs)

I said some of where this character came from in my very first post, because I wanted to mention my Muse. This character was based off of my cousin first. He was the one who got me started back writing and as I came up with ideas for the book he would act them out for me. This made the process of writing more comical for me because I was able to have a mental picture of my cousin doing the part for real.  He was there for at least the first half of my writing process. He gave me several ideas for his character that I absolutely loved and wanted to put in my book. After a while he started drifting away so that he could begin his life outside of our small town. I didn’t hear from him very often so it made it hard to want to write again. I love having someone to bounce ideas off of so that I can make my book more exciting. If the person I’m bouncing my ideas off of doesn’t seem intrigued or if they just seem bored of the idea then I scratch it and come up with another. I wrote for a time without bouncing ideas off of someone and the story was turning out great, but I wanted that interaction with someone who was interested in the book.

My Muse was a friend back when I was in school who left the state to pursue life abroad. He sowed his wild oats and decided to come back to the place where his family lives. He and I started talking again. I dropped the bomb that I was writing a book during one of our conversations and he wanted to know more about it. I gave him the run down of what the story was about and he liked it, so I started talking to him more and more about it. I realized after several conversations with him that he had much the same personality as my previous inspiration so we talked about him being my inspiration for the character Gabriel. He loved the idea and I started bouncing ideas off of him. He even gave me several ideas for his personality. His is filled with so much more dark and mysterious humor than my previous inspiration that the character changed a bit throughout the book. It was a change that seemed to flow easily from one way to another so well that the change became a part of the story.

I had several days where I was blocked throughout the writing process. I would rack my brain on what to do next and just couldn’t come up with anything. The Muse just so happened to call on one of those days and he gave me so many ideas that I was able to pick one of them and run with it. This is the exact reason I call him my Muse. Everytime I hit a block all I would have to do is call him and we would talk for hours about possible scenarios until I found one that I truly loved and I would continue from there. Some of our conversations led me to use more then one of the scenarios at a time so I would end up going from one scenario growing on that and then adding another one as a continuance. The ideas that he gave me were not just for his character, they were for every character in the book. I had the story in my head from long ago but there were holes in the story and my Muse helped me to fill in those holes and the story turned out exactly the way I wanted it too.

I don’t know how most authors work but I had a Muse to guide in the direction I wanted to go and since he doesn’t want his name out there for the world, he has requested that I continue calling him the Muse from now on. 🙂 As you could probably tell by the comment he gave on my first post. If there are any authors out there having trouble I strongly suggest finding a Muse to bounce ideas off of. It can be beneficial in an author’s writing when they are blocked, that’s how I got through it.