Writing Journal #5

In choosing a character I didn’t really think about my choice, I had to create her before I could choose her. I knew I wanted her to be female because I understand the way women’s minds work better than men’s, so I could write a piece entirely from a girl’s point of view much more believably than I could from a guy’s. I found that to create a complex character I had to place her in a situation that would create mixed feelings and which would allow her to show different sides of herself, and creating that type of situation without using dialogue or a true plot was difficult. As I designed my character I used something that is socially a familiar situation, but added the unsettling addition of being able to see into the uncertain thoughts of one of the participants of that situation. I did this because it was a context in which different sides of a character could be drawn out. I used several mechanisms to do this, such as including the character’s thoughts and mentioning other common social constructs like magazines and movies.