So Real: Characters

 Atticus Finch, Jane Eyre, R.P. McMurphy, Elena Greco...these are not real people. They are fictional characters, invented entirely out of black marks on a white page. But I can't help but feel as if they really exist; that their thoughts and actions came from a place similar to my own. 

How do authors do that? How do they create people that seem so real that we speculate what they'll do after the story is over, or why they make the decisions they do?

In Honors English, we shift from talking about characters with questions such as "Why did the character do that?" to "What effect does this choice on the part of the author have on the story?" 

In class, we've been focusing on how authors create characters through indirect characterization - how they lead us to think about their characters' personalities by how they make them look, what they make them say and think and do, and how they make other characters react and interact with them.

For this blog post, let's celebrate those characters that seem so real that you want to ask them questions about their lives; so real that you want to know what happened to them after the story ends. 

For this week's post, write about a fictional character that feels so real to you that you think of them as a friend, or an enemy, or a role model. 

Write two paragraphs: 

1. The first paragraph should introduce the character and the book and author that this character is from. Why does this character feel real to you?
2. The second paragraph should elaborate on some of your reactions to this character when you were reading. For example, you could write about a moment when you wanted to shout at the character, telling them they were making the wrong decision or when you felt so badly for a situation the character was in that you wanted to cry.  This paragraph should focus on how you interacted with the character as if they were real as you were reading.

Have fun with this!

Due Friday, September 24.