Characters in Remember When. First Look.

This is one of those "okay, I might be begging trouble here" sort of posts, but hey let's take a whack at it. There is a delete button for posts if this goes wrong.

Writing Remember When was a near-Fugue experience, producing a complete but messy-as-hell draft in under three days. There was very little conscious drafting of the characters before that happened. This is not a thing that is often wise to do. I was very fortunate that my motivation to write the work included a pretty keen sense of which characters would be "cracked mirror reflections" of real people, which ones were composites, and which ones were outright fabrications.

After the deluge of writing, there was a lengthy editing process for the story. That also included a whole lot of asking the questions "is this character complete? do they as-written convey a person who could have been? do they fulfill a needed role in the presentation of the story?" and all of that applies in any fiction writing process. There were a couple of times where "is this character sufficiently distinct from anyone real that I'm not going to catch hell for writing about them?" too. Might have succeeded at that; sure hope so. With that caveat in hand about any analysis having happened after the characters were written, how about a closer look now?

Let's take the example of a supporting Character like "Ed".

He's the counterfoil to how I expressed The Roomie's changes in ordinary life. He provided opportunities to express how those changes had wider effects than just internal to The Roomie. He's also the most normal guy around. As such, the reader knows him by what he thinks, and how he interacts with some of the same things The Roomie does... but how he looks in detail isn't important.

What is important is how he sees the same things The Roomie does, and yet acts on them differently. How he questions and draws out The Roomie's feelings and thoughts, occasionally. Sure, he also brings a bit of dry humor to some moments, but he's neither played as a joker nor as a scold.

When the manuscript went out for Critical Reads (beta readers, if you prefer that term), Ed was one character that came up early in many of the feedback reports. "I knew an Ed." was a thing said. "I cleaned that mark off the wall." was one that made me laugh, but also told me that character had worked as far as being accessible and relatable to readers. He was also pretty high on the "Characters I'd have a drink with" list from the old feedback question I used in the interview with Critical Readers of Hit, Kiss, Drink with, or Ignore?

How did he work for you? Is there more you wanted said about him, or are there unanswered questions as to his role and nature? Did he "live" for you?