 Horror/Scary: June 28, 2023 Issue [#12036] |
This week: Skeletons In The Closet Edited by: Gaby  
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Everything has been written. Everybody knows everything about me. There are no secrets. Except the skeletons in my closet.
~ Kirby Puckett
After 16 years in pictures I could not be intimidated easily, because I knew where all the skeletons were buried.
~ Gloria Swanson
I make skeletons that are able to walk on the wind, so they don't have to eat... eventually I want to put these animals out in herds on the beaches, so they will live their own lives.
~ Theo Jansen
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I do most of my thinking at night. Those may not be the smartest, filled with butterflies and rainbows kind of thoughts but they are there. The night those kinds of thoughts inspired this newsletter they also gave me plenty of nightmares. I tend to be impulsive and a bit paranoid, who also overthinks things, and likes to dig deeper than necessary.  That's me. What about you?
Do you have skeletons hiding in the closet or the back yard?
It's not necessarily a rhetorical question. Many would say that they don't have any secrets. An empty closet to present to the world. Are they being truly honest with themselves? If we all have a story to tell, then all of us have at least a few bones hidden somewhere, or they might just be hiding in plain sight.
To know yourself, is one thing, to know your characters another.
Since this is a subject not many like to talk about, I'll start with myself. Do I have skeletons in my closet? Yes! Some big and locked away to never see the light of day, others are just a few dog bones to chew on. With some it all depends on your perspective of things in order to decide how big they are. My thoughts, feelings, things I might have done, are all locked away. No one is an open book, especially not me. While I share a lot with the WdC world and those closest to me, there are parts of me, parts of my mind, that no one will ever get to experience. They are the dark corners of my soul because that is exactly what they are. Nothing good nor decent dwells there.
Which brings us to crating a character that in reality is good but also lives with demons of their own and skeletons hidden neatly in the closet. First major character that pops to mind in order to compare is Dexter. I, for one, have a twisted kind of love for him. I see all his bad, all his torture, and yet I cannot help but feel for him. Because I understand him. I don't share his love of murder, but I can find a connection with him many don't.
Another such character is Lestat from Anne Rice's books. While supernatural, her Vampire Chronicles were considered horror. Anne herself had a love for Lestat which had nothing to do with books and writing. He opened doors for her, shared his deepest thoughts and fears with her and she put it all on paper. If you haven't read the books, because not everything is everyone's cup of tea, I'll just sum up this one special character for you and hope that you see and understand what a simple character can do.
Lestat, who was born in a small village in France, had been taken by a vampire who turned him, and left him to figure everything out on his own. However, the many books she wrote about Lestat, they weren't just about his next adventure or the next kill. In reality, he was more human, more real than any other character I've ever read about. He was dead from the start and yet he was more real than some people I've met and talked to.
Anne shared his fears, his misfortunes, his self-doubts, the selfishness we all carry within us, his love of humanity and art, and love. He loved. He loved deeper and without judgement. He was a character that will live on for decades even if Anne is gone. Why does Lestat matter? He matters because he's not just another character we read about and forget. The creation of him opened a whole world to the reader but only because of him did it actually matter. His closet was littered with skeletons and that is exactly what made him human. It is that which made him stand out.
Of all the books you've read in your lifetime, how many books do you truly remember? Not just the writer who wrote it, but the actual book, its characters and you wished there was more? Ask yourself this. When you write your stories, don't you want to know all there's to know about your character? Don't you want your reader eagerly flip the pages? To ask for more?
How many stories do you have in your port where you tried to do the best you can? Where you thought that the story is worth reading? Then later on, you get a review on said stories and you yourself can't remember what you wrote about? If you who wrote it can't remember it, how can you expect others to want more of it? I, myself, am guilty of this and I realized that I didn't have a connection to what I wrote. I just wrote it, but I didn't care. So once you make a true connection with a character, that is when the story will matter to you, to your reader. And in order to do so, you have to dig deep. Not just a surface skim of their personality traits or what flaws they have, you have to find that closet full of skeletons. And you'll need the key. If you want the key, you should know everything else about that character up until that point. When you open that door, there's no turning back, but I promise you, the rewards will be much greater than the loss and pain you'll experience when you see those skeletons.
'til next time, my scary friends!
~ Gaby 
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