Looking up the definition for “Character” it simply states “A fictional person”. Everyone KNOWS this, but somehow it resonated with me. This is certainly not conducive to studying for my writing final, which I should be doing right now, but to simply state Character as a fictional person seems so… wrong, even though that’s what they are. They aren’t real, not in this physical realm of the five senses at least.
I can have whole conversations with characters, trying to flesh them out and find out who they are and they become intimate beings, separate but inherently part of me. They are not me, I cannot control them, they make their own decisions, have their own thoughts, fears, dreams, wants, needs. In the sense of what make people, people, they are all those things, but their bodies do not have flesh and bone in a literal sense, they are but words on a page.
A character is not real. But to me, the solitary writer, most days, they are my only friends.
~Kat
Tempest in a Teacup 