About Characters


When one creates a character, even if it is inspired on this person, even if if talks as this person, it thinks as this person, it is NOT this person. It is someone else, with a different story, and don't you ever dare to say that a character is it's author. First, because it may lead to wrong interpretations about the author's life and thoughts, even to love or hate based on the characters one assumes to be the same of their creator. Kind people may write about terrible villains, rude people can create lovely pieces of text. One author is not it's work.
And second, because by inferring that a character is the representation of its author, beyond committing an unforgivable mistake (except if the book is an autobiography, of course) you are also loosing a great  opportunity: the amazing, scary, deep, marvelous experience of considering a character real. 
There is a world to be discovered behind each character, if you consider it as a person. Not necessarily a human being, someone that lived or that will live someday somewhere, no! That is too limiting. A character shouldn't be seem as a possible future real being, or the record of a past one, but as a being that already exists, and ought to be considered. 
Seen like that, each character has a backstory. It may be said in the book, it may not. If it isn't, you are able to create one. Even if it is, there are always things unsaid: the first memory of it's childhood, the tone of voice of it's mom, dad or the person it loves, it's favorite picture, the thing that used to scary this character when it was five years old. 
As a person, the character has a life that existed before the book was written, and that continues after the point where the words stop. As an individual, the character will keep living. It may have children, it may not. It may travel around the world. As a person, even the villains have a chance to be happy in the end - since you doesn't see the end, you can't really tell. Of course that also implies the brave and noble hero or heroin may end it's life not that happy… Well, it may. Isn't it how life works? But the reader can imagine what would happen to him/her. Being an author, or a reflection of one, a character is a thing with expiring date. It has a function, and it's over as soon as it's performed. One can get to know how the author lives, or how it died, one can get the opinion of an author about abortion, religion, the universe, life and everything else. But a character! It has it's own circumstances, friends, life, decisions. And that's why it is fascinating.
As a person, a character opens space in your heart. You can cry for it, laugh with it, you can feel angry and be willing to beat it in the face - you feel. As a representation of it's creator, it may be effective and cause emotions, too. But it's author will never be able to become a part of your life in the way a character will. With its non-physical existence, a character can be with you on the dinner table, it may move to your country, it may live inside your head and help you deal with things. It may only be a scene on the back of your memory, but it may also become that one you will identify with so much that you will wonder if, in deed, you were not that character, or a part of it, all this time.
So, for this plead, for the sake of the joy, fear, sadness and enchantment that it will bring you, if not by the right a character has to live, don't assume a character is/speaks for it's author, unless you are told so. This way, reading becomes something not about story-writers and egos, but about a huge world of incredible, funny, evil, lovely (and all other adjectives) people. 

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