Searching for Mother

Photo by CDC on Unsplash

 Just to clarify from the start, this is not a heart wrenching or heart-warming tale of  long lost relatives. 

This is about searching for a character. or more specifically, searching for a character's look. 

For some of you, you'll know who Mother is. A woman, who since she was created in October 2020, has left umpteen bodies in her wake and who loves to cause a little mischief. She's been the character in many very short stories, but until now, I've not yet written what she looks like, so I can't glimpse her in my mind. This proves to be rather problematic when I want to turn Mother's murders into a novella.  

I tried to begin writing her story, and within 300 words, I changed how she looks twice. At first she had auburn hair, azure blue eyes and rosehip red lips. Then 158 words later, she had 'hair as black as midnight' and 'stormy grey eyes.' Do you see my problem? Admittedly I had come to it a few days later, so maybe I'd just forgotten, but still, after writing about Mother so many times I should know her a little bit better now, shouldn't I?

She has been though a few changes recently. She's got younger. After talking with a couple of fellow writers they suggested that a woman in her eighties would better then a woman of 93, and we've decided on more mischief and less murders. 

If only we could all have the JK Rowling experience of seeing the character fully formed in our minds eye, or is that more common than I realise? 

Whilst doing a little research for this blog post, I decided to google 'creating a character' and various options came up, which may help. 

There's the Character biography generator , how to create a character in six simple steps by Udemy and how to create a character in 14 steps with WikiHow. So I have plenty to be getting on with. 

If only I'd decided to do this months ago. Oh well, let's hope that Mother show's her face soon, then we can have some real fun! 

I'd love to hear how you created your characters, memorable characters that stand out to you or any tips that you may have in the comments or on Facebook. 

Martin is a writer, baker, photographer and storyteller. He's been published in the ACW Christmas anthology and Lent devotional. He's currently honing his craft at flash fiction and you can find him on Twitter here.