characters | Melissa MacVicar --Author

Since I announced to the world that I wrote a book and that someone thought enough of it to want to publish it, people have a lot of questions for me. I’ve literally got some explaining to do.

So I thought I’d share a little bit about my writing- what it is and what it is not.

As a teacher, there were many things that worried me about writing a young adult novel. One of my fears was that my friends and colleagues would make assumptions about the book that were inaccurate. So I wrote down some answers to questions people might have about the book.

Is it an educational book? The simple answer is no. I didn’t write the book to educate anybody about anything. I wrote the book to entertain people, the youngest probably being 14 and the oldest probably 110. Could people pull meaning from some of the themes and emotions in the book? Maybe. Hopefully. But not necessarily.

Are the characters based on real people? No. Definitely not. My characters are pure fiction. Making up characters is one of the most fun parts of writing. Of course, my characters do possess traits and emotions that a reader might recognize as familiar to them. That’s what every writer strives for–to emotionally connect with their reader. That’s part of what makes a book good, I think. I hope anyway.

Do you approve of or condone everything your characters do? Heck no! But I try to make my characters real people who make real life bad decisions. In fact, good conflict and action in a story often results from characters making bad choices. And just like real people who make bad decisions, I still love my characters. That doesn’t mean I recommend doing the things they do.