Observations on characterization from a future fiction writer

I don’t agree with the statement that your characters should be your friends. I think that as an author, as you are writing you should walk around in a “character suit.” By placing yourself somewhere inside your character you add a universal quality to that character that anyone who picks up your story can sympathize with if not relate to. Afterall, isn’t that why we read? To spend some time seeing the world through someone else’s eyes? Isn’t that why we watch movies? I don’t think there is any other craft that lets you get this close to people and lifestyles that aren’t your own (except maybe acting). I would spend some time reveling in the world that you create, good and bad. When I write a rape scene, for example, I feel breathless and weak afterwards. It takes everything out of me, because during the time that I was writing I was seeing what my character saw, feeling what she felt. Her tears were my tears. Her blood was my blood. The Hanson patches on her backpack were my Hanson patches. For that hour her rape story was my rape story. I think that that is how compelling scenes are written. My other character, Aimee Hansen, loves reading romance novels. I don’t read romance novels. But, if I did my body would clench up and a quiet yet high-pitched squeal would crawl up my throat at that moment when the heroine turns around to find her love interest standing right behind her. By spending some time inside your character you make them human. You keep them from becoming merely a “type.”