If you had to pick three characters in your books, who would be your favorites?
I can’t pick three characters who are my favorites because my favorite is always whoever I am writing at the moment; that is, whoever is the point of view character for any given scene, I like that person and I like that person more than anyone else. I think that’s a very basic human emotion. We like ourselves. And the reason that sacrificing yourself for someone else is such a big thing is because we do like ourselves very strongly. Now, if I don’t like that character that I’m writing more than I like any of the others, then the character doesn’t come out as being real.
There’s something tainted in the writing. Something false.
That’s an excellent point.
Because I’m trying to get inside that character’s skin, inside their head while I’m doing it. My wife will surprise the devil out of me. I’ll come into the house with the day’s writing, and before I’ve even said a word, she’ll say to me, “Oh, you’ve been writing Padan Fain today, haven’t you?”
And what’s really frightening about it is one, I haven’t said a word, and two, that even if it wasn’t Padan Fain, it was somebody else that you really don’t want to be alone with.
That’s really giving some life to the characters.
That’s what I try to do. I think the characters are the most important part. The story flows from character. That’s something I’ve always believed. If your characters are not as real as you can make them, then everything else begins to fall apart.
By doing it that way, it gives your work a three-dimensional quality that makes it seems like if anything happens to a certain character, the reader feels, “oh, no, this isn’t fair!”
Thank you.
I have to say that one of my personal favorites is Nynaeve.
Well, a lot of people like Nynaeve. I’ve noticed something interesting over the years about Nynaeve. I have had a number of women tell me how much they dislike Nynaeve. But what’s interesting is that when I talk with other people who know a woman who’s told me how much she dislikes Nynaeve, it turns out that she, herself, is a lot like Nynaeve. What this means, I have no idea.
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