Celebrating in Character

Book photo: Conger Design via Pixabay

Yesterday was National Relaxation Day. Did you celebrate?

I spent the day back-to-school clothing shopping with my daughter. I don't know if it was relaxing, but it was fun. I'm grateful to have a daughter whose company I enjoy, even if it means the house is going to seem very empty when she goes back to school next week.

Last Sunday was my birthday -- my first without my mom. I relaxed and celebrated by going to church, hanging out at home working on a syllabus and going to dinner with my family. Hardly a wild and crazy birthday celebration, but it was the one I wanted this year. I got to check something off my to-do list (which counts as relaxing because it reduced my stress level!) and spend time just being with people I love.

It's funny how our ideas of things like relaxing and celebrating change over time. Sometimes, it's a matter of growing older, but more often, it has to do with personality. Introverts celebrate differently from extroverts. Mothers celebrate differently than their daughters do, and husbands have a different definition than wives.

Pixabay

For writers, these differences, like so many others, figure into character development. Back when Marita and Bets were teenagers, relaxing and celebrating involved things like drinking and dancing -- the wilder and crazier the better. Bets retained more of her wild child over time, but Marita's was tamed a bit by motherhood. Sure, she still loves to get dressed up and go out, preferably with Bets, but these days, Marita sets her own curfews. With a young teen daughter as her first priority, Marita always has going home at the end of the evening -- to her own home -- in the back of her mind. This governs her behavior more than her parents or any significant other ever could because it's a choice she makes about how she wants to run her life.

For Angel, celebration and family go hand in hand. Despite the fact that she's younger than Bets and Marita, for Angel, celebrations have always been quieter. She might like a party, but only if it's populated with friends and loved ones; most of the time, she's just as happy to stay home. A night out on the town needs to center on the people she goes out with, not everyone else in the room.  While Marita's idea of celebration means getting away from her parents and letting loose, Angel still feels the pain of her mother's desertion profoundly. Instead of getting away from anyone, Angel strives to hold tightly to those she loves, a part of her afraid to lose anyone else.

As I work on the third novel with these characters, I continue to learn more about them, including  how they feel, how they relax and how they celebrate. In this third book, the way in which Marita and Angel approach their lives, the expectations they have for themselves and others around them and their unmet needs all play a part. I'm not sure I set out to explore all of this when I sat down to write the next chapters of their lives, but once again, my characters have drawn me into their stories.

And, in my opinion, that's exactly what a reader should expect from a book as well.

Happy Belated National Relaxation Day. If you haven't already celebrated, maybe now's the time.