Thursday 19 April 2012

Q is for Quirks

What makes a character more interesting? Quirks. Strange habits that make us who we are, or that makes a character in the story both unique, adding a dimension to them. Interesting.

I have some (not one) quirks. I bite my nails like crazy, especially when nervous, I love sleeping with my socks on (without them I will toss and turn the whole night. But once I have them on, I sleep like a baby)  When eating pizza, I remove all the onions. FOr some reason the onions disturb my eating senses alot. When I was young, after my mom cooked this wonderful stew,so healthy and yummy, I'd remove all those tiny traces of tomatoes. Any traces of those and I wouldn't even eat.  This annoyed my Mom to no end.

In my YA dark fantasy, my MC jiggles her foot when nervous, and enjoys making up words, and completely overprotective of her friends and family members. Which later causes a big conflict in the story and lands her in her current occupation: Reaper's Novice.

Imagine having a character who is superstitious about mirrors. It happens one day this same character is locked in a room full of mirrors, and no way to cover them. Would be interesting to see how he handles this conflict.

Or another who would never ever wear anything that is not made out of 100%. (I'm almost guilty on this one)

Or uses a word very often, that it has become a trademark :D
The character who comes to mind is Captain Jack Sparrow, using the word 'Savvy'. It's so Jack.




So what character quirks do you find annoying? or funny or interesting?