Eileen, my rebellious fairy godmother
- Are you giving me the best lines? I have no doubt Eileen would say this to me. She would want to be presented "properly" and wouldn't want her creator letting her down.
- Do you have to show my flaws? Eileen is a blunt and honest person, one reason I love writing about/for her, but like any of us would not necessarily want her flaws put on public display. Yet for a character to be real and not a cardboard cut-out, flaws must be shown as well as virtues. Eileen still wouldn't like this though. (Tough, she'd have to put up with it!).
- Don't ever write anything "twee" about me. I wouldn't dream of it. One thing I hate is that fairytales are still often seen as being for kids, simplistic etc. One thing confirmed to me by the Hans Christen Andersen course I'm currently studying on line is that the best tales have depth - lots of depth. They are also not twee (but often violent, brutally honest and whoever thought of reading some of them to kids at bedtime needs their head examining - see HCA's The Little Mermaid and compare it to Disney's version. You will see why Disney had to present the story the way they did, they couldn't have shown HCA's tale as originally written).
- Don't show me up. Fits in with 3 above. Not just for Eileen, I as a writer need to make sure what my characters say match what they do (unless I want to show them up as hypocrites and even there most hypocrites really don't think they come into that category. What I love about Eileen is she does know she can be hypocritical and simply doesn't care, which is a joy to write).
- Do you have to show what others think of me? A definite yes to this one. It's not just the character you present in a story, it's how others react to them and why that makes the tale live.