Marginal Characters

Thinking about characters who appeal to you on some deeper-than-ordinary level, you are more often than not drawn to outsiders, men or women of any age who neither arrived on schedule or took conventional evolution for granted. Most of these outsiders are moral enough--as moral as any of us--to inspire the trust a reader needs in order to sign on to one of their adventures; they have a more instinctive understanding of the use of the semi-colon rather than the more strictly grammatical approach. They are not angry persons bent on revenge or evening any particular score so much as they are enthusiastic about social justice in general, often arriving at that place from a situation in which they were shown the back of the hand of social justice.

They are naturals for a dramatic landscape in which surprises are every bit as likely to be pleasant as unpleasant. But they know this about their life and its surrounding terrain; this knowledge allows them to politely refuse targets of opportunism as well as opportunity. Sometimes they make choices that surprise them, finding ways to live cheerfully with the consequences.

It does come down to consequences, doesn't it? These men and women of your dreams and imagination, the strangers who appear before you in your inventions, they all take risks in the end, straying from potential boundaries or limitations of convention, consequences and conscience fitting nicely into their being. They may be strangers until you get to know them, but they are all of them you in one way or another.