Becoming human

When we are developing our characters for our stories we spend a great deal of time creating believable people. We want them to be flawed, but likable. This even goes for the bad guy sometimes. Some of the creepiest bad guys are those that we want to win anyway. My favorite example is Phantom in Phantom of the Opera. You know what he did is wrong but your heart breaks just the same at the end of the story.

I think one thing we as authors and business owners must also do is be human. There is a delicate balance between being human and committing a TMI-faux pas [TMI=Too much information]. The rise in popularity of reality shows, blogs and social networking, I believe, is the desire to pull people from their pedestals and "see behind the curtain" as it were.

How much humanity are you allowing your readers or your target market to see. Don't show so much that you undermine confidence in your professionalism, but you don't want to be aloof either. It is about striking a balance.

I'd like to share with you a blog interview I did with Nora St. Laurent. Here is the link. I was discussing a bit about Writing Career Coach but I also talked a bit about our family's financial struggles in the wake of my husband's cancer diagnosis 2 1/2 years ago. From that was birthed my other website "The Balanced Life".

As professionals who move in to the spotlight upon publication it is important to maintain our privacy while at the same time being human to the people who invest in us. Consider how you, and your characters, can become more human to your target readership. And please go check out the blog. It is a lot of fun. You'll find out about the Green Dress, Worm Farms [huh], and how we turned little Debbie snack cakes in to a chicken farm.

It's your opportunity to look behind the curtain of my life for a moment and see my driving motivation as a Coach.

Tiffany Colter is a writer, speaker and writing career coach who works with beginner to published writers. She can be reached through her website at www.WritingCareerCoach.com
Learn more about Tiffany's Marketing techniques on her main blog.
Common-sense money management is free at The Balanced Life website.
Read Tiffany's award winning manuscript "A Face in the Shadow" on her fiction blog.
She writes a blog for the Christian writer Tuesdays at Writer's Rest.