Committing to my characters

I'm currently re-writing a novel which I originally wrote as a young adult tale.  Leaving aside my naive view that YA fiction was simpler and needed less depth than adult fiction, there are other reasons why the story didn't work.

I've mentioned in previous blog posts my tendency to pull my punches in describing characters' emotional reactions to events that affect them, but in this particular book I've committed a far worse sin.  I've failed to get into my character's skin.  I could see what she was seeing, but I didn't describe the differences between her vision and a human's.  But what I hadn't done - surprise, surprise - was describe her emotional reactions to the things that were happening to her.

And that was fatal for this particular manuscript.  For starters, she's just returned from a field trip to find the research station she departed from a few hours ago a smoking ruin.  But even more traumatic was her discovery of the burned remains of her parents there.

I've had the experience of my own parents dying, and I know the feeling of being suddenly cut adrift.  Two people who have been around for every day of your life are suddenly gone.  And this plunges us into a black hole of grief.  Each of us grieves in our own way, but if we cared at all about the person who's died, then we will grieve their loss.

But my character Chita was being too stiff-upper-lipped.  True, she is in constant danger of attack and has an ongoing threat to her own life, but I needed to show her grief.  I needed more of her emotions, a sense of that black hole that her dark thoughts are constantly falling into.

What I needed to do was get inside her skin.  She's a genetically engineered cat/human, and I think I've always had my internal censor sitting on my shoulder when I write about her.  "This will never work" it says.  "Do you have any idea how Impossible it would be to combine I'shara and human DNA to create a viable hybrid?"

This is when I need to silence that voice and commit to my character.  She does exist, a fully-functioning big cat with a human brain, language, and intelligence.  And my task now is to get fully inside her fur, live her life, and bring this glorious creation alive.  I have to commit to my character.