Authentic Characters in Fiction

Good day, good people.

For devotees of the English language: bamblustercate is to discomfit or confuse.

The language of a character helps develop and show his or her personality. Stephen King wrote a book called On Writing. He tells the writer to have a racist talk like a racist and a bigot talk like a bigot whether your friends and readers like it or not.

In Operation Downfall, a political thriller, the heroine, Mariah O’Leary, is a chameleon of the English language. She talks in the vernacular of her people, the poor in her neighborhood and like the rich and famous when she is with them.

I wrote a thriller, Operation Exposed, which will be published in 2012. It is about intolerance, racism and anti-Semitism in Beverly Hills, California. I followed King’s advice. One of my friends who read the manuscript told me, “I’m a recovering bigot, and you’re a racist.” I bamblustercated my friend when I responded, “I am not, but I will put the reason for what I have done in an epigraph.” And I did.

This is the epigraph in Operation Exposed. “This story was written with the hope or was it a dream that a reader who identified with or recognized himself or herself in the portrayal of a character with an addictive prejudice who engaged in intolerance would change for the better. And, if you are offended by the realistic language and conduct of an intolerant character, I have been successful. And, if you motivate the intolerants among us and turn them into recovering intolerants, I have been successful.”

When my friend read the epigraph he understood.

What is your thought on Stephen King’s advice? What is your thought on my epigraph? Does it tell the reader I am not an intolerant?

Contacting me with comments and constructive criticisms with honesty and pleasantness, their constant companions, will always be welcome.