CHRISTMAS MORNING

The weight of my stocking pulled the brass holder off the fireplace mantle and onto the wood laminate flooring. Nothing broke, I can assure you of that, having left my stocking lying there until morning, but it most certainly awoke me in the middle of the night. Considering my young age and sense of practicality—I don’t believe in fat men sliding down chimneys unless they’re of criminal mind (you read about such characters getting stuck and crying for help until the police arrive, or worse: suffocating in their own stupidity)—so I rolled over and went back to sleep.

My wife says I can sleep through a plane crash in our backyard, but for some reason, today I had to get up early and investigate the damage. My greatest concern was that the brass stocking holder chipped the wood laminate; however, the only real damage happened to be a few broken Werther’s Original Candies that undoubtedly softened the blow. I thought about unsavory characters, the Billy Bob Thornton type, doing B & E’s and stealing presents from under Christmas trees. Of course, this would be perfectly acceptable if some tragic circumstance, some malady, some horrible affliction, motivated Mr. Bad Santa to overcome electronic burglar alarm systems and locked doors. Hey, what can I say—a Santa Claus of this nature interests me a hell of a lot more than some good natured jolly old man spreading joy and cheer all over the world for no real apparent reason except to make us forget about our troubles. Let’s be real—Christmas Day to some only magnifies their unfortunate circumstances. I’d rather take a look under the microscope and see if I can come up with some of the dirt, some of the unfortunate events that most people would rather ignore. Isn't that what makes a character interesting? I leave you with some advice on creating fictional characters from John Dufresne:

Once I get to know a character, I want to know even more about them, so I keep digging into their pasts. And I also feel that every character in a story is the central character in his or her own story, and I try to suggest what that story might be. Every character has an imagination and memories, has suffered childhood traumas, has or has had a mom and a dad. Every character has regrets. Every character has secrets. Every character has a public self and a private self and a self that he doesn’t even know about.. Every character has a history, a formative past. And I need to know all that when I write the story. I want to tell what happened in a character’s life. But I want to know why it happens and I want what happens to be told in a surprising way, surprising for me and for the reader.