So I’m sitting in the Ice House today, a coffee roaster in Downtown Evergreen, Colorado, and I am startled out of my reverie by a voice. The Ice House is actually more than a coffee roaster. It is a coffee maker, sandwich server, cinnamon roll baker, etc, and for my purposes a provider of tables where laptops can be connected and books written. I am at a crucial point in Chapter 22, trying to decide how the drama teacher would respond to the student who is full of talent and fuller of attitude, when I hear the voice that will challenge my approach to characters in books in general. There is a woman at the next table who is loudly explaining her point of view, certain that she knows better than the two other people at the table, which is why she isn’t bothering to allow them an opportunity to speak. Annoying. Common. I am almost provoked to violence.
But that is my dilemma with the drama teacher. How real can you make a character in a book? Books are places where men do not fart and women do not pick their noses while stopped at a light. We don’t really want to read about people who are coping with things like gas and boogers, and yet we cry for reality in our characters. We want to relate to them, to know them, but we would prefer they not bother us with their toe poking through the end of their sock inside their wingtips. So I am left with a drama teacher who is facing a very real situation; should I allow him to react in a real way?
