Ten Tips for Creating Multi-Faceted Characters

When I was sixteen, during the Civil Rights era, as part of a one-way student exchange program (from the inner city of Detroit to suburban Traverse City, Michigan), I lived with a white family. This was part of an integration initiative. (For me, it was an escape from the drugs taking over my neighborhood and some other demons in my life, but that's another story.) The mother of the family was also an artist, a sculptress, who encouraged me to write when she saw my love of the written word. Her name is Verna Bartnick, and when she prophesied that she saw a writing talent in me, I wasn't so sure. After all, if, at the time, I had told my family I wanted to be a writer, they would've laughed and said, "Go get you a good job." Well, as life rolled around, and I went to college, then became a social worker for the next twenty-three years, while raising 3 children, I used to wonder, when was my literary destiny going to begin?

Ironically, by the time my writing did emerge, I had buried my mother and become a grandmother, two milestones, which forced me to take action and realize how transient this life is. From living, I gleaned many things about my journey, but this is one thing I can