We all have this appendage lying about us somewhere – family.  Whether they are formed by blood, adoption or marriage, they accumulate or diminish, spread their wings and fly, or hang about forever, creating a ready stitched tapestry of characters at your disposal. You see, I suspect that many of us see a wealth of personalities displayed by our nearest and dearest and perhaps that might include the damn right eccentric through to the plain dull.

Whether you’re enamoured by your family, indifferent or estranged, they are what makes us and rather inescapably, they probably influence a great deal of writers, whether intentionally or not. I find the best approach is to disembody all those traits from names and faces, shuffle, then randomly pick a few and piece them back together into a whole new person.

It’s rather like the game Misfits (where head, body and legs of different people are swapped about until the correct alignment is created) swapping around those permutations might eventually lead to somebody and that person might just have a tale to tell.

Of course if all else fails, you could simply ring up a friend or family member and bounce a few ideas off them. An alternative perspective is always useful when shaping a new work.

Today’s book:

Louisa May Alcott – Little Women

Twitter hashtag is #AtoZChallenge and Twitter id is @AprilA2Z

Linky List  for finding other partipants in the challenge is here