What secret should my character have?

They’re immortal!

Maybe if we knew a bit more about the script, like if they is a he or a she and what the script is about. Is it a script based realistic possible events?

They could be pack rat who turned human from killing hundreds of humans.

He’s actually dead the whole time.

he was born a cat.
he fears the letter “t” when words start with it.
he cannot stand buttons- zippers only.
he eats people’s business cards

Steals change from blind and homeless people. You know, pretends to put money in the cup and secretly takes it out.

Write his other background even if it won’t be in the book. Where he was born, what his hobbies are, how he dresses, what are some of his personality traits.

As you do that, the character may well reveal the secret to you himself.

He’s secretly a time lord.

What genre is this script in, anyway? Is it supposed to be realistic or can we go wild?

I have exactly the same question as I ruminate about my NaNoWriMo story. So I’ll trade some secrets with you.

Here’s one: he or she is illiterate.

Your turn.

@Samurai and @Fyrius – so far the script is based in reality, but I’m open to new direction . . . and for the record, the character is a girl. Just sayin’.

I’m also doing NaNoWriMo.

what is NaNoWriMo?

She has a penchant for killing transients.

She is a lesbian that is into dudes.

She has the power to make people poop their pants simply by pointing at them.

The first cloned human.

It’s often interesting (if cliché) to have a character have a secret that seems entirely contrary to their personality or reputation. Probably the most common version of this is a large, muscular tough guy who secretly loves Hello Kitty. You can also turn it around and have a sweet little girl who has the time of her life watching violent wrestling matches.
And you can probably come up with something similar for any other personality; a clumsy, hyperactive loose cannon who is amazing at building houses out of playing cards, a deadpan snarker rationalist intellectual who cries her eyes out at the dumbest soap operas, an atheism spokesperson academic with an imaginary friend. Et cetera.

What kind of character are we dealing with here? What’s her personality like?

@efritz Time lords aren’t real?
Anyway it’d be a great twist since that way, David Tennant could help her make Time Lord babies!

@Fyrius – so far the character is, um, secretive. She seems to be unnoticed by most people, and she’s in track and field. I guess I have some character development to do . . .

@Sarcasm and @Blondesjon – LOL

She was raised by badgers.

Badgers?

@efritz
It’s easy to invent a secret for a character with no revealed personality, but difficult to come up with one that will surprise anyone. Basically everything about her that you haven’t mentioned yet is a secret.

@Fyrius – true. But I was hoping that the secret would reveal something to me about her character – and then I could go from there . . . I’m new at this whole writing thing, if it’s not obvious :)

I was going to say that she has only one leg, but that would be obvious if she is in track and field.

She is an identical twin separated at birth form her sister.

She was born with both male and female genitalia and chose to become female.

She is a bank robber on her days off, so she can pay her training fees.

She has an artificial eye so she cannot see people coming up to overtake her on the left.

She is a dominatrix.

She is able to use her psychic powers to slow down other runners.

She shot a man, just to watch him die.

She was raised by abusive parents who kept her locked in a closet between the ages of three and seven.

She has a pathological fear of lightening. Or water. Or chewing gum.

She isn’t human.

I don’t know, there are so many possibilities. Pick one that helps move your plot along.

@efritz
Ah. So you intend to base her personality in part on this secret?

And I should say I’m hardly an expert myself. I read up a bit, that’s all. :)
This and this tutorial are two of my sources. I don’t know, maybe you’ll find them interesting and/or helpful.

@oratio . . .Badgers.

She secretly can read peoples minds.
Bend spoons.
Supersonic hearing.
See in the dark.
Has no feeling in her hands.
Is dyslexic.
Cant turn left.

@Blondesjon classic

She works undercover for the CIA.

UPDATE: I think my character might be a body snatcher.

Thanks everyone!

Why? What does she do with the bodies?

You’ll have to read the story to find out.

Maybe she can’t swim. Not very cool or weird, but that’s the point isn’t it? A cool action type character wouldn’t be much inconvenienced by being cloned or some hard core vice type thing. Not being able to swim – THAT I call a secret worth keeping for an action character.

@johnpowell, join us here.

@efritz, here’s NaNoWriMo.

I don’t know about efritz, but I am interested in secrets that real people are likely to have and keep, secrets that might belong to the middle-aged drone in the next cubicle or the young woman who rings up your toasted tuna and coke. For instance, they have a wild online persona. They did time for drug dealing. They’re stealing from the company. Their mother is a hooker.

Some more examples of real secrets:

She gave a baby up for adoption when she was 18.
He raped a girl when he was 14.
She wants people to believe it’s her first marriage, but it’s her fourth.
He has constant violent fantasies about torturing, murdering, and dismembering people.
She dropped out of high school.
He has an out-of-wedlock daughter who is now 30 years old.

Her grandfather was a high level official in the Nazi party, and the family changed its name.
She’s a porn star.
She’s an undercover restaurant reviewer for the New York Times
She was a Powerball winner in another state, and changed her name.
She’s in the witness protection program.

She is the guilty driver in a hit-and-run accident.
She plagiarized her dissertation.
Her child isn’t hers.
She stood by while her abusive boyfriend beat her child to death and then testified that it was an accident.
She is addicted to porn.
She is a he.
She is a whistleblower.
She knows where the bodies are buried.

As a child, she saw her father kill her mother, and never told anyone.
She’s dating her half brother but has no idea they’re related.
She’s Paul McCartney’s love child.

She is in the country illegally and is wanted in six European countries and one in Africa.
All her teeth are false.
She wrote a trashy novel under a pseudonym, and it is a hot seller in its niche.
She stole her mother’s ring before they closed the coffin.
She let her baby brother die.
She is the secret lover of a rising political star.
She is a skilled assassin.
She has a prosthetic foot.

He can turn into a squid!

She is a cannibal.
She is the missing heiress to a fortune she does not want.
She has a disease that will kill her in a year.
She cannot see the left side of anything.
She is irresistibly attracted to skunks.
She has a morbid fear of rubber.
She was born in a commune, never knew which two adults were her actual parents, and slaughtered her first goat at the age of eight.

She litters as a secret act of defiance.
Her parents are aging hippies, and she owns a secret collection of Prada shoes.
She was a Chi Omega in college, and a Little Sister for Lambda Chi, but had a 4.0 in physics.
She hasn’t brushed her teeth in the last year.
Her boobs aren’t her own; before the implants she was a 32AAA
Once, in a reception line, she was so excited about meeting George Bush, she threw up on his shoes.
She has had an affair with a married man for the last 10 years.
She has two extra toes on her left foot.
She got pregnant at 16, and gave birth to a harlequin fetus.
She has two rows of teeth, like a shark.

She is an avowed atheist, but sneaks away on Sundays to attend Mass in nearby town.
She has a collection of mummified cats in her parent’s basement.
When she was 11, she microwaved her brother Billy’s hamster after giving it a bath. That did not turn out too well.
She cut the whiskers off the left side of her neighbor’s cat to see if the old wive’s tale that the cat would list to the left was true.
When out of town on business, she frequents lesbian bars.
When stressed, she eats pigs feet, pickled eggs and bologna to soothe herself.
From the ages of 6 to 14, her parents kept her locked up in closet.
She threw acid in the face of her ex-boyfriend’s new girlfriend.

Oooh, @PandoraBoxx, I am coming back to this page when I start my NaNoWriMo novel. You do have a fearsome imagination.

> She cut the whiskers off the left side of her neighbor’s cat to see if the old wive’s tale that the cat would list to the left was true.
And was it?

I have one more:

She heads a prestigious intellectual organization, but she has only a GED, and she cheated on that.

@Jeruba, it’s her secret. But let’s just say that until his whiskers grew back, the cat was known to walk clear around the block to get to the back door of his house. ;-P

She is cyborg from the future, sent to destroy Sarah Conner
She was the second shooter on the grassy knoll.
She is the daughter of a well known murder victim
She once got her toe stuck in her nose.
She wrote “the blair witch project”
She hates pancakes.

@filmfann, the “toe stuck in her nose” just sent hot tea shooting out my nose onto the laptop screen.

She really does have Earl in the trunk of her car.
She’s a kleptomaniac, but only steals spoons from historical museums.
She does bird impersonations. Quite badly.
She waxes her mustache every night.
She writes a syndicated advice column.
When stressed, she yodels. She once triggered an avalanche in the Cascade Mountains that killed 17 people.

She’s doping!
@filmfann cybernetic organism :)

Now, now, PB. Are we getting carried away?

@Jeruba, It beats the alternative this evening, which involves recently sharpened kitchen knifes and a sleeping inhabitant of this household. It’s a good thing that, despite living in Romania for 300 years, my ancestors did not intermarry with the native population but instead stayed within their Donauschwaben clansmen. Law-abiding proclivities will prevail. That, and it’s a new mattress on the bed. It would be a shame to ruin it.

I see. Better keep writing, darlin’. And, uh, nibble some garlic.

She carries the secret formula for Coca Cola in her purse
She knows where Jimmy Hoffa is buried but was paid a million dollars not to reveal it
She knows where Big Foot is but won’t tell because she had a child with him
She is a speech writer for Rush Limbaugh
She is paid by an insecticide manufacturer to import invasive species
She has a secret power that forces people to tell the truth
She has a recording of the Pope admititng he is an atheist

I don’t understand this thread anymore. But it’s quite entertaining.

she’s been raped
she’s had an abortion
she’s been abused
she is mentally ill
she is an alcoholic
she is addicted to gambling
she has killed someone
she let someone die
she has cheated with another character in the script
she is a sex addict
she is homeless
she has tattoos all over the clothed part of her body
she has cancer
she lied on her resume
she never finished high school or college
she works in a strip club
she was/is a prostitute
she has been a porn actress
she is having an affair with a married politician

all of the above!

How about secrets that are not evil or shameful, but are still something to hide or protect? Like, suppose she knows which of the amateurish-looking paintings in her father’s house conceals a real Rembrandt? or she has inside knowledge of a pharmaceutical company’s impending major breakthrough? or she can prove that she is JFK’s love child? or she possesses a genuine treasure map made by Jean LaFitte?

She books the reservations for the Bilderberg Group each year
By day, she works the Lancome counter at Niemann-Marcus, by night she works for the CIA.
She’s been playing the stockmarket online, and is currently worth $12,432,112.89.
She cannot turn her head to the left.
Her great-grandmother was Hermoine Gingold.
She cannot keep time to music.
She does a wicked moose call.
Dwarfism runs in her family.
She can explain Einstein’s Theory of Relativity.
She lost 223 lbs. with lapband surgery.
No matter how much she drinks, she never gets drunk.
She is a successful card-counter, and has yet to be detected.

You are wonderful, @PandoraBoxx. And that is not even a secret.

Eighty-nine cents. Nabokov was right, you’ve got to have the detail.

I can call cows.

I am impressed. But the question is, do they take your calls, or let them roll to voice mail?

Actually I suspect the cows are either cheesed off, or they milk it for all it’s worth.

She paid her college expenses by playing poker.
She plays first violin for an orchestra but gets weepy over John Denver songs.
She is a gourmet chef but has a thing for Hostess Twinkies.
She habitually turns people’s names into anagrams.
She teaches art history but figured out the Monty Hall problem
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monty_Hall_problem) before her friend the math professor.

aulophobia