The more I work on this novel, the more I see that my main character is selfish, unrealistic, and lazy. During planning, she didn't seem all that bad. Then when I started writing the story and her character started coming to life...things were totally different from what I expected. This is a likable, but still not a very good girl.
Danielle has a serious problem with perfectionism and pride, and that keeps her from creating relationships that mean anything with other people. I feel that her upbringing doesn't really help. Her parents raised her to be very competitive so instead of making friends, everyone around her is the competition:
I would go running to my mom after to school to show her the grades my teacher gave me.
“Look Mommy! Mrs. Brown gave me an A and a star!”
“Good job,” mommy would say. “Are you the smartest in your class sweetheart?”
I pouted a little. Jenna, a dark haired girl with braided pigtails, was constantly getting praised for being able to read well.
“No. I don’t read as well as Jenna.”
“Then let’s try working really hard to read better than Jenna. Okay?”
Also since she's smart and performs well at what she does, she feels the pressure to always do things right. Always put the right answer on the test. Always get the A. Because of that, she has too much pride to admit her weaknesses, and weakness is what helps people bond to each other.
She also has this super inflated ego based on how great she did in school, which is a result of lazy study habits and pleasing people:
If I wanted to pass a test, I simply binge memorized all the stuff I needed to know and then purged myself the next day in the form of spewing all of the right answers on the test answer sheet. Of course, I didn’t remember much of anything that I memorized three days later. I just shoved knowledge in and regurgitated it out in a neat way that makes teachers happy.
When she moves into the hectic and chaotic environment at the Blue Room Café, she finds that she doesn't have it all together like she thought. She also realizes that although she wants things to be easy and go her way, life really isn't like that.
Danielle wants all the good stuff to happen now, but good things come from hard work and time. Also the motives for doing what you do are also important. It's a hard lesson, and I think it's one that I'm starting to learn and accept personally.
I know that by the end Danielle will seriously start to rethink her attitude towards other people and her life in general, but she's a really fun, selfish character to write.
“To any girl out there who truly is an artist and needed a job and a place to stay to get a leg up on life, I’m truly sorry. But I needed it more.” --Danielle from The Blue Room Café
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