A Shadow of Time - Character Mapping

"I'm unable to connect with your main character."  

The first time I read those words from my editor my stomach seized and I started frantically wondering where I had gone wrong. If I was unable to make her see where my female lead was coming from, what hope had I of convincing a reader?   

The one thing I hadn't done was map my character on paper. Oh, I had a head map going on, but for some reason what was in my brain didn't come through to my editor. So, I did what any sensible person would do when faced with such an issue.   I mapped Kellyn O'Brien on paper and decided this would make a great blog on writing.

Character mapping is a must if you want to create someone believable.  

My main character in A Shadow of Time is Kellyn O'Brien.

She is:  

1. Twenty-eight.
2. Five foot two at best.
3. Brown eyes and hair, a light dusting of freckles across her nose. She's thin, but tends toward chubby if she doesn't watch it. She's cute, rather than beautiful, and nice. I like nice and I think there's not enough of it in the written word. Problem is, nice isn't attention grabbing. I need to make her a little cranky on occasion.   
4. Kellyn is adopted and was raised in a Catholic orphanage. She knows nothing of her parents. She was with a foster family for a few years, but ran away. Sister Mary, her one confidant from the orphanage rescued her.
5. Insecure, Kellyn doesn't know where she belongs. (Perhaps this came through too strongly.)
6. She is mother to Scott (age 2) and is pregnant with her second child when her husband passes away.
7. She discovers shortly after her husband's death that he lied to her and he wasn't adopted as she previously believed. In point of fact, his family is quite well off and now that he has passed, her son inherits the family home (Shadow Ley) in the Sierra Nevada foothills. Unfortunately, Scott is the only living heir leaving Kellyn once again on her own.  

So what else is there to know about Kellyn? What quirks does she have that make her character real.   

1. She has panic attacks and anxiety that stem from a fractured childhood.
2. She doesn't grab life by the reins, but let's life happen to her instead.
3. She chews her fingernails.  

What does Kellyn learn throughout the book:  

1. What little control she does have is thwarted by multiple dimensional conflict.
2. Taking control of life is her best option, but it takes her time to realize this.
3. Kellyn's main motivation is her son. Because she was raised without a mother or father, raising her Scott is the most important job in the universe.  

Kellyn doesn't run into vampires or werewolves and she doesn't face down mysterious elves or other worldly creatures. Instead she is very much like you and me, placed into an untenable situation, and confronted with a physical universe where particle physics come face to face with our concept of normal reality. 

I like Kellyn O'Brien and since no one I know has ever confronted her reality, it is up to me to make her believable enough to tackle a past she despises and face a future rife with uncertainty. A tall order? Probably, but I'll muddle my way through. Tomorrow I'll start on my edits and hopefully, create a character worth knowing.  

Happy reading!