Ketchup Please!

Anyone who lives in Chicago, as I do, knows you’re not supposed to squeeze one of kids’ favorite condiments on your hotdog. Once past a certain age, putting ketchup on a Chicago dog, as some people call them, is kind of like sacrilege. But, whether I’m getting one of these Chicago favorites from one of my Chicago favorites like Portillo’s or Buona Beef, I still love to drench my dog in ketchup. What can I say? Maybe I’m only grown up on the outside. Even so, alongside my ketchup, I do enjoy some “grown-up” things on my hotdogs too, like cucumbers, pickles, tomatoes, and celery salt, but what I don’t love is what most might say is a hotdog necessity – mustard. I just don’t like the stuff. On hotdogs. On sandwiches. Even on big salty pretzels.

Maybe you’re wondering, even during National Hotdog Month, what my love of ketchup on hotdogs has to do with anything. For National Hotdog Month, I decided I’d use the example of my personal preference when it comes to my hotdog condiment choice to say a few words about character. Many writers fall in love with a story they want to tell because of a character. Many readers fall in love with a book they read because of a character. But what does that have to do with hotdogs and ketchup? More than you might think.

It’s the myriad of tiny details about a person that make them who they are – their likes, their dislikes, their opinions, their strengths, their weaknesses, their faults, and so on. By themselves, each detail may not seem to be important, but when authors intentionally put specific details together, they create a character, and some might argue, even breathe life into that character. Maybe a character to love; maybe one to hate; but regardless, if an author does it well, the characters they create will evoke emotion of some kind in their reader.

So, whether I like ketchup or mustard on my hotdog, doesn’t make much difference, but what the characters we read and write about like, and dislike, makes all the difference in the world because it’s those details that tell us who they are. And, once we know enough about them, whether we hate them or love them, they become real to us, giving them the power to tell us their stories. The very stories they’ve inspired their authors to tell.

Happy Reading & Writing,

Nancy