The little things

I have to say that despite the fact I know that Monday is my day to dazzle you all wit my wit *insert laughter* I don't always know what to blog about. My life isn't overly exciting which I'm sure you can tell. Ha. So like I do every Sunday evening I try to think about what I want to blog about today. Some Sundays/Monday I will spot something or get a thought and go with it and on other days I pick something at random (the blogs which I class as "fun" would be those ones. :-P)

Luckily today I was having a conversation with my mother about butter - yes, I know how that sounds - but we were having some toast and she commented how she likes butter on it instead of margarine. I'm exactly the same, I think margarine on toast is like eating cardboard. It's gross.

Anyway, that little comment lead to me saying that butter on toast reminds me of the times I went to my grandmothers or aunts when I was a child, because they both made great toast.

And it got me thinking about the little things that people like/do and how those minor details remind us all of these particular people.

For example, when I think of my grandmother (my mothers mother) I think of butter on toast and of Christmas dinner (because we went every year until these last two). I think of Calamity Jane, Chitty Chitty Bang Bang and The Slipper and the Rose, because we would always watch those 3 musicals. I think of Catherine Cookson films/books because she loves them. I think of the magic camel teddy she use to make me hold when I was ill and all her funny faces.

The smell of washing powder of white musk from the body shop reminds me of my mother. Any Carpernter song - especially "Close to you" - reminds me of her. Any time I hear a bad joke and I mean bad jokes like...

Patient: "Doctor, doctor I feel like a pair of curtains."

Doctor: "Pull yourself together, man."

Oh yeah, her sense of humour is that bad. She will actually come out with jokes on a daily basis, but unfortunately I always need to laugh at how bad they are. And then there is the crazy laughter she does along with singing "freak out!" every time she feeds my cats catnip and they drop on the floor and begin to roll around.

I think you get where I'm going? How we can see something or smell something and it will conjure a memory or most of the time the person linked to that memory. Now, when I was thinking about that today, my first thought was, "I wonder what things will/do remind people of me?"

The little things are important, especially when as a writer (and a reader) we want characters to be just that little bit more real. Like I knew Owen and Clare (She-Wolf) were Nickleback fans, or more to the point Owen played their music and got Clare in to them. And how he likes peanut butter and chocolate together. Clare smells like Jasmine and cigarette smoke.

It's the little things that set us all apart - including characters in books. The little things we place on different people we know and it is those things that trigger happy or maybe sad little thoughts.

What do you think? Do you like the small details about characters; even if they have nothing to do with the story and are just parts of the individual? Do you think those little things help make characters stand out a little more for you?