Five Facts About My Protagonist

Thank you Mariam Kobras for including me in this interesting idea. As all writers know, it's important to develop characters in order to make them believable; they need to have a back-story even if it's never mentioned your book. I actually have two protagonists because I'm writing a dual narrative spanning seventy-five years. The character I'm choosing is French and lives on a farm in a small rural village in the unoccupied zone during WW2.

1. She's a nineteen year old when her story begins and her name is Arlette Blaise.

2. Arlette falls in love with a new farm-hand, a Jewish doctor called Saul who's forbidden from practising by the Nazis.

3. Her dream is to teach but war in Europe prevents her from pursuing her wish.

4. Arlette is present during the nightmare of Oradour-sur-Glane in June 1944.

5. She bequeaths her farmhouse and its hidden secrets to her great-neice, Rachel Blaise, in 2014 - my second protagonist.

I pass this idea of five facts about your protagonist to five more writers - Annette Thomson, Kay Beer, Maria Smith, Rosemary Gemmell and Sara Sheikh .