The main characters are as follows:
- Crabbottom - thirty something; misquotes Shakespeare; a somewhat lovable rum runner with gangster ties; his father, who also was a gangster, founded the home for wayward girls.
- Sister Salvation - thirty something; runs the home; has a belief that there is good in everyone.
- Willie - late teens; newspaper boy; a dreamer, likes Molly.
- Molly - late teens; one of the wayward girls; pragmatic; a 1930s style feminist.
The characters each had a slightly different look on life which fascinated me. Would the dreamer learn to deal with reality? Would a pragmatic girl dare to take a leap of faith? Would the the gangster learn to do good? Does God have a plan for all of us, or is the world an undetermined arena where we must find meaning and good?
The challenge, and the fun of it all, was to unobtrusively layer these ideas on to the scaffold of the simple plot. Cliches, throw away lines, misquoted Shakespeare, these might all be embedded with a deeper level of meaning without getting in the way of the entertainment.
Then, when I was nearly done with the book, I came across a quote from Anatole France, "To accomplish great things, we must not only act but also dream, not only plan but also believe." This fit the play perfectly and the quote would be a motto for the home for wayward girls.
I thanked my luck (or was it preordained fate?), but was also glad that I didn't come across the quote too early in the writing. I would have been tempted to make each of the characters "fit" - the dreamer, the planner, the doer, the believer. If I had done so, I think the characters would have been iconic and one dimensional. So, the characters don't match up perfectly (real people never do), but suggest and at times are in conflict with these themes.
I don't know how well I succeeded in any of this. For me, however, it was the fun and creative part of writing that kept me going.
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