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People have embarrassing secrets 
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Diana Pharaoh Francis
High Fantasy Adventure
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Probably, indeed, the larger part of the labor of an author composing his work is critical labor; the labor of sifting, combining, constructing, expunging, correcting, testing. This frightful toil is as much critical as creative.
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The real secret of magic is that the world is made of words, and that if you know the words that the world is made of you can make of it whatever you wish. ~Terence McKenna

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~ John Irving

Sometimes making stuff up feels a lot like Coyote* running across the empty space between one rocky pinnacle and the next, and as long as you keep moving you're fine. When you stop and look down, it's suddenly all too apparent that there's absolutely nothing underneath and that you're keeping in the air by a peculiar effort of will.

And then a good day comes, and you start running through the air once again, and, if you're smart, you resolutely don't look down. ~Neil Gaiman
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16th-Apr-2008 05:14 pm
People have embarrassing secrets. Some are minor. Like, frex, having a deep love for liver. Or rabidly watching Big Brother or the Bachelor. Some are less minor. Or more humiliating. Picking your nose. Masturbating. Venerial disease. 

Now this isn't confession time. Except . . . Okay, I own a cd of the Backstreet Boys, I avidly watch Survivor and  I panic around bats. Panic. There, confessions. But really what I was thinking about is how secret embarrassments motivate characters. As writers, we consider flaws and we consider the past and all sorts of habits and joys and fears and so on, but how often do you think about your characters' embarrassing secrets? I never do. Until today because, well, okay, another confession. Ran across an old Cher album on my computer and I'm listening to it right now. I did say I have eclectic taste (some say bad). I own Yanni. And Enigma and Accept and ACDC and Van Halen and Van Hagar and Judas Priest and the list goes on and on.

So anyhow, I was wondering how an embarrassing secret might effect a character's behavior and thinking. And how severely embarrassing? Like if it was a guy, maybe being unable to get it up would be worth seriously hiding. Or having homoerotic interests in a culture where such things are frowned upon. Or bestial. Notice how those all relate to sex? I wonder if most embarrassing secrets are sexual? Or scattalogical for that matter. Have you ever seen an incontinent character? Or one with hellacious smelling gas? But then there's bad body odor, bad foot odor . . .

So for the sake of shits and giggles (especially giggles) what sorts of embarrassing secrets would be fun to give a character?
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Comments 
16th-Apr-2008 11:47 pm (UTC)
Not all have to be sexual or scatological. Lots of otherwise perfectly fine people are embarrassed to admit they read genre literature, for instance...or, even worse, fanfic. You've listed the music secrets -- there's a whole stigma in some groups for a guy to even ADMIT to knowing the name of a boy band. What about watching 'art films'? Or loving musicals (that makes you gay, ya know). I know people who get red in the face when they admit they have/had a love for comic books, role play gaming, anime, or Star Trek.

In fact, almost anything can end up being an embarrassing secret depending on the social group the character is in/wants to be in. If you're trying to be a down home country boy, it's better to keep that love of Italian opera quiet. But if you want to get in good with the Opera crowd, don't wear that giant belt buckle. All you have to have is a passion out of step with others -- or that you PERCEIVE to be out of step.

I love this topic, btw. It's ENDLESS. It all comes down to that one little fear so many of us have -- if you really knew me, you wouldn't like me. Fear of rejection -- or the cultivation of rejection -- is a strong motivator.
[info]mallie_kite
16th-Apr-2008 11:53 pm (UTC)
Hmmm... could you imagine an incontinent hero? Every other page... "I kicked his ass, then had to pee. Then I kicked their ass, then had to pee. Oh, and I saved the hot chick, but had to pee so missed good sex. Bummer."

But what other traits? OCD, like someone who has to flip a light switch 33 times... that would be interesting to write. Or ADHD: "And as I stood face to face with the image of- oo! Kitty!!" Bwahahaha!!

Jim Hines actually gave Jig (Goblin Quest, etc) a trait he tried to hide: his vision problems. It plays a key part in some scenes. But then again, that's not a hideously scary trait like farting every time you laugh or something.
[info]mela_lyn
17th-Apr-2008 12:06 am (UTC)
As a general category, I'm interested in things that the character is embarrassed about that no one else would give a second thought to.
[info]ronin_kakuhito
17th-Apr-2008 01:24 am (UTC)
I've always had a ridiculous fear of the toys coming alive and walking around when I'm asleep or simply not paying attention. I work in a middle school library. Last year my media specialist (who meant no harm) placed a dozen large, full-body puppets on the bookshelves, as a decoration. It was sheer torture for me. :)

Most people to whom I've admitted my fear think I'm kidding, because I tend to present it that way. Makes me feel less foolish, you know? But it would be fun to saddle some poor character with that fear, since we live in such a rational, reasonable society. He'd have to mask it or hide it in order to avoid being locked away!

Sometime when we're at a con together, remind me to tell you the tale of Buzz Lightyear. It's better in person...
[info]madkestrel
17th-Apr-2008 03:28 am (UTC) - Thoughts
It's not rare for me to find embarrassing secrets among my characters' mental baggage. Two that stick out for me:

I have a pair of characters, a bandit-lord and a Healer, who weren't able to stay together; and forever after, the bandit-lord was embarrassed about a lot that went on between them and around them, and preferred not to mention it.

Same Healer now, bringing along a very old neuter shaman to the coast. Turns out the shaman had been in the decadent cities before and left after a scandal. Scope of scandal? Four hundred years later and most people in the courtroom recognized nis name, and there not only books with the public (untrue) version of what happened, but a more obscure one with the genuine version. (A wife of the heir had gotten a giant crush on the shaman, who not being a sexual person, was utterly humiliated and horrified by the situation.) Ne hadn't mentioned it because "You didn't ask. Besides, it was four hundred years ago. I was rather hoping everyone would have forgotten by now."

So far, that and one episode in childhood are the only times I've found that shaman nonplussed by anything. Hence the high interest factor of that revelation. I felt sorry for nim, though ... she really was kind of a slut, and not at all subtle.
[info]ysabetwordsmith
17th-Apr-2008 04:19 am (UTC)
I'm finding that the best secrets for my characters aren't the ones involving mineral oil and barnyard animals, they're the commonplace things that have painful or embarrassing events attached to them. My current main character has some heavy duty scarring on his back and body that he got from being beaten by his former demon Master. Most guys would show scars off, but he's very self-conscious of them because of the way he got them. As of the end of the first book, he still hasn't let his mother see them. And, he can't sleep in a bed. He stil sleeps huddled on the floor under his desk, like he did when he was a slave, so no one gets to know about that, either.

One that no one has touched on yet is having a differing religion than the mainstream. Big time secret, depending on the mainstream religion and how "heretical" the character's beliefs are considered. That's my big one.
[info]benreeder
17th-Apr-2008 10:34 am (UTC)
I read a short story once whose main character, a pompous high school lit teacher, was trying to teach Joyce's Araby but could not stop passing wind the entire time. it was hilarious. That being said, I love to see big guys with ridiculous little hidden foibles (a hidden desire for musical theatre, for instance). But I am 12.
[info]freixenet
17th-Apr-2008 08:38 pm (UTC)
One of the two main protagonists in my Twilight novel has burned out, mostly because of depression and alcoholism, but those are pretty common in literature. I'm thinking the other protag is going to have some hellaciously bad foot odor. The novel will need some small doses of lightness in order to better sucker-punch the reader with the nasty bits.

But as for serious flaws within a character, I've not really seen any particularly interesting ones lately. I get the feeling something nasty might emerge from my protagonist's past in Wanderlust, but it will be more to make him human than used as a plot device. I'd have a hard time relating to a man on the run for murder, but a man driven to wander the world because of his secret unhappiness and fear of rejection due to a complicated, wounded past? Now that's a character. Only thing is, I'm not sure quite yet what that something is. Or maybe his wanderlust is that nasty little something - he can't keep a relationship because he always wants to be somewhere else, doing something (or someone) else... hmmm, yeah, I like that.
[info]clowe
17th-Apr-2008 08:40 pm (UTC)
Oh, and since you shared yours, I'll share mine - sounds dirty, doesn't it?

I can't put on socks without help. Yeah, my gut is that freakin' big. So sometimes, I have some nasty foot odor. Thankfully, though, it's a habit I can and will break when I lose more weight and can flex my hips and legs a little easier.
[info]clowe
17th-Apr-2008 08:50 pm (UTC)
In my experience, a lot of people's embarrassing secrets involve Celine Dion . . .
[info]m_stiefvater
17th-Apr-2008 11:43 pm (UTC)
I think the bad gas could be a good one...could end up being a superhero!

Or bestiality (meet my dog...oh what a LOVELY dog...). Talk about a danger when you have to compete for your boyfriend with your dog! My BIL's most embarrassing secret was doing a dog at a party in front of everyone...had to share. Poor dog! And EWWW! He didn't move up much with my sister though.

Nosepicking...why is it that people think that once they are driving their cars that nobody can see them do it? Have you ever actually noticed how terribly MANY people are digging in there while waiting at a stoplight? Do they NOT realize the car is made of glass at that level?

Fear of butterflies would be hilarious. Birds is funny.

My son had an extreme fear of grass (stuff that grows out of the ground) for years. Wasn't so much funny as irritating.
[info]goldenrose23
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