Character Development Writing Journal

I chose to write about Daniel Bergman because I was walking through the Jewish Ghetto on Saturday and felt inspired to write about someone in the Holocaust. I got online to try and find Jewish names, and I came across the story of Daniel Bergman on the United States Holocaust Museum website. He was taken from his family when the German’s raided the ghetto where he lived, and put on a train to Dachau. When he arrived, he was 1 of 3 boys out of 150 who had survived the journey. He actually survived the Holocaust. I was so moved by his story that I wanted to incorporate it into mine. My biggest challenge in making him a complex character was getting his conflicts across without just saying them. I had no problem getting across all of the points that we worked on in class, but trying to portray emotion without just saying what it is was very difficult for me. I also found it hard to develop a character and tell an interesting story at the same time. The conflict that I depict within Daniel is his struggle to deal with the loss of his mother and sister which he blames solely on himself. I find this to be an unsettling theme as the author, not to mention how unsettling the holocaust was. I really just wanted to honor their memory with this piece, as cheesy as that may sound. In order to get this point across I tried to keep the reader wondering ‘Why?’ in the first paragraph. I wanted the reader to question Daniel and the actions of his mother. I wanted the reader to wonder why she is sobbing over a picture of her husband. I really tried to pull the reader into the story by being vague. Otherwise, I just tried to portray Daniels emotions without saying “He was sad.” Again, this was very difficult for me.