Tuesday Tip

Writing yourself into a corner isn’t any fun but getting yourself out can be. You may have got stuck because you didn’t know what your character would do. Now is the time to get to know your character a little better.

Filling out a character sketch when I start a new project is like trying to fit into my swimsuit at the beginning of summer. It can be a little embarrassing. How am I supposed to write a story about this person when we’ve only just met.

I fill out the basic information that I know, usually the appearance, hair color, eyes, height, weight. Now I have a basic shadow person, no real depth. I then write a few scenes and as I write, I learn more about the character and gradually make more decisions.

Keep your character sketch handy as you write. The more you write, the better picture you’ll develop and the more you’ill get to know them. What do they really want? Why do they want it? What do they need? What scares them? Do they fear anyone or anything? What are their goals? Where do they want to be by the end of the story?

Keep asking questions. The more answers you get, the better you get to know the character and the better your chance of not getting stuck.

Let character help drive your story.

Hope you get to meet lots of interesting characters.

Virginia

Related articles

• Character Sketch Formulas: Or, How To Make Your Character Come Alive (inkwellsplatters.wordpress.com)

 

4th of July 2011

I have been counting down the days to another long weekend. It seems that there are too few of them.  I am planning to work on characters for my
current work in progress. Trying to get to the point where I can actually start writing when I have my week of vacation starting on the 9^th.

When I write, I like to have a bit of an outline without filling in all the gaps. Not knowing everything seems to make the whole process more fun but I do need to have some direction. Developing characters is one way I work on developing my story. It’s more than deciding what they look like. It’s about discovering who they are and what they would do. Creating a past that will help determine the character’s present and future. It’s like meeting someone new and sitting down for a chat but this character isn’t afraid to tell me everything. The more I know, the more I can predict how this character would react if dropped into different situations.  Someone who has a fear of the dark is not going to wander off into the woods alone at night unless they have no other choice. If the reader is aware of the character’s fear it makes them want to stay with the story to find out what happens.

It’s easy to make the protagonist too much like yourself. You know what you would do in a given situation but the character is not you so you have to create someone who would react differently than you would as the writer. You have to decide what the character wants most, what they are most afraid of, what their goals are, and what motivates them. Do they have flaws and what are they? What is their background? Where do they come from? What have they done? What has happened to them to make them into the person they are now?

Because your story has to have more than one person you have to populate your book with several characters. Some are major characters, some minor, and some who just walk-on to the story. It is also easy to create a flawless character. Everyone has flaws.

No one likes a perfect person, they’re not interesting. To shake it up a little, even your good guy has to have some faults. The same can be said for
the antagonist, he can’t be all evil. He has to have something good about him; otherwise you end up working with paper doll characters. They need a little more depth. By creating fully developed characters you make them three dimensional. You make them people want to read about and spend some time with.

 

I always turn to books as references while writing. The books I am using currently to develop my characters are ‘Plot versus Character’
by Jeff Gerke and ’45 Master Characters – Mythic Models for Creating Original Characters’ by Victoria Lynn Schmidt. I plan to write a review about my reference books at another time so won’t go into detail for now. Besides the weekend is wasting away as I blog so need to get back to my project.

 

Currently I am reading ‘A Murder is Announced’ by Agatha Christy. It is a book my Sister’s in Crime group is reading to discuss at our July Meeting. Now that I am further into the book, I am enjoying immersing myself into that time period. If you haven’t read Agatha’s novels, it’s never
too late to start. Would love to hear about your writing process, I am truly interested in that aspect of writing. How do you create your characters? Do you use detailed information or do you just have them fully developed in your head?  What are you reading right now? Feel free to comment and share. There is nothing better than visiting with writers and readers.

Hope you all have a happy and safe 4^th. Spend some of it outside away from your computer. As writers you can’t expect to write about life unless you experience some of it.

Virginia