Characters, At Long Last

You may have started with nothing more than a kernel of thought, but now that you’ve created your world, you should have a good idea of who your hero, villain, and supporting characters are. They must not be automatons. Your reader must buy into these characters as real people, with real goals, real relationships, real motivations, ad real emotions.

Your characters must be multi-dimensional. They must have flaws as well as virtues. They must face internal struggle as well as external conflict. They must have past lives and prior relationships. Their previous experiences define how they view their world and their situation and determine how they respond to their emotions. 

1)     Give each character a unique set of physical traits. These traits need not be unique among all humanity, just unique within the context of your story. If you have two or more similar characters, your reader may have some difficulty keeping them straight. (Display through variance in five senses: appearance, perfume, voice, body-types, etc.)

2)     Give each character a unique style of speech. Since you cannot convey tone through writing, you must either describe the character’s style of speech, or give them a unique perspective/cadence that appears through their dialogue. This will make them easier to identify and give another trait that you connect to them, making them more relatable as a person.

3)     Give each character a flaw that the reader can understand. Write about ordinary people in extraordinary circumstances.

4)     Give each character a special skill that they will find useful at some point in the story. Introduce your character’s skill early in the story, well before they will need it, otherwise it will seem contrived¾something you made up to get them out of a fix.

5)     Give each character a definable personality. Optimistic? Pessimistic? Grumpy? Funny? Flirtatious? Adversarial?

6)    You may choose to give each character an identifying line, mannerism, or prop. Giving your reader something to associate with your character besides a name will help you to keep your characters straight. Again, an identifying characteristic could be the cadence or unique physical characteristic.

7)     Give each character virtues. This is particularly important for your hero; the reader must like them. No mater how many internal demons your hero has to overcome, they must have at least one redeeming quality that your reader can latch onto and that makes him say, “I care. I hope s/he overcomes it all because s/he’s worth saving.”

8)    Know each character’s backstory. As a writer, you must know the details of your character’s backstory in far greater depth than you’ll ever reveal in the pages of your novel. Your character’s past has made him the person he is today. His past will determine his emotions, attitudes, and actions. And it will justify them to the reader. His past will make him real.

9)    Know how each character will change throughout the story. The change your character makes and the way that change comes about is the character’s arc. Provide an arc for each major character, not just the hero, but make the hero’s arc dominant in the story. Give your villain an arc too, though his change may be from a bad guy to a dead or imprisoned or crazy guy.

10)  Make your villain stronger than your hero. Don’t make your hero’s victory a foregone conclusion.

1)     Make sure each character’s personality is different from that of every other character.

2)     Make your hero strong willed.

3)     Remove clichéd character traits.

4)     Don’t forget your secondary characters.

Choking Marmots

1. It occurs to me that I have not posted in roughly 11 days, and inconsistent updates is theoretically bad for viewership. (I say theoretically because in recent days I have actually received more attention than ever before in my blogging career.) But, in the interest of providing still interested readers with something new to see when they check this site, I will transcribe the following.
2. So that this isn't entirely unrelated to the topic I've been working on, characters, I should probably mention characters. What is something that could go here as a supplement to The Gears and Cogs Behind a Novel without technically being a part of it? I've got it! Examples. This list is going to be a short mention of a few titles I've read and what that particular book had to offer that made it somewhere in the range of good to phenomenal. 

 to , The Skinjacker Trilogy: aside from other aspects, Everlost had a very vibrant setting that absolutely fascinated me. There were extensive laws and quirks to the world that added flavor. The story encompassed a broad range so that you experienced but never became tired of one location. However, being in third person, I found it difficult to connect with the characters of Everlost. This book also had a good plot. (Have I written about plot yet?)

Hunger Games: the primary appeal of Hunger Games, I think, was 1) the plot and 2) the message. The violent and shocking twists intrigued and kept you guessing, throwing wrenches in the machinations and flinging the story into whole other directions while making paths that were inevitable (no spoilers here but fans should know what I'm talking about) still fascinating to traverse. The message . . . well, finishing that trilogy left me awake for several nights just contemplating. As for the characters . . . after the first several died off, I tried not to get too attached. 

Eon and Eona: some of these books best qualities were the characters and the plot. I've already said a lot about plot in the above examples that applies to Eon and Eona so I won't elaborate on that. Instead I'll say that, being in first person, I immediately forged a connection with the narrator, and followed their splendid character arc (I'll talk about that later) with much delight/revulsion/disappointment (no spoilers). I came to care about the other character's through the narrator's perspective. The writing of Eon and especially Eona is also skillful.

1. You may have noticed that I am avoiding punctuating non-defining relative clauses and breaks in thought with EM dashes. This is because there are no EM dashes on this confounded blog. I will have to figure out how to type those, since I can do it just fine in Microsoft Word.
2. Some fun ballads to listen to: Fire Coming out of a Monkey's Head (not as violent as it sounds, but this isn't part of the song title) by Gorillaz; Rocky Racoon by The Beatles; and Boy Named Sue by Johnny Cash.
3. And the last thing this post is about is not choking marmots. No, reader. Choking marmots are lame. I hate to break it to you.

Interlude

Wow, I haven't blogged in forever! And I guess this doesn't really count, because I have nothing of value to say on any subject whatsoever. But the entire purpose of the post is for me to have posted something in less than twenty-five days. So I guess I have to say something. . . .

Well. Let's just throw out a few terms: character arc, relatable qualities, personality development, and something to do with a worksheet that I'll set up here next time I post. So there's something to look forward to. See ya!

The Gears and Cogs Behind a Novel - Part Two

WORLD CHARACTERISTICS

1. Explain what your world is like physically: what does it look like? Can you map it? What is the climate? Are there seasons? What is the geography?

2. Explain the moral codes: what is society like? What are the beliefs, values, and prejudices?

3. Explain the economic state: are people wealthy, poor, or divided? What is the prominent item of commerce? Currency? Barter? Information?

4. Explain the political structure: does it work for the people? More importantly, does it work for your characters? Why or why not?

5. Explain the world's political environment: is it stable? Is it riddled with war? Who is the dominant power? Why? What are their aims and goals?

6. Explain the predominant religion (or religions): are the people advanced enough to understand the difference between religion, philosophy, natural philosophy, and magic?

7. Explain how magic (if there is any) or any paranormal element works.

8. Explain the level of scientific achievement: what are the preferred methods of transportation and communication? What is the state of medicine? Are there any unique technologies?

9. Explain the day-to-day life of your characters and how it differs from that of your readers.

The Gears and Cogs Behind a Novel-Part One

Today is the monumental day when I begin my first post in what I imagine will be a long series of posts about my experience and my research on writing specifically book-length fiction or fantasy. Sort of a backstage pass that shows you the rudiments of making a novel. Some of this comes from my personal perspective on creation, having written (but failed to publish, hint hint to any of you publishers out there) eight novels myself. A fair percentage of this, however, is based off of a fabulous book entitled Revising Fiction by someone whose name I have unfortunately forgotten. I would like to thank them for their experience, and emphasize that anything I write here would be reiterated with much greater detail and guidance in that fabulous book, Revising Fiction, that my Humanities teacher lent me twice. 

Today, I write about . . .

THEME

Your theme is your message.

When I sat down to begin my first book, well, it was a far cry from anything worthy to line the shelves of a bookstore. At first it was just a kernel of inspiration from a fun book called A Practical Guide to Monsters that I read when I was eight or nine. From there, I was intrigued by the fantastical creatures of this whimsical realm. As time progressed, several failed attempts at forming a plot resulted in . . . a stupendous waste of paper. But still, this demesne of dragons and faeries clawed at the walls restraining my imagination until, coupled with a cute lighthouse lamp, an idea that I could finally manage poured out onto my rickety and aged laptop. 

The point there is, a book can start as just a nugget of thought or interest, or as the inklings of an idea, or already as a full-fledged story. Beginning without your entire plot already worked out and sequels beginning to formulate is not a crime. In fact, its something of the norm for me. I get halfway through my first few drafts before thinking, alright, I should probably have some idea of where this series is going now; it's time to get that onto paper. Occasionally, when a sudden brilliant twist strikes me, I'll have to go back and write some revisions, but revisiting the past is even less of an offense. In fact, it's a pretty smart idea. I'm still a fairly (okay, ludicrously) young writer, so my style is ever changing. As I look back on something I wrote a year ago, my improved technique screams at me adaptations that I should make. 

Other themes can be lessons for readers to contemplate; values for them to emulate; a great idea for a hero, villain, or just a side character; or even a setting that you simply wish to share through fiction and end up elaborating on. 

A genre that has accumulated its fair share of stereotypes is science fiction. Let's take a look at some of the themes related to our dear old friend. . . .

Science fiction: science fiction themes often explore a question about scientific advancement or a social trend blown drastically out of proportion. What if technologies like time travel, genetic engineering, teleportation, or faster-than-light space travel developed to dominate our lives? What if sociological trends like overpopulation, censorship, worldwide collaborative government, or nuclear proliferation were extrapolated to their logical conclusions? Science fiction is a guess about where we're going with what. 

Or another fairly common one, dystopias. . . .

Dystopias: most dystopias are about what can go wrong. It's some sort of alteration made to the regular functioning of humanity that completely twists are future; you're denied the right to fall in love, everyone is surgically enhanced to look beautiful, children are forced to fight to the death for entertainment. Usually, whatever this futuristic realm is seems great. (Well, maybe not that last one.) In the beginning of Uglies, Matched, or Delirium, everyone's perfectly happy about whatever the norm is in this society. Usually the main character is poised - or forced, in the case of Hunger Games - to follow through with it. But then, something changes, causing them to question their whole worlds development. They fall in love. Making them pretty makes their brains defective. Or, y'know, they don't want to fight to the death. This whole new society comes crashing down and things revert to pretty much how they are now, in the 21st century. Apparently we really nailed how the human race should behave. 

You know the theme of a book is strong when for hours after completing it you're dazed. The potent message wraps you in a stupor, suppressing all emotion until something even more powerful cracks through the cocoon. Books that I've found to do this are Mockingjay, Everfound, and Inheritance. (Notice they are all the end of a series, not just the middle or first book in some chronicle.) As I write this, I've just completed the first example, instead of cocooning me, its energy has funneled into efficient writer's block, preventing me from doing anything more complicated (like working on my novel) then drawing up this post. But the effects are dissipating fast, thankfully, nothing compared to when I finished writing my first real series. That may as well have enclosed me in a concrete cell that, over a period of weeks, maybe even months was weathered away by exquisite words and searing inspiration. Finally, I have recovered from the staggering pressure of that theme - friendship - and moved onto the next series, of which the theme is undetermined. Perhaps my message would not be so strong to other readers, only to me, the author.

The point is, every story needs a message, an ideal, a quality, a person that was special to you, or just a concept - really anything that it can revolve around. Make your core strong; blow readers off their feet, hold them captive in deep musings even after their done reading. if it has a huge impact on you, that's a good start. Choose a them that matters, that evokes emotion. And when you're finished . . . have a friend read it first. Or send it to me! I can give you the adulation and the harder truths. 

Similes

Similes are a most elegant form of iambic writing, but I find the necessity of the words like and as to be primitive. It conveys a bulky structure containing the poetic flow. Having something hinder the mellifluous quality of your comparison is not what I consider to be a successful writing experience. 

The secret that they don't tell you when you learn similes in middle school is that they aren't reliant on like and as. It takes a little creativity, a little ingenuity, a little extra brainstorming, and maybe a gander to the border of personification, but successful similes can exist without those two constricting words.

The words were gouged into wood with all the rough brutality of a tigers claws.

Her eyes were twin pools of liquid silver, but tender and vulnerable in ways that water was too insubstantial to convey. 

The hollow blue light of the computer monitor contorted her face into the grimace of a ghastly wraith. 

Each of these can easily be tweaked back into the standard simile. 

The words were gouged into the wood as if a rough, brutal tiger had clawed them in. 

Her eyes were like twin pools of liquid silver, but tender and vulnerable as water was too insubstantial to convey. 

The hollow blue light of the computer monitor contorted her face into a grimace like a ghastly wraith. 

It's all about playing with the sentence so that it makes sense to omit those two generic words. Can it still be a simile without as or like? The comparison is definitely less pronounced, and without that obvious trademark, will anyone really notice the nature of your poetry? 

Of course, it is up to the writer whether they chafe at the confines of as and like. Some might enjoy the definition of such terms, and some might be daunted to deride their necessity. But for me, and others like me, a simile is more flexible, and this post is me pulling at the elasticity. 

Anger

I'm angry today, or at least I was, and before this anger faded into sorrow, surreality, and then reluctant acceptance, I couldn't quite pinpoint it. It was just . . . there, muddling my vision and blurring the past when I look upon it. Anger is a very interesting emotion, as are they all, as are the effects that emotions have upon your body. I think I already posted about that . . . but I was strolling through a ludicrously cheap and disproportionately large book, and I found a few things I had highlighted that gave me a new perspective on my previous anger. Ah, perspective. That deserves its own post, too. . . .

'It's my rule never to lose my temper until it would be detrimental to keep it.' - Sean O'Casey

'Never forget what a man says to you when he is angry.' - Henry Ward Beecher

'Heaven has no rage like love to hatred turned,

Nor hell a fury like a woman scorned.' - William Congreve