Category Archives: Character

A guest post by VICTORIA MORRIS.

There’s an oblong granite stone just behind a wrought iron fence. You can’t see it clearly unless you walk around the gate. Continue through the hallowed ground until you’re standing just to the left of the gatehouse, under the shade of a hundred year-old weeping willow lending relief from the day.

There are three names on that headstone. The first two, on either end, aren’t similar in any way. The numbers beneath the names are as different as the names themselves. But what is carved between them, binds them all together.

We’ve all seen grave stones. They bear cherished titles: Beloved wife, sister, mother, grandmother. Written just below the name are years. In this case, 1927 ~ 2007.

Have you ever pondered what is really being said in that short last phrase? It isn’t the day of birth and the day of death that tell the story. It’s the dash between them.

Hidden inside that one mark, is a lifetime. All the choices and the entire world of that person. Every joy and every sorrow. Every minute of every day that became the pages of her life.

Changes happened. She grew up during the great depression. She helped work on a farm, and she made sure that she, her little brother, and sister all made it to school. Then she married at fifteen. And promptly sent her brand new husband off to fight in World War 2.

More changes came. He almost didn’t come home when a bullet found his chest, and death swarmed all around him. If a member of his troop hadn’t seen him just barely pointing to his own pocket, to where the rain slicker each of them kept was held, they would have left him in their retreat. Instead, they would use that thin plastic to carry him off the still engaged battlefield. Had they not, children never would have been born.

But he did come home. And their choices together added more pages to their story.

They tried and failed at a few things. But they didn’t give up. They kept on moving, together.

They changed their scenery, moving from the farm into a little white house on an island, where they raised their family of ten children.

The story of the life goes on, adding more chapters. Many more years. Many more joys and happy days. Along with ones that brought tears. All of this, happening during that dash chiseled in a few skillful taps into a white-gray granite.

We all face trials, joys, choices, successes, and failures in life. It’s how we choose to view them, that determines how we classify them and how we embrace, rather than resist them, that helps to make our life great.

Sometimes, it’s within the trials and errors that we find the paths to the greatest joys. Who among the writers here, hasn’t found inspiration by changing the scenery. Inspired images come raining down in the shower, that moments before were no where near existing. And you have to rush to dry off to get them all onto paper. Found the answer to a perplexing scene where you least expected. Located the keys in the last place you looked.

Great inventions nearly always happen that way. Penicillin, capable of saving and helping a life, first existed as mold on a piece of bread. But someone looked at that moldy bread differently, and saw the flash of an idea.

Plot twists change the way we see things. One thousand ways to not make a light bulb happened, before the light bulb did.

Losing something worth everything can be the hardest place to start again. But if you have the courage to begin again, perhaps some of your greatest yet-to-bes, are waiting for you there.

Changes kept happening for that couple. He passed away the day after their 49th anniversary. Cancer finally taking him, after the bullet that stayed in his lung the rest of his life couldn’t.

She mourned him. But before too long, another man crossed her path. Having dealt with his own dash, life had been hard. He didn’t smile much. He spoke with a very soft voice, if at all. But she showed him how to smile. And in showing him, found a joy she’d never experienced before, even in a life-long love.

Then cancer came again. And twice, she had to bury that love.

We all face things that seem insurmountable. Troubles, illness, job losses, moves to places unknown. Things that will shape our stories. But we have the power to choose how that new shape looks. We have the opportunity to turn the unknown into the greatest thing that will ever happen, just by deciding to see it that way in the beginning.

She mourned a second time. This time in a completely different way. She was so sad that she had to choose where to go, whom to lie beside when her time came. Until she realized, she didn’t have to choose between them. She felt she needed to share it with her family, but not a single one of them objected to her idea.

She moved her first husband to lie at her left. Her second would be buried to her right. Leaving the space between them for herself. Connected to them both in death, the loves of her life.

She spent her last years happy. Even though the pain of losing each of them was always with her, the joy that each had given surrounded her completely. There nearly wasn’t a day on her wipe board calendar that did not celebrate a birthday of someone close.

Then the day came when she was laid to rest between her two loves, and her dash was chiseled. Though there were many many tears, there was even more laughter. Because if there was one consistent thing about her, my grandmother knew how to laugh.

A different outcome on that Okinawa battlefield would have caused an enormous difference in my life. I’m very thankful for those men that stopped and looked, so very far away and long ago. Without their bravery in the face of an ongoing destructive force, my mother would have never been born. Without her, me. A scary choice faced them when they stopped for one wounded soldier, not unlike some of choices we ourselves face today.

That headstone is complete now. It stands as a quiet memorial of three lives that influenced my own deeply. My grandfather was an artist and a poet, my grandmother the first to show me what music could do for the soul. My second grandpa, who came and left too quickly for me to get to love deep enough, but to whom I am forever grateful for giving grandma so much joy. There, behind that wrought iron fence, shaded by that willow. Even though I don’t get to visit it very often, the symbol of those words and dashes and the stories they hold are always with me.

Every story deserves its chance to be told. Don’t be afraid to share the failures along with the successes. Don’t steer clear of the hard choices you may face, if you can imagine a different way of seeing through them.

Each choice, every chance, is one more way to learn if the vision of your life can work. And even if it’s not how you pictured it the first time, you may find something you never knew was there. And that something might very well change your dash forever.

Victoria Morris Bio: Victoria lives on the edge of a mysty magical forest in the Pacific Northwest with one husband, two daughters, a big white dog and one huge resident bald eagle that likes to circle over her house when she brings in the groceries. A lifelong artist and not quite as long writer, Victoria is building a universe inside her head that has taken form in a six book fantasy series, with a middle grade trilogy on the side. While illustrating the world and all its characters is always on her mind, she draws portraits in her spare time to relax. Find out more here.

Git Er Dun: Using the Vernacular

January 7, 2015

Kristin Luna

Character Craft & Skills Kristin Luna Motivation Narrative Voice POV The Writing Life Writing Tools 1 Comment

One potentially powerful and useful tool to have in your toolbox is the ability to write in a certain vernacular that makes your characters memorable. Stylistic voicing has been successfully used by some great authors. Let’s take a look at those, and why they were successful.

The Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger

One of the most memorable characters I can think of is Holden Caulfield. The Catcher in the Rye is a staple for coming-of-age readers. It’s my favorite book, in fact. Why? Why did this book resonate with me so much? No, it’s not because I’m

a sociopath, as many critical readers think of Holden. I loved the book because it was real.

We understand that this is the first time Holden has ever truly spoken his mind, consequences be damned. And we get a front row seat! His raw vernacular often includes calling people “phonies” and using “goddamn” as a consistent adjective. This usage of stylistic voicing achieved a certain authenticity. Whether Holden was right or wrong about the other characters being phonies, we never question for a minute that Holden is completely convinced that they are.

Room by Emma Donoghue

The book Room is told by a 5-year-old boy, Jack, whose main education is the television. Why? Because he is a captive, along with his mother, locked in a shed for years. Jack’s stylistic voicing is so convincing, so well constructed, that the reader is completely enveloped into Jack’s world, where he has only known the Room. He has never been outside. He hasn’t received any sort of education, apart from the one his mother tries to give him, which makes his sentence construction short and plain. He only describes what he sees, not knowing exactly what certain things mean. But you, the reader, know exactly what it means. And it makes your stomach churn and your heart ache.

You may want to pick up Room to see an excellent example of emotional transport with a stylistic narrative voice. It should also be noted that some readers simply could not get past the stylistic voicing. That is one of the risks you take when choosing a stylistic narration, but the rewards can be BIG. Room won Emma Donoghue over ten prestigious awards for her effort and risk.

The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain

Perhaps the most well-known example of using stylistic voice is Huck Finn. It was, in fact, the very first novel published to use American vernacular, or more specifically, regional dialect (an example:“Sometimes you gwyne to git hurt, en sometimes you gwyne to git sick; but every time you’s gwyne to git well agin.”). Huck is described as a pariah, son of the town drunk, and the other children wish they dared to be like him. That’s one hellova introduction. If Samuel Clemens decided to write The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn in third person, I venture to say everyone would hate Huck. A bratty little kid, running around causing havoc. What Twain did so brilliantly was deciding to tell the story from Huck’s perspective, showing us the charm and charisma Huck has to offer, so we can’t help but love the little shit. Using stylistic voicing, Twain made us relate to an otherwise potentially annoying character.

You may have noticed that I chose all first-person novels, as well as young narrators. Can you think of any examples of stylistic voice using adults, told in third person? Was it as effective as a first-person stylistic voice?

If you’re on the edge about whether or not to write a character’s unique voicing, take heart. Mark Twain had never seen it before, but did it anyway. Emma Donoghue received some unkind reviews of Room because of her style choice, and probably cries about it in front of her wall full of awards. Just kidding. She doesn’t. And Holden Caulfield wouldn’t be one of the most notorious voices in literature if Salinger hadn’t let him. Tell your character’s story in the most authentic way possible, even if that includes letting him or her speak for him/herself.

The Upside to Being Messy and Unfocussed

January 6, 2015

Evan Braun

Character Evan Braun Rewriting Storyline No Comments

RubiksCube For the most part, I’m a gardener. And proud of it! If you’ve spent any amount of time in the writing community, you probably know what this means: I explore my story as I go along, finding my way to the ending through a process of trial and error rather than moving through the book strictly according to a preordained outline. I don’t eschew outlining entirely; I do keep fairly detailed outlines of the two or three chapters ahead of wherever I happen to be in the story on a given day. Working this way gives me confidence in the story’s immediate future, but beyond that I admit it can get a little murky. I only have a general idea of how I want the story to resolve while I’m in the midst of it (usually it’s a solid, workable idea, but nonetheless I only work out the details very generally).

This doesn’t mean the endings aren’t well-earned or carefully orchestrated. In fact, I feel that working this way forces me to spend a lot of time considering how satisfying various plot and character developments will be when push comes to shove. If any particular idea isn’t panning out, I don’t have qualms about jettisoning it in favour of an alternate approach. In my experience, this allows my books to get better, stronger, tighter as I work through them, solving them in the same way one might tackle a Rubik’s Cube. (Full disclosure: I’ve never managed to solve a Rubik’s Cube, so I guess that’s a bad example.)

So what does this have to do with character? Everything.

When you don’t have an airtight outline guiding you through the storytelling weeds, you have to create potential in your characters. In the earlier stages of writing a novel, it’s profitable to spin dozens of little threads that may or may not pay off in the long run. You don’t have to tie them all together. Once your story is worked out, you can trim the book down to focus only on the threads that coalesce. At the beginning, though, the key to creating great, story-propelling characters is to pinball them off other characters and events to see what sticks. In my experience, this leads to a host of options which can be exploited down the road.

This can feel messy and unfocussed while in progress, but a lot of the detritus doesn’t make it into the final cut. I end up writing a number of early scenes that don’t see the light of day, because they don’t lead anywhere interesting. But I often won’t know if particular character combinations work until I attempt them. So Margaret clashes with Fred, and Fred makes a pass at Steve, and Steve can speak with the ghost of a long-dead alien consciousness from Europa, and the long-dead alien consciousness from Europa… The point is, none of these may be central to the premise of my story—at least to begin with—but the few threads that really click create enormous depth and interconnectivity to my characterizations in the long-term. And several of them likely will become central to the premise by the time I type “The End.”

Knowing what will come together and what won’t is a mysterious, unscientific alchemy I have yet to master—and maybe I never will. But in the meantime, I’m going to keep the gardening the hell out of my characters and sees what sprouts up. Sometimes it’s this. Other times? Not so much.

Petting the Dog in Space

January 4, 2015

fictorians

Character Dave Heyman Guest Posts Narrative Voice 2 Comments

A guest post by DAVID HEYMAN.

2014 for me was a year of education. As I made the decision to move my writing out of the realm of hobby and move towards publication, I immersed myself in every book, course and workshop I could find.

An immediate focus for me was on my characters, as I felt that my initial takes on characters tended to be a bit drab, especially on the protagonists. I wanted my readers to like my characters, to care about them and root for them. One lesson I heard articulated often was something David Farland referred to in his workshop as “petting the dog.” In effect, show your character being nice to someone and people will naturally start to invest in their trials and goals themselves. People like nice people.

I began to look for examples of this in media, and once I knew to look for it I found it pretty easy to spot. While it was often fairly obvious in television shows, movies and novels, my favorite example of it was not in the realm of fiction at all. It was, instead, in the Twitter feeds of the two ESA probes investigating the comet 67P/Churyumov–Gerasimenko.

The investigation of the comet was fairly well captured by the standard media. If you followed the approach and landing on the television news or via news websites, you were given an accounting that was factual, if a bit dry. If you followed the ESA Twitter feed however, you were given an emotional epic. Through the use of nothing more than 140 characters at a time, the ESA wove a story that made its readers care.

The ESA started by anthromorphizing the probes, allowing them to speak on their feeds in the first person. I felt this was a good first step, and one that plays on human nature. As people we seem to be drawn to this model easily, as we go about our lives ascribing emotions and whole personalities to our cars, our favorite shoes and so on. By making the probes speak for themselves, they started to become characters.

Making something a character is not that hard in the perfunctory sense. The trick I have been studying is how to make them likable, and in this I feel the ESA engineers gave a clinic, as these two probes quickly became characters I was invested in. The trick was not in simply letting them speak, but rather what made me care about Philae and Rosetta is that they clearly cared about each other.

Consider the following message orbiter Rosetta sent lander Philae, just after the small probe had separated from the larger lander:

@ESA_Rosetta: Also now back in contact with @philae2014! Good to hear you again buddy 🙂

The probe responds back:

@Philae2014: Nice to talk to you again, @ESA_Rosetta!

The two went back and forth like this, with Philae sending Rosetta pictures of itself and promising postcards from the comet’s surface. They would comment and compliment each other as they went about the work of the landing. When Philae finally completed its historic landing, it was with Rosetta cheering it on by re-tweeting the probe’s landing announcement:

@ESA_Rosetta: Well done my friend! RT @Philae2014: Touchdown! My new address: 67P!

Unfortunately, things did not go as planned for the mission. For a time, the ESA scientists could not locate Philae’s position on the comet. During this period the two probes exchanged humorous messages about the situation, like actual humans would, both trying to keep each other calm in the crisis:

@Philae2014: I’m in the shadow of a cliff on #67P. Where exactly? That’s what my team is in the process of finding out!

@ESA_Rosetta: @Philae2014 you’re in a shadow? How am I supposed to spot you there?! Our teams working hard to find you 🙂

In time it was determined that Philae had bounced on landing, and was now located in an area with much more shadow than expected. Due to this, the solar batteries would not receive the expected charge and soon communications with the probe would be lost.

By this time, my wife and I were fully invested readers. Philae and Rosetta were no longer pieces of machinery, they were now characters we had grown to care about. Through the skillful use of 140 characters at a time, the ESA engineers had made these two matter to us on an emotional level. The writer in me was curious to see how they would handle this new dire situation Philae was in.

I was proud to see they recognized the path the story needed to take. If Philae was going to die, he was going to die a hero. His last tweets were brave, talking about the work he would do until the end:

@Philae2014: I will use all my remaining energy to “communicate” between @ESA_Rosetta and myself with @ConsertRosetta

@Philae2014: @ESA_Rosetta I’m feeling a bit tired, did you get all my data? I might take a nap…

This culminated with a final exchange, where you can almost see Rosetta kneeling by Philae’s bed, telling his young charge that it will be all right:

@ESA_Rosetta: S’ok Philae, I’ve got it from here for now. Rest well…

@Philae_2014: My #lifeonacomet has just begun @ESA_Rosetta. I’ll tell you more about my new home, comet #67P soon… zzzzz

My wife and I held back a few tears while reading this. I kept checking Philae’s Twitter feed for several days, but no new updates were forthcoming. Its batteries drained and its mission complete, Philae was at rest.

Long after the comet mission faded from the news, I continued to think about how emotionally invested I had become. I knew very little about the mission before the landing grew close, and I while I had followed similar missions like the Mars landing with great interest, that is all it had been. Interest.

Philae and Rosetta made me feel. That is a powerful reaction, the very goal of my writing, and I suspect a lot of the investment I grew to have in the mission was from how these two characters cared about each other. As I move forward in my own writing, the lessons I learned here will be ones I hope to emulate.

Guest Writer Bio:

David Heyman writes short sci-fi and fantasy and is working on a novel. He works as a director for a networking company.