Category Archives: The Writing Process

We can build worlds, create interesting characters, have background information and personality/motivational analysis that fills a book. After studying how to create characters, how to make them interesting, unique and multidimensional, we must somehow bring them to life and make them as real to the reader as a living, breathing human being. Yet how can this be done?

It’s all about relationships. Characters come alive when we see them in relationship. Their interactions (actions and reactions) reveal their innermost secrets, their fears, their world view, their values. Just like us, they act and react to those around them – life is not lived in a vacuum. That’s why the background work and world building are so important. What is the society’s prevailing code of ethics or conduct? Where does the character live – the social and survival norms are different from a crowded city in first world or third world economies, rural or urban settings, earth, Mars or a fantasy world. This determines what is important to the character – what she values or abhors.

We interact with and react to our families, our pets, our loves, those we loathe, those we casually know and those we don’t even know but have a strong reaction to. A strong reaction to strangers? Think about it. Do you slam the phone on the telemarketer or do you make friends with that person? Do you disregard or mock political propaganda from the party you don’t support or do you take the time to befriend a supporter and understand their views? In both examples, the interaction with strangers is at different ends of the spectrum – from blatant disregard to embracing their humanity. Most of us are somewhere in between. The way we choose to interact with people in these situations is determined by what we value, what motivates us and what issues are pressing in on us. Knowing where your character lies on the value spectrum will make it easier to write believable character interactions. Is your character determined or unsure? Have faith in life or believe it can’t be trusted? Accept or reject change?

For example, in a self-help book on relationships (those are gold mines for writers!) titled Love is a Many Splintered Thing by Patricia H. Rushford, we follow Samantha and David as they journey from the honey moon stage to near divorce. The fight scenes, simply done for illustrative purposes, are quite compelling. In one scene, we learn that David has manipulated Samantha’s computer dating data sheet so that their scores will jive. Samantha is so furious that she wants nothing to do with David. David is hurt and upset. He had fallen in love with her the moment he saw her and didn’t want to trust a machine with the rest of his life.

So, why did Samantha have such a strong reaction to David’s action and why did he manipulate the data? The answers lie in their backgrounds, in those deep dark corners that are so easy to ignore yet which compel us to act as we do. As Rushford explains: David is a man’s man, always in control and is uncomfortable with the feelings Sam has awakened in him. He has tried to be the kind of man he thought his father (now dead) would have wanted him to be but David feels he has never quite succeeded. Now once again, in his relationship with Sam, he hasn’t quite succeeded. Samantha, on the other hand, comes from a childhood of abuse and neglect and so resists love for fear of abandonment. At times her emotional needs exceed her ability to reason.

Understanding fears and aspirations this deeply means a writer can stay true to the core of who their characters are. That then makes their actions and reactions more consistent and true to their nature as they interact with other characters. What about dialogue and body language? Both are important and once again, are part of knowing your character well. Is her language terse? Can he say what he means? She talks of feelings while he refers to car manuals. Is her manner aloof, open or frustratingly neutral? Is there a combination of warmth and cold, efficiency and aloof caring, that is both appealing and frustrating? How does each character react to how the other speaks let alone to what he or she says? Thinking through those dynamics creates most interesting interactions.

There is one major stumbling block to writing genuine character interactions. That is unconsciously slipping into your own value system and not remaining true to your character. That’s when characters and scenes become one dimensional. Personally, I hate conflict. I prefer to be the peacemaker. Knowing that about myself gives me the awareness I need to let my characters be themselves in all their gore and glory. The best writing advice I ever received was permission to be cruel, to ramp up the stakes, to let my characters sweat, squirm and yes, fight.

By knowing our characters intimately, from their deepest darkest fears to their speech patterns, we can totally abandon ourselves to the muse and write compelling, memorable scenes that will whisk our readers into our characters’ worlds. Ah, yes, the elusive muse – that’s the moment when we know our characters so well that on paper, we become them and we give genuine voice to them and to those they interact with.

What things have you learned to bring your characters to life and to make their interactions genuine?

Characters: A Writer’s Best Friends or Bêtes Noire?

February 4, 2013

David Carrico

Authorial Trust Character Craft & Skills Reader Investment & Empathy The Writing Process 4 Comments

“There are nine and sixty ways of constructing tribal lays, and every single one of them is right!”
– Rudyard Kipling

Every writer does things a little bit differently, and that’s just as true of building/creating characters as it is of any other task in the writer’s list. That being said, there are still some common elements that we as writers can talk about when it comes to the creatures of our minds that inhabit our stories.

So how do characters come to light? To my mind, there are three basic paths you can take to create characters, none of which are mutually exclusive.

First, characters can grow out of world building. If you’re a writer who spends much time creating a self-consistent story universe before you begin writing the story, you may well create the universe first, then ask yourself what kind of people would inhabit it. I know of several authors for whom this would appear to be their favorite method, but probably the most well-known example of this would be J. R. R. Tolkien’s Middle-Earth. Tolkien first invented the amazing languages in his stories, then tried to imagine what kind of people would speak them. Out of that grew the stories that served as bedrock for The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings.

Second, characters can grow out of situations. This tends to be very true of writers who tightly plot their stories, from what I can tell. If you’ve got this great idea for a end of civilization as we know it story, what kind of character would tell it?

And third, sometimes the characters steps onto center stage in your mind, full-blown, full-grown, out of seemingly nowhere. This tends to happen a lot with writers who are pantsers. (Raises hand. Happens to me a lot.) The problem then is trying to figure out what story needs to be told for that character.

There’s going to be more posts later this month about specifics of characters and characterizations. I’d like to spend the rest of this one dealing with one thing we as writers sometimes don’t think about very much.

I’ve often heard it said that one of the keys to successful story telling is having believable characters. That’s true, as far as it goes. But in today’s reading environment, it’s just as important-if not more so-that characters be ‘connectable’. In other words, do the readers connect with them-do they feel what the characters feel? If your readers don’t feel some kind of empathy for at least one of the characters in your story-preferably the hero-it’s not going to succeed. But for your readers to connect with your characters, you have to connect with them first.

Case in point: Marion Zimmer Bradley told an anecdote on herself in a story introduction she wrote for a story in The Best of Randall Garrett (edited by Robert Silverberg, Timescape Books, 1982). She was talking about the friendship she had with Randall, and how many times and ways he had helped her. At one point she tells of being five chapters into writing a new novel. It wasn’t going well, and she could tell that it wasn’t going well, but she couldn’t figure out what the problem was. It was driving her nuts. So she drove over to Randall’s house, handed him the manuscript, and asked him to tell her what was wrong. She waited while he read the five chapters. His response after doing so was as follows:

“Honey, you know what’s wrong with this book? It’s written very well and it’s a nice idea. But your hero is a klutz. Nobody wants to read about a klutz.” (The Best of Randall Garrett, page 44.)

Marion concluded the anecdote by saying that she immediately recognized that his critique was valid, that she rewrote all five chapters to make the hero into a different person, and the rest of the writing went smoothly.

I told you that story to make the point that no reader is going to connect with a character that we as writers don’t connect with, that we don’t understand, that we don’t have some form of empathy for. It doesn’t matter if they’re bad guys or good guys. It doesn’t matter if we built the characters like Legos in the world building process, if we discovered them dealing with disaster, or if they sprang full-grown from our foreheads in search of a story like Athena from the brow of Zeus. If we don’t feel them, if we don’t understand them, if we don’t connect with them, our readers won’t either, and the story will fail.

If you want your stories to work, you don’t necessarily have to like your characters, but you do need to understand them and feel something for them. This will come through in your writing.

Novel Rewriting Workshop and Other Dave Wolverton Semimars

January 29, 2013

Nancy

Conventions First Drafts Giveaways Nancy Greene Rewriting Superstars Writing Seminars The Writing Life 5 Comments

Did you every have one of those stories that you know “missed it by that much”? I did. While there were some obvious fixes I knew I needed (like beefing up my descriptions), there was a fundamental flaw in the story that I couldn’t get my hands around. The story was sick and needed help. So, I took my baby to a professional.

Let me back up for a second, the story I’m talking about is my trunk novel. I’ve been picking at it for far too long. The first draft was well over 300,000 words. I know. I know. So, I broke it into three books. The problem was that the first book’s story arc was high on the Character quotient of Orson Scott Card’s MICE scale. For those who don’t know, I’m going to vastly oversimplify this. Card broke stories down to four archetypes – Milieu (setting), Issue, Character, and Event. A character story is mostly concerned with the character’s internal journey. So, the book ended when my main character transitioned from spoiled, self-centered twit to taking responsibility for the greater community, and before the promised big battle. A lot of the comments I received was that “nothing happened” in the story. So, books one and two became book 1. But I still had what I called a “pacing” problem. I didn’t know how to fix it. Hence, the trip to the book doctor.

The book doctor of choice and the stated course of therapy? David Farland’s Novel Rewriting Seminar. Dave is a New York Times Bestselling writer who has been translated into many languages and trained a number of #1 New York Times bestsellers, like Brandon Mull, Brandon Sanderson, and Stephenie Meyer. His latest novel, NIGHTINGALE, has won eight awards. So, the ability to hear him speak, much less take a class from him, is an amazing opportunity.

This seminar focuses on editing. In order to attend, you have to submit a sample to Dave and be accepted. You’re committing to a lot of homework, both before and during the workshop. We had a reading list which ensured all participants were starting with the same base knowledge.

All participants send in the first 100 pages and a synopsis of their stories. Part of the pre-seminar homework is to read the first 20 pages and synopsis of the other workshop stories. Getting to read and critique other stories, when you do so honestly, is a learning experience. What do I mean by “critiquing honestly”? I mean not cutting down a story just to cut it down. Your plan should always be to help the writer improve the story. realizing that your comments are just your opinion and you’re not any smarter or better than any other writer. Use critiquing as a way to help someone, but also as a means of seeing what you are doing that might be hurting your own writing.

The work doesn’t end when you get to the workshop. This isn’t a seminar where you can sit back and zone out. Each day, we went over two or more of the workshop stories, discussed story structure and elements, and were given homework that applied the topics discussed. We each left with 10 other perspectives on our story. Another fabulous excercise we did was disecting the story-telling elements in The Hunger Games movie. Many of the workshop participants would go out to lunch or dinner together. We built a community there.

Each participant meets with Dave to go over his comments on the first 100 pages of your novel. I have to say the time spent with Dave was worth far more than the price of admission. Not only is he a genuinely wonderful person, but he has so much insight and experience over the entire entertainment industry. I could have spent hours talking to him about everything from game design to movie making to publishing, and barely dipped my toes in the well of information and experience that he has. Dave pointed out some of the things I knew needed work – my descriptions of places and people were thin. But he also articulated the bigger problem I was having, and a way to address it.

What was the best thing about the workshop? That’s a hard question. The people I met there are wonderful. The knowledge I gained was invaluable. But, I have to say the best thing about the workshop was leaving knowing what I had to do, and that I could accomplish it.

Dave has a workshop for whereever you are in your writing career. He has a host of new writing classes scheduled for 2013 available at www.davidfarland.com/writing workshops. These range from his new Short Fiction Master’s Class, to his Million-Dollar Outlines, Novel Revision class, and Fiction Mastery Class. While there is some overlap between the seminars, each focuses on a different aspect of the craft of writing. I can’t wait to attend some of the other ones.

As if the workshops weren’t cool enough, if you go to to any of his workshops and mention that “I heard about it through the Fictorians,” Dave will buy you a free dinner with him (if time allows), or he’ll give you $20.

If you have the choice between dinner with Dave or $20, take the dinner. Every time.

So please check out his workshops here.

Revise Unto Death or Quit?

December 31, 2012

clancy

Character Clancy Metzger Craft & Skills Rewriting The Writing Life Writing Tools 5 Comments

The last post of 2012. Oh, the pressure!

This makes me think of endings… and beginnings. These ideas fortuitously play into the topic at hand – when should a writer abandon a scene/plot/character/work that just isn’t working rather than rewriting for the fiftieth time?

My story, A Guardian’s Destiny, was a work in process for sixteen months, give or take. I wrote, rewrote, edited, revised, rewrote and on and on for what was longer than was good for me or it. I was halfway through rewrites that added a major character when I couldn’t take it any more. I knew it needed fixed, but I couldn’t figure out what the fix might be. Frustration didn’t begin to cover how I felt. When I stepped back and looked at it with some small measure of objectivity, I could see it had “Edit Face.” Not pretty. So, I put it in a virtual drawer and began something else.

When do you make that call? End one thing, begin another?

That is a personal decision, but here are some things to consider.

Time – How long have you worked on your scene/plot/character/work? Think about Return on Investment or Lost Opportunity Costs. Yes, we want our writing to be its best, but it will never be perfect and we need to recognize the tipping point where we have gone beyond productive effort. If you could have written a multitude of other scenes/plots/characters/works in the time you’ve spent on this particular one, then maybe it’s time to let it go and move on.
Sanity – Is it making you crazy? My story was. That’s not constructive and it’s stressful.
Distance – Sometimes, it isn’t that you need to completely abandon your scene/plot/character/work, it’s that you need some distance from it. Your muse may need time to gel. Time to work out exactly what the problem is and how to fix it. It may be weeks, months, years or never. You just never know.
Perspective – It’s just a story. We’re not curing cancer. Don’t marry your scene/plot/character/work. You need to have some perspective. Sometimes, things just aren’t working and you need to stop. If it helps, save all the drafts or put any deleted text into a different document. Then it isn’t really gone, just not where it isn’t working.

A Guardian’s Destiny has been tucked away for six to ten months. My critique partner asked to read it anyway despite my protestations that it seemed hopeless. After all this time and with her help, I think it may be time to take it back out and finish it. With a second set of eyes and ideas, it may yet be salvageable, but I know now that if it isn’t complete in a reasonable amount of time (not months on end), then back in the drawer it goes.

Here are some sayings that I keep in mind to help me.

A certain amount of opposition is a great help to man. Kites rise against, not with, the wind…… John Neal

It’s only a book. If nothing is happening – hit delete and start over. ….. I don’t remember where I heard this, sorry.

When your moment of truth comes, remind yourself: They told me it would be hard. This is what hard feels like. I can do this. ….. Rachelle Gardner, Literary Agent

What do y’all think? I’d love more great quotes and/or tales of death, birth and maybe rebirth of your scene/plot/character/work.