Tag Archives: Character

Over the years we’ve posted over 90 articles on character from who to how-to. Murderers, villains, lovers, enduring characters, shoes, shape shifters, hackers, dicks, and cannibal dwarves – we’ve got those covered! Then there’s the great how-to topics including how to build character through dialogue, using everyday inspiration, interactions, perspective, conflict and a touch of horror.

By the time you’re done reading through these, you’ll feel like you’ve attended a full workshop. So, pick and click and enjoy!

Indiana Jones and the Great Test of Character

On Cannibal Dwarves and Other Character Problems

Character Study – It’s All About Soles – Building a Character from the Ground Up

How to Build a Murderer

Take Note of Inspiration

Programmers, Hackers, and Technology

The Conflicts of Character Design

What Does Your Dialogue Say About Your Characters?

How to be a Better Tease

The Right Voice for a Dick

Love Your Cannon Fodder

Building Character : The Art of Genuine Interactions

Take Control – Please!

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

3 Dimensions of Character – A Review of Larry Brooks’ Character Development Technique

Complex Characters

Why do I like you when you’re standing in my way? The likable antagonist.

Villains, Villains, Everywhere-The Perfect Bad Guy For All Occasions

My Alien Being

Platonic Male-Female Relationships in Fiction (a.k.a. “The Glue”)

Shapeshifting: Mythical and Modern

The Outsider’s Perspective

A Secret History: The Real Stories Behind Literature’s Most Legendary Figures

Pirates of the Caribbean – The Curse of the Black Pearl

Mean Salvation

Bad Boys and Anti-heroes: Why the Gals Love Them

Making the Fear Personal

Making Murder Acceptable

Understanding Accents

Writing Who You’re Not

Hot Fun in the Summertime

The Not-So Likable Hero

What Makes Good Horror?

Valuing Your Characters or Maslow for Writers

Faith

Beyond the Nightlight

January 27, 2015

mary

Horror Marketing Mary Pletsch No Comments

There’s nothing to be afraid of. Childhood fears fade as the years pass. They are never as real as they were when you were a child.

Unless they are.

“Beyond the Nightlight” is an anthology for adult readers about the terrors of childhood boogeymen. My contribution, “Big Boy,” is based on the earliest childhood fear I can remember. I wasn’t afraid of monsters under the bed, creatures in my closet or the dark shadows in the corners of my room. I was afraid…of the light.

More specifically, I was afraid of the light cast by trucks going by on the highway outside. Their powerful headlights reflected through my window and created an illuminated square that crawled over my wall and disappeared right above my headboard.

My goal, in writing this scary story, was to show readers, firsthand, what’s so scary about light on a wall. Most people are familiar with common tropes like boogey men and monsters under the bed. And, because those tropes are common, writing a story about them demands a fresh twist or some new insight into the reasons those concepts became tropes in the first place. I decided I’d rather take my uncommon fear and show readers why that moving light kept me awake late into the night, watching it come creeping towards me.

To do that, one of the things I had to do was put myself in the mindset of a three-year-old. I remember arguing with my dad that headlights shone straight ahead on the road, not sideways and up into people’s windows, so how could a truck cause that scary moving square? The square, of course, was caused by the shape of my window, and the light moved as the truck moved on the highway, appearing when the vehicle came into range and disappearing when it passed by. My father tried very patiently to explain this to me, but my child’s logic didn’t think it made sense. Moving patches of light aren’t scary to adults. I had to describe this scene through a child’s eyes.

Next, I asked myself what I remembered the most about this childhood fear. Why do I still remember being scared of the light over three decades later, when I’ve long forgotten why I was ever afraid of other childhood boogeys? (I remember the Sphynx and sprouty potatoes being other terrors of mine). I thought back, and realized that my other fears could be easily escaped: I just closed the book on Ancient Egypt, or put the lid back on the potato barrel. With that light, though, all I could do was lie very still and hope it didn’t notice me. I remember calling for my parents, not knowing if they’d come or not, knowing the light would reappear sooner or later after they left. That feeling of being alone, possibly abandoned, holding very still in the dark and watching the light come crawling my way…that feeling lasted. That was the feeling I wanted to convey to my readers: the feeling of being there with the three-year-old protagonist, small and young and all alone in the dark, wondering if your parent would come…or if the light would get you first.

Thankfully for me (and unfortunately for my main character), “Beyond the Nightlight” falls into the horror component of speculative fiction. That means that I wasn’t bound to write a story that conformed to my reality (which always involved the illuminated square of light vanishing harmlessly once the truck moved out of range). No, in fiction I’m free to describe exactly what three-year-old me was so afraid might happen if I fell asleep with that light on my wall.

Are you scared yet? No? Are you….curious?

You can order your own copy of “Beyond the Nightlight” in paperback or ebook here.

Shine your light on twenty-four terrifying stories for grown-up readers about the horrors that lurk in a child’s imagination.

Working the Humor Scale

January 16, 2015

Frank Morin

Character Craft & Skills Frank Morin Writing Tools 2 Comments

One aspect of character that can be hard to pin down is: How funny should they be?

Most of us aren’t comedy writers. We write fantasy or science fiction or horror or (input genre), but that doesn’t mean humor doesn’t have a place in our stories.

People draw upon their sense of humor in real life, even in dire circumstances. It helps relieve tension and to cope. We don’t need to become the next Terry Pratchett, but sometimes a little humor is the best way to deal with the difficult situations we’re bound to drop our characters into.

Everyone loves a sense of humor. Does our character have one?

Humor has a scale, just like all the other attributes we’re defining for our characters, just as important as their fighting skills, how much they love their mother, and whether they respond to small animals by wanting to pet them or to eat them. We just don’t think about it that way as often.

So I’ve designed a Humor Scale to demonstrate the types of humor we can assign to our characters.

Slapstick (10) – Pure comedy. Take some ibuprofen because your stomach’s going to hurt from laughing so hard.
Comic Relief (8) – Usually not your main protagonist. These are the side-kicks that we love to laugh at.
Deadpan/dry (7) – They say funny things, but in a serious way.
Comedy Villains (7) – They’re bad guys, but they make us laugh instead of scaring us.
Wisecrack (6) – Always have a comeback, a great one-liner, no matter how dire the situation.
Sassy (5) – Cheeky, and full of spirit. Often get into trouble as a result.
Snark (4) – Sarcastic, snide.
Gallows humor (3) – The more dangerous one’s job, the more refined their gallows humor. Think of the group of crucified criminals in Monty Python’s The Life of Brian singing, “Always look on the bright side of life.”
No humor (0) – These are often your serious villains who burned all humor out of their system.
Comedic villain (0) – They’re the bad guy, but they think evil is funny. Their sick humor either demonstrates a lack of understanding of the gravity of what they’re doing, or proves they’re insane.

Here’s the Humor Scale in graph form, with examples to illustrate each category.

We can apply the various categories in all kinds of situations. Some examples include:

Jokes. These can be woven in just about anywhere.
Situational humor. The entire scene is inherently funny (your super-buff warrior hero is stuck in a cupcake bake-off against the evil overlord)
Dialogue. Great place for wisecracks, snark, sass, and gallows humor.
A funny outlook on life. Either irreverent, bizarre, or just a little bit off. Any of these can produce humorous situations and dialogue. Something funny, and yet totally in character.
And of course, slapstick lies in a realm all its own. This is pure comedy. Some characters just have to fall down and break things wherever they go.

In all of these instances, there are commonalities. Surprise is the secret to humor, and usually there’s some kind of set-up, then the punch-line that adds the surprise, the twist, generating the laugh.

Humor often pushes things to the extreme. Think the intro to Captain Jack Sparrow. Standing atop the mast of his ship is a great epic image. Then comes the comedic twist when we learn it’s really a small boat and he’s standing atop the mast because the ship is sinking out from under him.

So let’s talk specific application.

When I first started writing, I included only a little humor in my stories. Even the first drafts of my YA fantasy story, Set in Stone, remained too serious. With some self reflection and encouragement from family, I decided the story needed humor to work. So I rewrote 80% of the novel, making dramatic changes to the plot structure and how I approached it. I ratcheted up the humor while still maintaining an epic feel to the story. It was my first foray into humor-laden fantasy, and response from beta readers is overwhelmingly positive. The novel will be released this spring.

With my urban fantasy novels, I toned down the humor, but I’ve been experimenting with sliding characters along the humor scale, depending on which effect I’m looking for.

It’s not as hard as I first feared. Humor isn’t the story. It’s just another layer, and you can shift characters along the humor scale pretty easily once you determine what effect you’re looking for.

In a recent editing pass over an epic fantasy novel, I decided to shift the protagonist a couple of notches up the scale. So I mixed in a little snark and dry humor, which helped him come across as more experienced, more resilient, and less emotional. The story as a whole is unchanged, but his outlook on life, and his responses to some of the crazy events he’s experiencing works so much better.

In essence, I shifted him away from the Luke Skywalker end of the scale and more toward Han Solo. Luke is young, idealistic, and inexperienced while Han is tough, world-wise, and irreverent. They’re both heroes, but they approach life and trials differently. I applied a little of Han’s unflappable attitude and great one-liners.

In The Empire Strikes Back, after losing his hand and learning the evil overlord of the universe was his father, Luke’s response always seemed more whiny than heroic:

“Nooooooo! I’ll never rule the universe with you.”

My character had reacted more like that. Now he could now respond more like Han Solo who, after being tortured, just said, “I feel terrible.”

Or who snapped, “Never tell me the odds,” when flying into an asteroid belt.

Or, when Leia confessed she loved him just prior to his getting frozen in carbonite, he glibly replied, “I know.”

Another example of the effect of the Humor Scale decision is comparing Battlestar Galactica to Firefly. Both have spaceships, fighting, life-and-death situations but, where Firefly is enhanced by the humor woven into it – making it a cowboys in space adventure – Battlestar Galactica was left very straight-laced – a little too much so in my opinion.

So play with this layer. After writing your story and making sure all the other elements are in place, check where each character falls on the Humor Scale, and where that takes your story as a whole. Then decide if that’s where you want it. Perhaps poll some early readers and discuss if the story would benefit from either more or less humor.

Tweak accordingly, and have fun with it.

* * * *

Here are a few humor-related links you might be interested in:

Scott Adam’s Dilbert blog, where he talks about writing humor.

The Writer’s Dig by Brian Klems – Another good blog post, with links to other articles.

Tabloid Reporter to the Stars – This is a short story recommended to me as an example of one that successfully added humor. I haven’t read it yet, but plan to.

Setting as Character: How to Give it Voice

January 14, 2015

Ace Jordyn

Ace Jordyn Character Craft & Skills Setting and Milieu World-building Writing Tools No Comments

It’s the quiet ones you’ve got to watch out for like when the kids are suddenly quiet and that tells you there’s trouble’s afoot. It’s the same in a story. When setting is too quiet, your story is in trouble. The problem with setting as character is that setting has no real voice, at least it doesn’t participate in dialogue directly – or does it?

Setting, we are told, must do more than be a background for characters to engage in. It should determine HOW they engage, WHY they engage and REVEAL how characters see their world, themselves and others. Setting is the voiceless character who niggles, needles, exaggerates, creates, destroys, challenges, extracts and dampens. How do you write a voiceless character?

For great ideas and the basics on creating setting and world building, you can peruse our archives. But to understand how to make setting as real and alive as your other characters, here are some things to be aware of:

6) Setting is personal. To understand what is important to POV character ask him how he’d react and feel if his world was suddenly changed or destroyed. What would he miss? What would he fight for? When a person loses their home whether it’s because of weather, war, politics or even choice, there is loss and grieving. That makes setting personal. Does setting herald change or present a conflict? Is there a storm? A volcano about to erupt, a nuclear device about to explode? An impending war? Political change? A lost love? A demand to convert?

2) Setting is the voiceless, albeit dynamic, character with whom the POV interacts and relates to varying degrees. This interaction reveals both the world and the character just as any good dialogue reveals something about its participants. How will the man in a suit react if he finds himself: in the midst of a medieval battle against dragons? Hitchhiking with a suitcase in hand? With an extremely belligerent client threatening a much needed sale? Performing on stage?

Let’s take the suit analogy one step further: Setting is more than just the background fabric of your character’s experience, it is the tailored cloth, designed, sewn and fitted just for him. In the pockets of that tailoring, he carries with him the tools he needs to be his larger than life self or not – sometimes it’s the pockets which are stitched shut or the empty ones that are the most revealing.

3) The POV can only see what’s import to him so we must be able to see and understand his world through his eyes. His experiences and his reactions form his dialogue with setting. Is a hot sunny day a reason to hide indoors, play on the beach, curse the office job, time for a cold beer in the pub, a perfect day to move the troops? Is a fog depressing or an opportunity for mischief? Thus the reader learns the most about the character and his setting when the descriptions are filtered through his point of view.

4) Setting reveals what is unique an important for the POV thus allowing his voice to come through. Not every character experiences (physically or emotionally), understands or reacts to the same environment in the same way.

5) It’s more than just geography – it’s the sociology, economy, level of technology, religion, politics, societal and personal values of the POV and those he interacts with. These are areas of potential conflict. Just as importantly, setting tells us what we need to know about the POV. What does the world/setting expect from him? Saint or serf? Hero or villain? It can also include sensory inputs: sight, smell, sound, touch, taste, heat, cold, or the passage of time. Remember the suit? In some societies, clothing symbolizes status and what the POV and others wear is important.

6) Setting is active, has impact and can change throughout the story. Is it friend or foe? Is it a place to hide (friend), a fight on a cliff (foe), dystopia (foe), utopia (friend), does it impede (foe) or help (friend) the POV’s plans? How does it help or hinder a POV from achieving his story goal? If it’s too dull, blow it out of proportion to make it larger than life just like you do to achieve maximum impact with plot or character. A POV can always change the setting, or strive to. Change may be societal, political, within a community, family or locales.

Like other characters, setting can based on an archetype. Archetypes typically offer challenges, gifts and opportunities for POVs. Does the the setting in your story have archetypal traits and if so, what can you do to make it a stronger character?

The Sorcerer: a place of magic which has interesting consequences
The Magician: where we can be made to believe anything but is it real? Is the situation sustainable? What happens when the luck wears off? Is this a place of transformation with the gift of power?
The Green Man: a life force that impels growth, vitality but growth has a dark side of death and decay.
The Mentor: possesses wisdom, is a teacher and sometimes a healer. Can serve as a motivator, conscience and gives the hero a gift once he’s earned it.
The Herald: a challenge for change the herald can be a force, a thing, an event (tornado). The herald disturbs, unbalances.
The Threshold Guardian: tests the hero by providing obstacles; not always defeated but the hero learns from the experience.
The Shape Shifter: friend or foe, will the shape shifter help or hinder/betray? Crafty and charismatic, the shape shifter confuses and tests the hero.

So maybe setting isn’t such a quiet character after all. Voiceless in some ways, but it speaks its own extremely complex language. Archetype, friend or foe, setting is a dynamic environment that is as alive as any other character because it illuminates, challenges, and demands calls the POV to action.