Flesh and blood characters for stand-out stories

You know how, when you’re thinking about something, everything around you seems to be that same something? For me recently, in writing, that “something” has been character. Everywhere I turn, strange, even bizarre characters have appeared. First, there’s the news, replete with characters to study. Then the writing course offered by NaNoWriMo through the online site Coursera includes a segment on character. Even when I turned to what seemed to be a delightful book about a woman and her pet bulldog, darned if the “character” aspect didn’t appear again. (For both woman and her canine friend!) Finally, half of this fall’s writing workshop sponsored by the Writers Guild of Texas hinged on the aspect of character. 

Creating fictional characters, we as human beings can relate to is such an essential element that the basic formula for story is: character + action = plot. But how to create those characters? (I’ll save the action portion of the formula for another post!)

image: Wikimedia commons

During the Coursera lessons, novelist/instructor Amy Bloom noted, “Most of us have enough trouble being ourselves, without having to then take on the task of (inventing) other people. But when you’re a writer, that’s the job. You have to enter into their body, into their soul, and see the world as they see it.”

So no wonder that after bestselling romantic suspense author Cindy Dees, who taught the WGT workshop, confessed that character development isn’t her strongest point, she developed an entire course on the subject to help her compensate. Because I was a student of Dees at a creative writing course at Southern Methodist University several years ago, I knew there would be character description worksheets. This time they were even bigger and more detailed than I remembered. 

There are innumerable sample character building worksheets online, including one developed just for NaNoWriMo, but I’m addicted to Dees’ version.

I don’t want to – in fact, it’s not even possible – to include the entire volume of information Dees lists in a single blog post. They include all the generalities available online: ethnic, social, economic, religious and educational background; behavioral descriptions; and physical description. (The Dees version emphasizes the way the physical characteristics evoke the main aspects of the person’s character.)

Digging deeper, she asked her audience members to list the main qualities that describe and define each character, the characters’ ethics (what they believe) and their code of honor (what they do), and consider the possibility of internal conflict these present.

“Some characters talk about their values,” she said, “but don’t do a darn thing.”

Dees’ character spreadsheets included side by side listings for both the main character and another primary character (and can be expanded to include multiple other characters). What I found particularly interesting was her suggestion of placing a checkmark by each point at which the characters’ personalities, background, etc., would conflict. And using these points of conflict to help build the story. 

“Is there a moral crisis that challenges (the character’s) values? If there’s not, why the hell are you writing the book?. . .What makes (the character) argue passionately about after they’ve had a few drinks?”

Then there are the detail such as: What’s this character’s most embarrassing moment ever? When did this character feel like the greatest fool ever in his/her life? “Such profound and visceral moments” can make readers so emotionally involved with a character that Dees tries to include at least one in every book.

And the often talked about issue of character likeability? As novelist Amy Bloom also noted in her discussion of character in the segment of her Coursera class, “You don’t have to like your characters, but you do have to love them and be willing to see the world through their eyes.”

It’s great to “have your heroic characters do something heroic off the bat to show us they’re the good guys,” Dees said. But watch out for cliché moments. 

Since the appearance of the late screenwriter Blake Snyder’s handbook, Save the Cat! “I’ve seen a rash of characters who climbed trees and saved cats recently,” she noted wryly.

She continued. Is the character interesting? Fascinating? “Interesting is someone I’d like to talk to at a cocktail party,” Dees told her audience. “Fascinating is, I can’t look away from that train wreck. A person can be terrible and be fascinating. Bad guys are where you can really (write) off the rails.” (I’ll add – study your news sources for examples of off-the-rails, over the top versions.)

As I flipped through the pages of character sheets Dees passed out to the workshop audience, I groaned inwardly at her suggestion to “give a symbol set to each character.” I should have known she had more in mind that yet another magical piece of jewelry or sparkly slippers. Not. She wanted us to think of our characters as that symbol.

“If I think of a character as a motorcycle, I can create a whole set of characteristics without ever calling him a motorcycle.” He/she can be noisy, powerful, eccentric, a loner, with as many of the attributes the writer attributes to motorcycles as the dog writer at the beginning of this post attributed to her bulldog. 

And I thought, yes, I do have a character who’s a motorcycle. . . And maybe one who’s a bulldog, as well.

Here’s a writing course sample – will you open the box?

FLASH: Since posting this, I have learned that the NaNoWriMo courses for 2017 are now closed. Here's the current link, for those who want to see what's publically available. Or mark your calendars for 2018.

I just started another of the online writing courses NaNoWriMo sponsors with Coursera and Wesleyan College. This is my third of the four courses NaNoWriMo wrangled for people interested in participating in its annual November write-a-thon. Instructors so far have been Salvatore Scibona (The End), Amity Gage (O My Darling), and now Amy Bloom (Lucky Us). The classes are billed as lasting four weeks, but I clipped through the first ones at about two weeks each, starting in late August.

image: pixabay

As I’ve mentioned before, you can listen to the lectures and interviews, do the readings and writing assignments free of charge. However, you will need to pay the special $29 fee per class to get (and give) reviews and feedback from your fellow cyber classmates.

Even though one of my peer reviewers was kind enough to tell me that I failed the first assignment in Scibona’s course on The Craft of Style, enough of my fellow classmates gave me a pass to let me slither through the course’s pass/fail grading system.

The assignment was to write three paragraphs of description using language of the physical senses – sight, sound, touch/feel, smell and taste. He didn’t say we had to cram all five senses into those three paragraphs, and I only managed three. Here’s my effort.

***

The Box

I head for the garage to go through that box Matt and I kept in case there were more kids, even after we knew how unlikely that would be. When I flip on the overhead light, a small scorpion scuttles backward, claws clicking, tail raised menacingly. I’ll have to warn the kids about it. Or maybe I shouldn’t say anything. Their boys’ curiosity is as likely to send them in search of the deadly little creature as to scare them away from it.

The box I want hasn’t been opened, although two years have passed since our move here to Las Vegas. The tape sealing its seams is brown and peeling. Written on its dusty side is its room designation: nursery. I bend carefully at the knees to lift the box, conscious of the importance of legs, of knees, of the flex and stretch of muscles, of feet planted firmly on the ground. Things you don’t miss until they’re gone.

Then out to the patio. There are wet marks on the box when I set it on the picnic table. Sweat? You don’t sweat in the dry desert heat of Las Vegas. Sweat wicks off exposed skin before you even have a chance to feel it. But the marks must be sweat. They can’t be tears. Surely, I don’t have any tears left to cry.

***

I realized later, and classmates pointed out, that I could have done more with the smells of the box and garage, or the taste of the tears. Definitely remember that during NaNoWriMo's revision phase. I also (as did most of the classmates I reviewed) tried to make this part of a narrative, which Scibona later told us was not his intention. It only needed to be a portrait, not a complete narrative.

If any of my writing critique partners are out there, they’ll recognize this as a fragment from a work in progress, although the assignments are not intended to give us a cut-and-paste formula for our NaNoWriMo opus.

Could I have managed better by writing longer paragraphs? Maybe. At least one of the classmates I reviewed simply gave up paragraphing altogether. I laughed and gave him/her a pass because the language of the writing was in keeping with the stated assignment.