Creating Characters

6 articles tagged as Creating Characters

Fictional Characters are Picky in Love

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Tips for Writers
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Several months ago I was reading an interview with Maria V. Snyder (I can’t remember where I read it). In the interview, she shared that originally she had intended Yelena, the Heroine of the Study Series, to have a relationship with the Commander, not Valek. But in the course of writing, she realized this wasn’t meant to be.

Characters have a mind of their own in matters of love

In my current WIP, I set out with a lovely outline detailing how my MC would come to love the intended love interest. But as I’ve been writing, there’s been a complete lack of chemistry. Zero emotion. They don’t hate each other, but they don’t like each other either. They are completely indifferent. So how am I supposed to make them like each other, let alone love each other?

As it turns out, my MC made up her own mind and, out of nowhere, I suddenly realized that sexual chemistry had been building between her and a minor character, and I realized that he really isn’t a minor character but rather the obvious love interest and ideal hero. And in realizing this, everything fell together. Several of the plot holes, the way to create a romance that an audience will like, everything finally made sense.

Without even realizing it, I’ve already written several scenes full of sexual tension. And the new love interest is extremely likeable. I’d go as far as to say that he’s lovable. And I’ve already built in conflict for the relationship, reasons why he shouldn’t fall for my MC and reasons why she should definitely not be falling for him. It really couldn’t have worked out better if I had sat down and written an outline. Oh wait, I did that and my outline love story flopped.

Let your characters run wild

I know people talk about this a lot, but sometimes, your characters do unexpected things. They may be fictional, but in our subconscious, we know what will work, and this comes out through our characters doing something we, the writers, did not foresee. And you know what, it’s actually kind of exciting when this happens. It makes the story feel more dynamic, more real. And personally, I’m a big fan of letting my characters run wild.

Do your characters do things you don’t expect? Do you give them free reign? Or do you make them conform to what you planned for them all along?

Want to read more about creating a romantic relationship? Check out this post from Dark Angel’s Blog, The Essence of Attraction.

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When Characters Have a Mind of their Own

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Tips for Writers
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I often hear writers say that you should allow your character to surprise you, or let your characters think for themselves. When I was first starting out, I had no clue what this meant. I remember thinking ‘how is a fictional character that lives inside my head going to surprise me?’

Little Surprises Lead to Realistic Characters

And then it happened. At first it started with little things. A character choosing to go left instead of right, or saying no instead of yes, things that helped move the story along while also sharing something about how the character thinks. And then it moved on to bigger things, like a character ending up in a room he most definitely did not belong in, making an appearance when, in fact, he was supposed to remain unseen until the very end. Tuesday, it went so far as a character creating an entire back story for another character through a memory she had that I never intended her to have. She created a connection different but better than the one I planned. So how does this happen?

Character Surprises are a Good Thing

When you are engrossed in your writing, things fall into place. You get in the zone and the story makes sense. Things you forgot to plan out beforehand jump out at you and they just happen. And this is a good thing. It helps your characters become real. No human is 1-dimensional. These surprises help move your character from 1-D to 3-D; they help make that character real.

Example:

Yesterday I discovered that my character has a fear of blood. Here’s what happened. I decided that the best way to create a sinister environment was to add in the scent of blood. This smell then triggered a memory in the MC and through that memory, I discovered that she has really bad associations with blood, having seen a man killed when she was only 6. Not only does this provide insight into both the character’s past and the nature of her world, but it also makes her a little vulnerable. People like characters that are a little vulnerable.

I’m sure there are many experienced writers who plan things out down to those tiny details before ever starting chapter 1. I’m not yet at that level. But if my characters keep speaking to me, keep throwing out little surprises, that’s OK with me. After all, doesn’t everyone love a good surprise?

Do your characters surprise you? Are there downfalls to this? Do you think this goes away when you become a more experienced writer?

For more on character’s thinking for themselves, check out this post from YA Highway

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Eavesdropping-the secret to great writing…or so I hear

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Finding Inspiration, Tips for Writers
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I recently learned about this great website/newsletter – WriteSpa, part of Winslow Eliot’s website. You can either subscribe to the newsletter or view past newsletters online. The premise is to provide writers with a weekly writing exercise. In perusing some of the past exercises, I came to one from last week: Great Dialog (part 1/3). The exercise encouraged eavesdropping to improve dialog in your writing.

So why does this excite me?

I LOVE to eavesdrop. I can’t help it. Out at dinner, on the T (subway for you non-Bostonians out there), walking down the street, in a dressing room. If there are people conversing, I’m probably eavesdropping. I think my favorite type of conversations to eavesdrop on are phone conversations. There is a sense of mystery and intrigue. You have no clue who is on the other end. It’s always fun trying to figure out what is going on, creating the other end of the conversation in my head, imagining who the mystery person is in relation to the one in front of me. Of course, first dates are also fun to eavesdrop on.

Wait, doesn’t this make me a creep?

And now we come to the crux of the matter. If eavesdropping helps me to better experience the world and see how others interact, then there’s nothing creepy about it at all. It’s research. I mean, how boring would it be if all of my characters interacted in the same way? Super boring. So, to all you writers out there, I say give into your inner creep, the voyeur inside us all, and engage in some healthy eavesdropping.

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Spunky Female Main Characters

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Misc., Tips for Writers
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The other day I was having drinks with a friend and discussing writing and books (I’m a dork, I know). The journey my book has taken from day one to now came up and we got into a discussion about female MCs. My MC was originally a female. This changed about 1.5 years into the project. In discussing my reasons for making this change, we hit upon something common to female MCs. They all have a bit of spunk.

Think about a female MC from almost any book you loved, from any genre. We used Matilda as our initial example, but think about older literary characters, like Anna Karenina or Scarlett O’Hara. Think about more recent ones, like Katniss Everdeen or Lisbeth Salander. Now think about what all these characters have in common. They all reject societies conventions for what a woman should be; they all have spunk.

Now think about books you didn’t love that had a female MC. To be kind, I will refrain from giving examples, but I can think of several. And I can think of one thing all these MCs had in common. They whined. They moaned about lack of love and misfortune. They didn’t create their own destiny, at least not willingly. They lacked true spunk. Some of these tried to have spunk, but there was so much whining and too many fits of self-pity, it just didn’t work.

Now think of some books with great male MCs. Would they have worked as well with a female MC? The example my friend and I used was Harry Potter, but Frodo from Lord of the Rings works just as well, if not better. Had Harry or Frodo been a female, would we have loved them? Or would we have told them to suck it up and quit complaining (in all fairness, I did say that a few times to Frodo, but I kept it to a minimum)? Why is it that a male MC can get away with more moments of emotional weakness than a woman?

So what was the main reason I switched my MC to a male? As a female, she was just too whiny. She seemed to be suffering from too much self-pity. And so I made the switch, and suddenly it worked.

I read a post the other day by Justine Musk, Why You Need to Write Like a Bad Girl, and it got me thinking. If our writing is more honest by throwing away convention and writing honestly, and, as Justine puts it, like a bad girl, are our readers looking to embrace the bad girl in our characters and, by extension, themselves? Is this the appeal of the spunky female MC?

What do you think about this? Are you more likely to read a book with a male MC who has moments of weakness than you are a female? Are we more forgiving of male MCs? Are there any great books out there that give leniency to weaker female characters?

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Overweight Characters in Children's Books

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Misc.
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Is it wrong to make my overweight characters evil and mean? Is this playing into stereotypes? Is this too much of a cliché? Does this teach children to view overweight people negatively? So often with writing it becomes difficult to see past the works of those whose footsteps we walk in so that we can forge our own path. I worry that I will inadvertently play into the stereotypes created by my predecessors, and that my work will suffer as a result.

Kids Come in Every Size

Certainly obesity is something that shouldn’t be encouraged in children, but children who are overweight, or those with body issues, may become more self-conscious about their weight if characters physically similar to them are villanized in stories. Equally, the kids who would pick on overweight children may feel their behavior is justified through the negative portrayal of overweight characters in books.

The Harry Potter series instantly jumps to mind when I think about negative portrayals of overweight people. Dudley is fat, unintelligent, and a bully. Malfoy, on the other hand, while evil, is intelligent and conniving. He is also thin.

Stereotyping Obesity

There are many other children’s books that also portray overweight characters in a negative light. Of course, overweight characters are equally portrayed as jovial, yet simple. Rarely do you see a normal, run-of-the-mill overweight character. Rarely do you see an overweight hero (one of the refreshing things about Disney-Pixar’s UP).

But would we want to write an overweight hero? Aren’t we trying to encourage weight loss and exercise? Do we want children to associate being overweight with being dimwitted and/or mean? Or are we inadvertently excluding an increasing population or readers? According to the CDC, 17% of children in 2006 were obese. This is double the amount found in 1980. With these numbers rising, maybe we should not treat obesity in such a negative way. Certainly we can show an overweight character struggling with their weight, or facing obstacles they would not face were they more fit (again to reference UP : Russell faced obstacles brought on by his lack of fitness), but to make every overweight character less than the fit characters may not be the best message to send children.

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