Character
Is It All About Character?
Aristotle concluded that story is superior to character. In the 1800s, many thought that structure was simply a way to convey the fascinating characters that readers desired. But, as fiction continues to evolve, where do we stand today?
Looking at this from a writer’s perspective, I’ve recently realised that all of my novel-length pieces of work begin with character names/personalities; these create the initial spark that gets ideas flowing. The plot, the tension, the outcome – they all start to come alive as soon as a cast of names form in my head and are allowed to interact on the page. But when it comes to writing short stories, I get a sense of the mood that I want to convey first, and the characters come later. In fact, sometimes the characters come so late, I have to put the story aside for a very long time before they enter stage left.
Weird that both genres should be approached so differently – and weirder still that I’ve only just realised that this is how I work. So I decided to do a bit of investigating to try and understand what’s making me/my characters tick. Here’s my thoughts on some of the great advice that I found:
Sensory Memories
How can we touch the hearts of our readers? The books that stay with us are not the ones we admire, but the ones we love. So how do you get someone to fall in love with your book?
For me the power of a good book is its ability to totally hold my heart, appealing to my emotions, and gripping me with characters that I really care about. The book becomes a page - turner not because of a clever plot, or even beautiful language, but because I have made a commitment to the characters. I need to know what happens to them at the end of their journey.
So how do you make your characters real, and empathic? How do you get your readers to care about people who are merely figments of your imagination? There are some fundamental ways – knowing your characters inside and out, good dialogue, and authentic descriptive language. It is this last element that I want to focus on.
Arlene Hunt on Creating the Bad
‘It’s alive, it’s alive!’
Who doesn’t recognise the joyous cry of the demented scientist when Frankenstein, his monster creation, finally comes to life. It’s one of the most classic lines in horror movie history.
Though I leave out the shriek, I often feel this way when a character– once a mere blastocyst of an idea banging about in my brain – fleshes out and takes form. It can be a giddy-making moment when I stop thinking of a character as a thing and begin to think of them as he or she. In general this is a pleasant experience, after all characters are an important part of the crime novel, the people we watch carefully as the plot propels us in, but occasionally I will create a character that leaves me wondering where on earth I found them and why I am so happy to set them loose into the world.
Adrian White on Method Writing
People harm themselves in many different ways and it's never easy for others to understand why.
A few years ago, a colleague of mine - let's call him Jack - told me about a friend of his from college whose self-harm had become her whole life. This woman's story had a profound effect upon me, even though we had never met, and what I learnt about her was ultimately the prompt for my second novel, Where the Rain Gets In.
I met Jack again recently out of the blue and, when the topic of my writing came up, he told me he'd visited his friend just last week in hospital and that she wasn't doing at all well. What Jack told me hit home a second time and I thought of the years in between Jack first mentioning his friend and what those years have meant to this girl, this woman, this human being living through her own private hell.
I was very conscious when I sat down to write Where the Rain Gets In that what I was doing could be seen as exploiting another person's suffering. I told myself then, as I'm telling myself now, that I was writing from the heart, that this was a genuine attempt to put myself into the mind of a woman who could harm herself in this way.
Back Story - How Best to Include it
“Too much Back Story slows down the pace of your narrative…”
Receiving this powerful sentence in a rejection letter set me back for weeks. How could I have got my writing so wrong? I’d read all the books on writing. I’d assumed the reader needed to know about my characters’ pasts – and perhaps they did - just not in the first chapter!
Like a lot of other valuable nuggets associated with the craft of writing, I learned about Back Story through a rejection letter. And, as with many things in this life, we learn our best lessons through our most painful mistakes.
In an earlier draft of my first novel, I had included far too much information in the opening chapters. Dropping characters’ college education into dialogue, mentioning their parents’ occupations in lengthy paragraphs and making reference to their first romance before the end of Chapter One distracted from the real storyline and lost the reader’s attention before I had truly possessed it.
More Articles...
Page 1 of 2
<< Start < Prev 1 2 Next > End >>
If you would like to contribute articles, news, or anything writing related please 
To be kept up to date on all areas of our site why not sign up to our RSS feed 