Wednesday's Writer's Tip - More on Character Development

Bringing characters to life involves making them into individuals. Another way to do this is by labeling them. So how do you do this. There are a number of ways to explore and add details to the people in your story. So how do we label people in fiction. Sometimes we do this in real time as well.

The first is appearance. Molly becomes the red haired woman with the flashing blue eyes. She's tall but not exactly slender but well-built. She is different from Susan who is short, blonde hair and hazel eyes. When giving the appearance of the characters in your story unless there's a reason they shouldn't all be blondes, red-heads or have dark hair. Maybe in a mystery you could get away with the three sultry blondes of if your characters are twins or triplets. So picture your characters as individuals.

The second way is by speech patterns. Sometimes when reading stories by beginning writers, all the characters, male, female all sound the same. Speech patterns should be individual. The way a person speaks and the words they choose often depend on many things. Their choice of a career, their family upbringing. They also can have little tells in their speech. "In my opinion," the man says many times. "Er" Uh" these are other things that can show who is speaking and makes the character more real.

A third way is mannerisms. He slicks his hair back. She chews on her fingernails. His gaze is always on the ground. She closes her eyes when she talks to anyone. These kind of manners also bring the character into view as a person.

The final way is attitude. The boy was eternally defiant. She was obsessed with perfection. He's so vain. She seems perpetually embarrassed.

Adding a bit from each area is a great way to make the characters alive. The reader will think they know the person you've created to make the story work.

Wednesday's Writer's Tip - Character Stories - Orson Scott Card

Once again looking at something learned from How To Write Science Fiction and Fantasy by Orson Scott Card. This is about stories that focus on Characters. All stories have characters but not all stories are character stories. What makes the difference?

A Character story is about change or transformation. There are many stories where the main character remains essentially the same at the end as he or she was in the beginning. I've had critique partners tell me in some of my stories that the character hasn't changed. This is especially true when I'm writing a series with the same character. The traits of the character are established in the first book and remain the same in the last book in the series. This can often drive people who don't know the series in entirety but come in during the third or fourth story. But that's something the writer knows. These are not character stories.

A Character story begins when the main character realizes he or she must change. In some matter they have reached bottom and must change. Not always an interior change in their nature but this can also be a change in how they relate to their environment. Character stories look at the hero or heroine in depth. This doesn't mean other stories don't have characters that change but other elements of the story are more important. In a Character story, the character's change or development is the story.

The Character story begins the moment the main character realizes there is a need for change. The reader needs to be shown what or why the character has come to this conclusion but not for pages and chapters of the character's life leading up to the moment. Begin at the beginning or the triggering moment. The story ends when the character has made the change or when they sink back to their old ways and refuse to make the change.

Wednesday's Writer's Tip - Tell and Show - Elements of the Novel - Eileen Charbonneau

We're probably all been told to show not tell. I know I have at least a dozen times. But there's nothing wrong with using some tell in your story. Our early days of reading or being read to gave us a lot of tell in the stories. What Eileen Charbonneau has done in this chapter from Elements of Fiction is to tell us what the element of show in our stories can add to the depth.

Telling can be static but it can be dynamic so don't take out all the tell in your story, One place is moving characters from one scene to another. You could say John left the house and went to Megan's. Or you could add a little touch that gives a hint of why he's going or what he's feeling. Tell is giving the facts. I once critiqued a story where the entire first chapter was in the tell mode with the character leaving his home and giving in detail everything he saw along the way. After a time I wanted to know what was happening here. That's where show could have helped.

Why does a writer need show in his stories. The first reason is to engage the reader by giving them a picture of the character's nature. Show can have the character interacting with the setting and giving a focus to the story. Show can trigger a memory and produce a hopefully short flash into the past. Show really is what brings a story to life and helps with the pacing.

I often look at my rough drafts and realize most of what I've written is in the tell mode. I have been known to make what will become a scene and express it in a single sentence. There's a fight scene here. They make love. When I'm working on the other drafts I have to go through and show what is happening in these scenes.

Wednesday's Writer's Tip - Theme and Strategy

What is the theme of this story? That's a question heard so often in lit. classes. I know I always struggled to decide what was behind the author;s writing of a book and I'm not sure I ever really knew. Stories are based on ideas and if one takes ten writers and presents them with the same basic idea, 10 different stories would emerge with each author taking their own views and translating them into the stories. For myself I've written one story that grew from a theme but I didn't discover this until I was through a rough draft of the story and suddenly what I was trying to say became clear. In this story each of the characters had an obsession and where these obsessions lead was what held the story together. So what the theme boils down to is the writer's reason for the story.

I read in a book called Thrme and Strategy of the many types of themes that exist in stories. Some I understood and some I didn't. Most of the time I write stories using the theme of escape. Meaning I create worlds with words that will allow the reader to escape for a time be it with mystery, romance, fantasy or adventure. This is probably the theme of most popular novels and there's nothing wrong with that. Sometimes these stories go beyond the escape pattern and sometimes they fail.

Part of the reason for this failure is the author becomes preachy and shoves the theme in the reader's face. Not a good thing to do. This makes the reader want to toss the book away. Here are some general themes a writer might attempt. Escape. Action. Here the story moves from one event to another in rapid succession. Effect where what happens in the story is the important. Horror stories use this as the theme frequently. Character as a theme shows the life of a particular person and his effect on others or theirs on him or her. Morality and this can cause problems if over preaching is done. Coming of age is another where the character moves from innocence into knowledge. Other themes can be style and often is seen in literary stories. Human relationships and human nature are two others which are related to character themes.

As you write, perhaps your theme will be revealed. You will know what it is but don't be surprised if the reader finds something different. Theme is the writer's reaction to an idea and as they write, the reason for writing this particular story comes from inside them.