Wednesday's Writer's Tip - Writing ABC - Characters #MFRWauthor #amwriting

Characters are one of the main elements of every story. There are layers to developing characters and strong ones are what the reader wants. There are a number of ways to bring chanacters to life and thus there will be more than one post about these intriguing people writers place in their book.

Names is one of the first. Finding other than Mary and John are a help to have the reader see a bit of the characters nature. Now some writers go a bit too far when naming their characters. Brick Roughstone is sort of a play on what they do. Now this kind of thing works in humor so choosing an outlandish name must fit the character. I've missnamed a character or two in my stories but the books are written and published. If I went back I might change their names. One thing to look at does the name fit the time period of the character. Choosing a name you like and discovering there never was a name like that in the time period you're writing. In contemporary fiction sometimes one will choose a name from the past to give the character a particular flavor. That is good but then the character's traits must fit the name chosen. Fantasy writers sometimes choose names that can't be pronounced. This can leave the reader scratching their head or sitting and stumbling over the name trying every pronounciation they can imagine. Not a good thing for the reader. Writing names so the pronounciation is easily scanned by the reader is good. I'm reading a fantasy right now that though  the spelling of the names looks strange when sounding them out the names make sense. Phonetically writing the names here really helps.

So names is the first order of business. Having a multitude of sources of names can help and this is something I've collected over the years. I'm not sure how many I have but there are a lot and I use them frequently. So remember names have power and names can gain a reader's attention. Also remember a name you may love could be one that turns a particular reader off. Choose your characters names with care no matter what genre you choose to write.

Characterization -- Beyond Astrology

There are some other things that help define a character. Names are one thing. Choosing how to name your characters can be sometimes harder than writing the synopsis. Well, maybe not. I spend a lot of time naming characters and looking through books of names including those like New Age Books. Once I had a computer program to help with this but that was many computers ago and the program came on one of those large floppy discs. Sometimes the name comes easy. When I was writing The Warrior of Bast, I needed names that sounded like they could be coming from Egypt and so I sat with books on Egypt and looked at the names of the pharaohs and queens and then did variations. The characters in The Henge Betrayed series are plays on my grandchildren's names. mostly with new endings added to their names, thus Brandon became Brandien, Kyla became Kylandra and so forth. Sometimes when I'm reading books particularly those set in historical periods one sees names that don't fit what we think of as being pleasant names today but in the time period of the historical the names are perfectly fine. Or names that once were men's names are now used for women. So one has to decide to be true to the period or true to today.

Another way of defining a character is posture -- How does a person stand. Do they slouch or stand like there's a rod in their spine. Are their shoulders hunched or straightened. I once read a description that was sort of like this. He walked as though he had no bones. Does that mean graceful or did he ooze across the stage. Posture can also show a person's mood. Ways of moving also do this. Does your heroine always strice or does she mince. Does he walk with a heavy tread? A lot about a person's nature can be shown by the way they walk or stand.

What about expressions. What does this statement make you think. He wore his perpetual sneer. Doesn't make me what to like this person. She was never without a smile. Eyes danced with laughter. Just seeing how another person views the expressions a character wears can give a picture in an instant.

There are more ways that I'll get to another time. Just remember when you're showing your characters try to show more than a static description. If possible avoid having them look into a mirror.

My way continued

I talked about the when and the where in the last posting. The next step in my way means I have to find the characters. For this book I needed a hero, a heroine and at least one villain plus characters that would be important to this story and would perhaps become important to the other stories in what I now saw as a trilogy. One thing I really need to learn is to name my characters. Some people may think this is strange but until my characters have a name I really can't write about them. Somehow the name helps me define their character. For my current book the name I chose for the heroine was Tira and that name just popped into my head. Finding the names for the other characters was more difficult. I took some of the books I have about Egypt and used the names I found there to develop character names. The hero became Kashe. Hos older brother became Pian. There was a reason for these names sunce I was injecting some Nubian influences into the characters. Tira is a young black woman and Pian is a throwback to an ancestory his father has tried to deny. Kashe's younger brother is named Namose which is a take off of an ancient Egyptian name. Of course when I began the rough draft of the story, Kashe's younger brother was his sister called Merin. The change came about during the planning of the story. I'll explain later. Now for some villains. The nomarch of Mero and his son Pian are among the less that nice characters and so are the priests of Aken Re. There are two main ones in the story. Oris and Hebu, these men have come from a different country, actually they belong to the Hyksos, the mysterious invaders of the land. One more character crept in and this was Tuten, a retired member of the nomarch's guard and Kashe's mentor. Once I had the characters there were other needed things but that will come later.