Crafting Characters
Chris Reddingâs next book, Incendiary, will be out in electronic form mid December and out in print in the Spring of 2011. When she isnât writing, she works part time for her local hospital. She lives in New Jersey with her husband, kids and various animals. This post is an excerpt of a writing workshop she will be presenting at
www. writersonlineclasses.com
How do writers go about crafting characters? Well we have to include emotions to make them real. Iâm terrible at emotions. Really. Itâs sad that I write romance or at least include it in my suspense stories.
You need the specifics to make your character three âdimensional.
Ambiguity: A writer has to trust his own experience. This is one of my flaws. I could go into a long complicated explanation but none of you are my therapist. Suffice it to say it has been a hard fought lesson on my part to trust my experience.
A writer needs to bleed onto the page. That requires the writer to tap into and explore their own emotions. I know many writers who say if they didnât write theyâd be in a straight jacket.
Lack of Trust in Characters: A writer can write the character with too many inconsistencies. The reader needs to see the emotional journey of the character for the range of emotions to be believable. A writer can also make a character too consistent. We all have a range of emotions. Our characters should too.
âGiving your characters authentic, believable emotions is the best way I know to breathe life into them and off the page.â Ann Hood.
Your characters should have emotional depth and breadth. How does a character get from emotion A to emotion B?
Thereâs a timeline. Do you have one? How did you get from A to B? A character must go through a similar timeline, but it should be different from the writerâs since the character is different from the author.
The writerâs emotional life and a characterâs emotional life only needs to overlap enough to make the reader believe.
So if not clichĂ©âs to attain these goals then what? Fresh language.
âFresh language and images rather than tired clichĂ©s force you- and your reader-to see emotions in a different light.â Ann Hood
Cliches do the work for the writer. Suggestion helps you do the emotional work. Use props. Instead of state the obvious.
Do you think all writers do an equal job? Of course not. Iâm sure youâve read a book where the character didnât ring true. How much do you as a reader need to identify with a character for you to love a book? Can you love a book where the character has views diametrically opposed to yours? As a writer I really want to know how much does it make a difference?
From Incendiary:
The electricity of an impending storm raised the hair on Chelsea Jamesâ arms.
She stood, barefoot, on her wide front porch, watching the wind almost blowing the trees back and forth.
And through it all, her dead sisterâs voice played in her mind.
âItâs like nature has to violently clean up,â Morgan used to say when they stood in this very spot.
Theyâd both loved storms then.
The power of nature impressed  Chelsea while Morgan concentrated on the aftermath. Odd that Morgan never thought of the aftermath of her own actions.
âHow so?â Chelsea would ask her older-by-a-few-minutes sister.
Morganâs eyes would be wide. âBecause a storm gives the trees a haircut, gets rid of the ones that are weak. And on top of that, the rain helps the ones that do survive,â Morgan had answered.
Chelsea nodded.
But this storm didnât bring with it the same renewal. Somewhere deep in Chelsea, she knew this storm was different. This storm could bring destruction.
Thank for having me and one lucky
commenter will get a Lia Sophia necklace.
The winning name will be drawn on
Tuesday, November 30th.
November 28, 2010
Posted in: Guest Blogs
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7 Responses
Hi, Chris,
Just ran across your comments. Good luck with you new novel.
It sounds like a winner!
I’m doing the same thing in the novel I’m working on: trying to make the characters multi-leveled and believable. Perhaps I’m taking too much from my own past, but this is what I know.
If the characters tend to read as if they could be interchangeable, then you know you’re on the wrong track, especially if they all sound a bit like you. It won’t even work if you base them on people you know. They have to be people you come to know over the course of writing the book. You can use nuggets of what you already know, but like real people they are not always going to do what you think they should.
(Long winded way of saying, I agree!)
Helen
Thanks for stopping by ladies.
cmr
As a reader and not a writer, being able to identify and understand the characters is very important to me. My favorite reads are historical fiction round 1800s. Especially those set in England. As I did not live in that time period, lol, the characters need to be written so that in these modern day times I can still feel what they feel. I have put down many a book after the first couple chapters as the characters did not “make sense” to me. As a reader I applaud the writers for being able to do what you do, as I know I could not.
Having great characters is just fabulous and can truly make the story!
Chris, thank you so much for visiting and sharing your thoughts on a topic so important to good writing
Congratulations to Lynn, winner of the Lia Sophia necklace!
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