Writing Tip...Characters
There's a million articles on the subject out there. Entire
books, in fact. But the more I learn about writing, the more I
value those simplistic yet powerful tips. That's why I loved
this one.
I sent my manuscript,
Safe In Enemy Arms, to my agent who read
it and said the plot was a bit too complicated and the
characters weren't "real" yet.
After two hellish weeks on revisions, I hadn't changed the
plot, but I introduced its multi-faceted, yet connected
elements slower.
My agent liked that. She thought it worked.
As for the characters, I worked them over pretty good, too,
strengthening their GMC, pumping up their emotions, even
deepening a subplot and brought my villain into the limelight
more often.
Unfortunately, she still said they weren't "3D" enough. She
said they didn't have that inherent quality that took them
from the status of characters to real people, like she felt my
characters in Hiding In Plain Sight achieved.
Uh-huh. Right.
I'll spare you the headache, heartache and confusion I went
through in trying to figure out what this meant, exactly, but
I will tell you the method I used to give me an alternate view
inside my character's head. Maybe it will help you someday
when you're staring at a heroine asking, "How the hell do I
make you more real?"
I subscribe to two writing article loops and just about
everyday I'm bombarded with writing-related craft articles.
Most of them simply rehash the same stuff we've all read in
other articles or in books. The ones that are exceptional,
give me a different perspective, teach me something new or in
a more comprehensive way, I add to my
Articles
links on my website.
A few days ago I read an article on character development by
Robert Gregory Browne (RGB), entitled
Creating Characters That Jump Off The Page
and found his perspective wholly unique and deeply helpful.
Instead of character interviews and getting into the nitty
gritty psyche of a character extracting information that may
or may not be relevant to his story, RGB broke it down to
attitude, emotion, goal and action. I'm not going to rehash
the article here, but I wanted to share a particular technique
that resonated with me and got me over the wall I was
experiencing.
You may have heard before that every character embodies a
piece of the author. I thought that was true...with my first
few characters. But as I branched out and gave my characters
different histories, different professions, different
families, different GMCs, I found I became distant from them
-- hence the "non-3-D" issues. And of course I've been having
a nightmare of a time with my villains which I spoke with
Allison Brennan about at length. But that's a whole other
post.
In relation to character development though, RBG brought it
all back together for me with one simple concept: imagination
+ self.
He says every character he writes is him--hero, heroine,
secondary, tertiary, one-liners. They're all him.
So, let's use my heroine from SIEA, Cassie: She is an
independent physician suffering from the sudden, tragic loss
of the two most important people in her life during the
hardest year of her education and trying to find closure.
RBG suggests you ask yourself, if this were me, how would I
handle the situation? Now, I'm not a physician, although I've
worked with hundreds; I've never lost the most important
people in my life, but I could imagine how I'd feel and
attempt to cope if I did.
The next step is adding what he calls color: attitude and
emotion. A=Independent, E=suffering.
So, knowing these key elements, how would **I** act if I were
this character?
***WOW*** Definitely an I-could-have-had-a-V8 moment.
It hit the mark for me. Right then and there I realized I was
trying to get into someone else's head, when all I had to do
was stay in my own head all the time and just imagine. And all
us writers have killer imaginations...making this technique
not only as simplistic as daydreaming, but intensely powerful.
Just thought I'd share...hope it helps someone else banging
their head against the wall trying to get under their
character's skin.
