How to use personal ads to define a character

How to use a random name generator to spark character ideas

How to get diversity in your cast when they all start looking and sounding the same

How to deal with secondary characters that try to take over your story

And if pictures of people from magazines and model websites don’t produce the face of your character, try this face generator and take a look at one of the character’s Lynn put together for a novel.

And if you’ve never read Lynn’s blog, you should.  She has a great sense of humor, she offers a ton of writing advice and information on her blog and has posted many stories and ebooks on her Scribd account, free for the downloading.

In keeping with the theme of characters this month, here’s another book on creating compelling characters.  This book was written by Holly Lisle and is part of her Writing Clinics bundle.  This is a fun book.  Holly has a great sense of humor and it comes out best in the last section on the sins.

How It’s Put Together:  This book has three main sections, each with exercises to apply the information to your characters.

1 – Ask Them Anything

Get to know your characters through determining the answers to a variety of questions on

• the character’s compelling need
• his work and play
• his past, present and future
• his friends, enemies and lovers
• life and death
• culture, religion and education
• his moral stance

All this detail might seem overwhelming, but Holly recommends that you start with answering just a few questions in each section. You can work through a set of questions in greater detail later on if your story would benefit from it.

2 – Bring Them to Life

Exercises let you find out more about your character through interviews, the character’s setting, his dialogue, exposition and action.

3 – The Sins of Characterization, and How to Commit Them Right

Holly discusses the five sins of exposition…

• Core Dump – big lumps of the author’s research dumped into the story
• Dust and Cobwebs – long, itemized sections of tedious description
• MIrror, Mirror on the Wall – where the hero or heroine admire themselves in a reflective surface
• Behemoth – the hundred-plus word sentence of tedious details
• Superman vs. The Gremlin – Hero who is perfect in every way versus Villain who is evil, deformed and all things wretched and loathsome

the five sins of dialogue…

• As You Know, Bob – two characters telling each other what they already know
• Headless Horseman – dialogue with no tags or action to denote who is speaking or what the characters are doing while talking (I do this all the time in my first drafts.  Thank heavens for revisions.)
• Coffee and a Bagel – all the nonsense pleasantries we say to one another (Hi, how are you doing, what do you think of the weather, etc.)
• Seltzer – dialogue that is all fizz, no substance – usually something witty the writer thought to have the character say that has no relevance to the story
• Elephant at the Tea Party – characters talking around and avoiding the primary issues and compelling needs

and the five sins of action…

• The Ben Franklin – mind-numbing detail of a character’s daily routine
• The Snowman – action that is bold and exciting, but then melts away to nothing because the author chickened out
• Door, Two Guns, No Ammo – exciting action with no possible way to resolve it… also known as painting yourself into a corner
• Naked Chick at the Opera – something so bizarre and out of place in the story that it catapults the reader out of the story and back to reality
• The Brain Transplant – stupid, drooling idiot character has moment of impossible brilliance or impossibly brilliant character does something agonizingly stupid

and best of all, shows you how to use them correctly in your writing.  Yes, there are actually correct ways to incorporate all of the above sins into a story.  Well, except for the Brain Transplant.  There’s no way to do that right.  Just cut that section out of your story and rewrite it.

How It Helped Me: There is such a wealth of information in this book.  When I got my copy, I set down to read through it first (before beginning the exercises) and wow.  Just reading the questions in the Ask Them Anything section sparked all kinds of ideas for the characters in my book.  The most helpful idea for me was that of using Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs to determine where your character is at in his or her life.  Using the hierarchy and determining the character’s compelling need has provided a great basic definition for my characters.

This book explains how Holly creates her characters. But the best part is that by following her example, you won’t create characters like hers. You’ll create characters that are uniquely your own. Characters that live and breathe and are remembered by the reader long past your story’s end.

Who Can Benefit From Reading It:  This book is actually applicable for writers of all levels.  A beginner can use it to understand the basics of creating three-dimensional characters.  Experienced writers can use Holly’s exercises to refresh their characters and add more depth.  Pick up a copy, you won’t be disappointed.

Format:  147-page PDF file (e-book)

As a follow-up to the post on Plotters vs. Pantsers, here’s a free ebook on plotting. 

Create A Plot Clinic by Holly Lisle contains her years of experience in developing multiple plot tools to create over thirty novels.

She shares

• what goes into a great plot (hint… it all comes from you)
• how plots grow
• six different plot structures and how to mix and match them
• two plot tools to get you started

This is just the beginning of a much longer ebook that covers eighteen more plotting tools (because no tool works every time, as every writer knows) as well as how to plot while you’re writing and also when you’re revising.   There’s a link to the longer book inside the ebook.

If you’re looking for some help creating a plot, download this book.  It’s free… what’s to lose?

It’s an age old argument… plot your story vs. sit down and just start writing. 

Plotters say that knowing where the story is going is vital.  How can you create a great story if you don’t know how it will end?  It is essential to create an outline detailing the scenes and plot points of your story.  Having character dossiers is also helpful.  Without good planning, your story will end up as a muddle of disconnected plotlines and random events.  Planning keeps you on track with a cohesive story structure that leads you to a satisfying end.

Pantsers (as in seat-of-the-pants writing) on the other hand believe that plotting ahead of time smothers all the life out of a story.  Instead, a writer should sit down and write whatever comes to mind.  Start with your character and see where she takes you.  Sure, the book may end up messy and disorganized, but that’s what revision is for.  Getting words down on the page without constraining yourself to an outline allows your mind to be spontaneously creative.  You will come out with some amazing material that you could never have planned ahead of time.

So which of these methods is better?  Well, they both are.  No two writers have the same writing habits.  Some work best outlining every last scene in the book.  Some work best with no planning at all.  If creating an outline works for you, then that’s the better one.  For you.  Same with using no outline.   The important thing is finding the method that works for you.

If you’re not sure which one is your method, here are a few tips to try out:

Plotter

• Jot down a few ideas for scenes you’d like to include.
• Organize them into a logical order (this scene needs to happen before that scene does).
• Aim to get a minimum number of scenes defined, including a good opening scene, three major plot points, a climax scene and a wrapup scene.
• Using your loose outline, begin writing.  If you get ideas for other scenes, write them down and see where they fit in your outline.
• When the story is finished, use your outline as a guide for your revisions.  Make sure that each scene advances the story in some way.

Pantser

• Brainstorm an interesting character or event and start writing.
• Don’t try to plan ahead on your scenes, just keep typing as ideas come to you.
• If you get an idea that completely changes the story, or a new character shows up out of the blue, go with it.
• Hold off on any revisions until after the story has reached an ending.
• When the story is complete, read through it and evaluate the direction the story has taken.  Eliminate plot threads and characters that went no where and tighten up the remaining material.

Which method works best for you?

I’m going to be releasing a new mini course on building characters this month so to go along with that here’s a review of an oldie, but goody. Creating Characters by Dwight V. Swain was published in 1990, but it still has great information on putting together interesting story people.

How It’s Put Together: The book has seventeen chapters focusing on different aspects of creating characters. The chapters are short, only 5-10 pages each and you can dip into them selectively to add nuances to your characters.

1 – The Core of Character: What’s the one key element any major character must have? The ability to care.

Giving your character something to care deeply makes him an individual, and gives you conflict potential. Threatening the thing that your character cares about provides the drive behind the character… a reason for him to keep going throughout your story.

2 – Searching Out Your Characters: How do you find the right character? You scan the applicants until you locate one who turns you on and fits the part.

It’s important to get a character that fits your private quirks and standards… you’ll be writing your book for a while and you need a character that you will still like three months, six months or a year down the road. One way to zero in on your character is to pay attention to your reactions to real people around you. Find someone that sets off strong feelings in you and consider using him or her in your story.

When you have an initial idea for a character, you need to provide enough characteristics that make his story behavior plausible. You rationalize his presence and behavior in your story.

3 – Labels, Labels: Why do you label a character? Your reader needs some clue or two to help him recognize each of your story people.

This is one area where I definitely notice if an author is not very proficient – usually too many characters are introduced too quickly with not enough tags or labels to help me differentiate between them. They blur together and I’m left confused.

Swain recommends that you define the dominant impression that a character gives, using four attributes – sex, age, vocation, and manner. Sex and age are obvious. Vocation can refer to a character’s primary occupation, such as doctor, lawyer, used car salesmen, or less obvious ones such as housewife, invalid, bag lady, or ‘significant other’. Manner is an individual’s personal bearing; his or her habitual stance or style. Terms such as loud and pushy, clumsy, grouchy, sympathetic can combine with an occupation to give you a sloppy waitress, a harried nurse or a wise-cracking invalid. Swain also covers how to use the labels in introducing your character through description and appearance, action, dialogue or thoughts and introspection.

4 – Fleshing Out: How do you make a character real? You provide him or her with appropriate tags, traits, and relationships.

Swain starts by warning that you can make a character too complex. It is better to use fairly clear and simply traits. A tag is a limited, specialized label and includes such items as such as a name, appearance, ability, speech, mannerism, and attitude. Swain also touches on creating a character dossier to catalog all the traits, labels and other characteristics of your cast. He chooses to reverse the process–instead of creating a full dossier at the beginning, he lays out characters in a quick pass and then adds character details as he needs them while writing the story.

5 – The World Within: 1: How do you motivate a character? You devise something that he or she must change in order to win happiness.

Swain defines happiness, illustrating that it means different things to different people–a characteristic that lends itself to unique story people. He also examines unhappiness and fear… both good motivators for a character’s behavior.

6 – The World Within: 2: How do you keep a character moving? You point that character towards his or her private future.

In this chapter, you learn about Direction, Goal, Drive, and Attitude.

Direction – the road to happiness. He loosely defines it as a tendency to lead the kind of life the character enjoys, meaning that the character will be searching for experiences that bring pleasure and avoiding experiences that bring pain. He lists five types of desires that the character might be searching for – adventure, security, recognition, response and power. The ratio between the elements the character zeros in on establishes the direction the character goes.

Goal – Dissatisfaction as dynamic. A goal is born out of dissatisfaction with a situation. The desire to change the situation to something that the character prefers more provides the character’s goal – the changed situation.

Drive – The “Give a Hoot” factor. Drive is mainly the intensity with which a character wants to change a situation. To give a character drive Swain lists four steps:

1. You devise something for him to care about, consciously or otherwise.
2. You fit him out with a suitable goal, in view of the direction you’ve postulated for him.
3. You threaten that goal, that something he cares about.
4. You establish reasons for him not to quit, reasons to continue to fight against the threat and reach his goal.

Attitude – Character plus hangup. This is the character’s consistent disposition, how the character views the world around him.

7 – The Breath of Life: How do you bring a character to life? You make the character reveal emotion.

Readers experience empathy with characters. If your character displays emotion, your reader feels that emotion also. This leads the reader to identify more with the character. To give emotions to your character, you must start by feeling the emotions yourself.

Courage is also important in a character. The best characters are like us and more. The more is usually the courage to continue on toward the goal in the face of whatever danger or obstacles arise. It’s a quality we all want to have and it increases reader identification with the character.

8 – Bent Twigs: How much background should you give a character? Only enough to make your reader–and you–believe in him.

Background is necessary for three reasons:

1. To make the character unique.
2. To give the character reasons for behaving as he does.
3. To make him believable, to give him depth.

The four components to Background are Body, Environment, Experience and Ideas. Together they form the reasons why a character does the things he does and the reasons why he doesn’t do other things. Swain suggests coming up with a few details from each of the four areas.

9 – Wild Cards: What goes into building an offbeat character? The same elements that you use in creating any story person–only more so.

This chapter covers the eccentric, defined as someone who feels a tremendous need to maintain his individuality, and the psycho, someone who has moved beyond minor deviations of normal behavior to severe deviations. The eccentric tends to be open in his aberration and viewed as harmless, while the psycho masks his or aberration or is mistrusted or feared. Swain provides guidance on how to fashion these special characters.

10 – The Role of Roles: How do you treat a hero? You shape the hero to fit the job he or she has to do.

Here Swain covers eight types of roles with guidelines for building and portraying them effectively.

• The interesting character
• The memorable character
• The viewpoint character
• The protagonist
• The antagonist
• The love interest character
• The incidental character
• The non-human character

11 – The Light Touch: How do you make a character amusing? You replace reader assumptions with offbeat alternatives. T

his chapter thoroughly covers what humor is and how to use it in a story.

12 – The Right Words: How do you describe a character effectively? You build the character with significant specifics that lead readers to feel the way you want them to feel.

Your goal as a writer is to evoke or create feeling in your reader. He advises dumping generalities and choosing significant details that reveal pertinent facts about the character and make him a unique individual.

13 – The Things They Say: How do you write good dialogue? You pay as much attention to feelings as to words.

Choosing the right words to put in a character’s mouth can also establish him as a unique individual, distinct from the others in the story. Dialogue can also provide conflict and Swain suggests using dialogue to show the characters attempting to influence someone’s attitude or behavior, to help or hinder another character.

14 – Variations On a Theme: How do you treat characters in various lengths, media, and genres? You design your people to fit your market.

Swain covers:

• The Short Story Character
• The Long Story Character
• The Category Character (or genre character)
• The Radio Character (valid today as audio books continue to be popular)
• The Stage Character
• The Film/TV Character

15 – The Character Out of Time: How do you get people to read about characters in unfamiliar worlds? You provide emotional insight into the world and individuals involved.

In this chapter, Swain describes characters from the past (history); future (as in science fiction); and those in the present, but “not-you” (contemporary groups whose lifestyles are outside of your norm).

16 – The Dynamics of Disbelief: How do you cope when readers don’t believe in your characters and stories? You plug the gaps where belief leaks out.

Swain lists seven major categories that can disrupt a reader’s suspension of disbelief and provides suggestions for how to fix them.

1. You can fall out of viewpoint.
2. You can fail to do enough research.
3. You can tell your story instead of showing it.
4. You can leave gaps in the motivation/reaction (M/R) stairway.
5. You can fail to plant the things you should.
6. You can give your characters things to do that your readers find distasteful.
7. You can make the characters themselves less than likable.

17 – The Search for Zest: How do you maintain your cutting edge as a writer? You draw on the stimulus of story people.

The research and study of people, along with trying new experiences, will fill your mind with new images and ideas. New and different raw materials make for fresh settings, fresh plot concepts and fresh story people. Continually reach for more of life to maintain a zest for your characters and stories.

How It Helped Me: While the book can help you create a character from scratch, it really excels in helping you improve an existing character. Chapter 6 was an eye-opener for me. Using Direction, Goal, Drive and Attitude as quick touch-points gave me a handle on my characters that I didn’t have before. There’s a lot less aimless wandering in my stories now as my characters have a stronger purpose for their actions.

Who Can Benefit From Reading It: This book will be of most use to the writer that is still working on the basics of craft. The short chapters make it easy to jump in and grab a piece of information that will help round out a character. In fact, I’d recommend using it that way more than trying to follow every piece of advice in each chapter. Dip in and choose individual bits when you need them.

Though it isn’t a new kid on the publishing block, there is plenty of basic information that is still relevant to building story characters. Pick up a copy of Creating Characters today.

When it comes to writing your novel, there are two schools of thought:

1. Get it done and fix it later
2. Take your time and do it right the first time

Most of my life, I’ve been firmly in the second camp – agonizing over my words as I put them down, taking plenty of time to be sure a scene is right before I move on to the next. 

This method, however, has not been without problems.  I have several unfinished manuscripts languishing about.  As I painstakingly worked on each one, the passion and interest I had for each idea faded until one day I was no longer interested in working on them at all.  And now they sit, ignored and unfinished.

Recognizing this as an undesirable outcome, I find myself now leaning toward the first practice.  I wrote fast and pushed through to the end of one manuscript even though I changed the plot in the middle.  I changed it so much that the second half of the story bears no resemblance to the first half.  It will need major revisions to become a coherent novel.  But it is a finished first draft.

So my current strategy is to blaze through the first draft, no matter how crappy it comes out, just to get it done.  Then I have something that I can revise into perfection.  A completed first draft gets me one step closer to a finished final product.

So… fast vs. perfect… which method works better for you?

This little book is a favorite of mine. You can tell by the many sticky notes I have stuck to the pages marking spots I use frequently.  It has short chapters full of specific exercises and advice on how to analyze and improve your writing.  It has huge appeal for an analytic writer like myself.

How It’s Put Together:  This book is a collection of 79 very short chapters on a variety of subjects – character, editing, writing scenes, word choice, creativity, pacing, and dialogue, to name a few.  Each subject is covered in several chapters, but they are laid out randomly.  A chapter on getting published is followed by one on dialogue, for example.  I’ve read other reviews of the book which criticize this particular feature.

For my own use, I rather like how the book is structured.  It allows me to focus on individual snippets of information, say a short vignette on how to avoid writing bad dialogue, rather than being faced with a longer chapter on dialogue that has multiple points that I must then sort through.  The sorting has been pre-done for me and everything is neatly packaged in chapters of 2-4 pages with a single point to make.  The short chapters are easy to consume in a brief sitting.  You might say that the book has been formatted for the busy schedules and short attention span of the newer generations.

Another feature that I adore are the graphs and charts that Smith uses throughout.  I love to analyze things and he provides different methods of analyzing your writing from the pacing in your novel to the intensity of your scenes.  If you’re more of a technical writer, you’ll get a kick out of trying the different analysis techniques.

How It Helped Me: I have used many of the tools and techniques included in this book. One of my favorites and very useful – the 10-Scene Structure. 

You begin the 10-Scene Structure by sketching out five scenes – the Opener, the Point of No Return Complication, a Major Complication, the Closer (also known as the Climax) and the Ending.  These are the major highlights of your book. Once you have those significant events in place, you go back and add in the five other major scenes (more complications) that help you move from the beginning of the story to the end.  At the end, you have a good roadmap for where your story is headed and the high points (or low points) to hit along the way.

Such an easy method for laying out a novel.  I’ve plotted two novels so far using the 10-Scene Structure and it made the process a lot easier.  The best part is that it doesn’t take away your freedom to be spontaneous during the writing process.  You can still throw in an unexpected scene, event or character.  The 10-Scene Structure just helps you keep on the path to the end of the novel. It doesn’t prevent you from taking the scenic route or complete detours off the main path.

One other item from Smith’s book was a huge eye-opener for me - ”Story is what happens to people.”  A light bulb went on over my head when I read that sentence.  In thinking about my own reading habits, I don’t read a book for the events in it.  I read a book to see how characters, how individuals handle things that happen to them.  How does a woman handle a betrayal that tears her marriage apart?  How does a farm boy handle the responsibility of saving his village or his kingdom?  How does a police detective handle a crime wave when he’s dealing with his own personal problems?  I want to know about the people in the stories and how they get through the strange, sad, horrific, or unusual things that happen in their lives.  And that’s what I should focus on when I’m writing my own stories.  Great advice from a terrific little book.

Who Can Benefit From Reading It: This book is probably most useful for the intermediate writer–the one who has written some short stories or a novel and is looking for ways to improve her writing and story. A beginning writer can certainly use the information in this book, but would need to be careful not to get caught up in the techniques and processes to the exclusion of actually writing their own story.

If you’ve completed a few pieces and are looking for something to take your writing to the next level, try The Writer’s Little Helper.  It’ll keep you coming back for a long time to mine all the gems included in it.

“You will never overcome your fear that your writing is insipid or incomprehensible–write in spite of the fear.” -Inspiration & Motivation, Paul Raymond Martin

I still struggle with this fear on a daily basis.  I only have to read through what I wrote the day before and I start to question the wisdom of following the writer’s path.  Surely no other writer writes as badly as I do…  repetitive action, dull dialogue, no descriptions and characters who nod and smile constantly.  Who would want to read such dreck?

In my mind, I am positive that all other writers compose their first drafts with exquisite, sparkling words that need no polish before being sent on wings to eager agents and editors.  And knowing this to be a fact (in my own mind at least), it is hard to drag myself to the keyboard day after day.

But part of being a writer is having confidence in yourself.  After all, what other profession experiences the kind of rejection that a writer does?  Can you imagine a lawyer who had to cold-call prospects to get clients?  After 50 or 100 outright rejections, do you think he’d still want to be a lawyer?  Or what if a plumber had to go to a plumber’s conference to pitch his skills to potential customers in 15 minutes or less? 

Writers need to have a high level of confidence in themselves and their writing to keep pursuing this line of work.  That confidence, that willingness to keep writing despite the fear and the doubt, is the secret quality of successful writers.   Every writer who has been published has persevered and kept believing in themselves to get to that coveted published stage.  Those who let the fear and doubt get to them and give up… well, you won’t find them on the bestseller list.  You won’t find them in the bookstores or in the magazines. 

So how do you keep going when your words seem flat and lifeless?

I look for quotes like the one above to give me perspective on my abilities.  Okay, so the fear that I’m turning out garbage may always be with me.  I can write anyway.  And maybe my perspective is skewed because I’m so close to the work.  And maybe every other writer in the world struggles just like I do and doesn’t turn out perfect prose in their first draft.  I’m going to keep writing anyway and trust that as I work, I’ll get better.

What do you do to keep the fear at bay?