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A couple of years ago I took my first stab at longer fiction. With over 32,000 words in tow, I decided to enroll in a mentorship program to help with the broader issue of my writing life, clarify goals, manage time and energy and sustain a book-length project. My mentor told me two things: read, and know your characters. More novels are rejected because of characterization and weak motivation than for any other reason. Reading wasn’t a problem—I read every chance I got. I didn’t expect getting to know my characters would be a problem, either. I couldn’t have been more wrong. My mss drew comments like, “flesh them out,” “round them out,” “needs to be developed,” “where is the growth?” Obviously, it wasn’t enough to name these characters, give them a physical appearance and send them on their way to wander through my story. To make matters worse, my mentor not only criticized my key characters but went after my secondary characters as well. I had never looked at them as anything more than supporting players who needed only a name. Now I was being told they were flat! I began to read with a writer’s eye. I bought several secondhand paperbacks, colored pens, and set about coding the various parts of the novels as I read. When a main character did something that made him come alive for me, I underlined it in red. When a conversation was particularly good—blue. Action sequences were green, description, yellow…and so on. I seldom referred to these colored lines but the act of creating them forced me to analyze why the author was successful and I wasn’t. Characters are created from all the people who touch our lives: those we know personally and those we read about in newspapers and books. They unfold from the inside out. If I’ve pumped enough blood into them, my characters will develop minds and wills of their own. I was offered a foolproof method to develop characters—and draw on my journalism background at the same time: Interview them! First, I listed the questions I wanted to ask about their personal lives, background and hopes for the future. Then talk about relationships, past and present, people who have influenced their lives, and important beliefs. There’s something about the process of responding to the questions with “I” that removes me from characters. They come to life and respond in ways that surprise me. When I do the interview, I don’t “think” about the characters because they aren’t mine. Of course, there’s always the danger that a character, given freedom, will overturn the plot. When that happens, I question the original premise of my work and whether it’s wrong or the character doesn’t belong and should be rewritten.
I interview one character a day, but it
takes me most of that time to complete it. The following is the format I
use for character profile and interview. Character’s name: Physical description: Age HairEyes Height Weight Skin Physical characteristics (walk, build, etc.)
Emotional traits Background: Date and place of birthFamily (siblings and ages; parents’ names, both living and non. Each will have a detailed profile if used.) Early schooling (where and when; grades; activities, etc.). Childhood relationships/friends (successes and failures). Childhood problems (with family, friends, internal and external conflicts.). Education (high school; university; music; art, etc.). Attitudes towards politics, religion, money, death, drugs, children.
List of the strengths and
weaknesses that developed from childhood and family relationships. Interview Questions:How do you feel about your family, now that you’re an adult?Who and what affected your personality? What do you need to overcome? What do you want from life? What, in the outside world, is preventing you from getting it? What, in yourself, is preventing you from getting it? What must happen before you overcome this? How well do you know/like yourself? What do you love/admire about yourself? What don’t you like about yourself? In what situation is your self-esteem most at risk? In what situation are you scared? In what situation are you brave? How well do your friends know you? A friend described your personality. How was he/she wrong? Right? What are you keeping a secret? What are you lying about to yourself? To others? In your relationship with others, how are you different with family than you are with friends? Why? Is there someone in your life you’re attracted to? What scares you about this person? What do you think that person can do for you than no one else can? What does your partner know about you that no one else does? What kind of power does this love give you? Are you really sensual? How do you fall in love? At first sight? Over a long period? What parts of loving come easy for you? Hard? What is your initial perception of a stranger? Do you try to charm or deceive people you meet? How are you with rivals—on the job and on a personal level? How do you decide if you can trust someone? When you walk into a room, what do you notice first? Second? When you walk into a room, what do you expect people to notice about you? How do you see the world? How would you change the world? The things around you? The people around you? How do you learn best? Are you satisfied with your occupation? If you could change jobs, what would you do? What are your goals in life? What do you want for your old age?
Describe yourself to me. Adapt these questions to suit the theme and plot of your novel. Your characters will be more talkative than you expect, so you will likely find questions popping into your mind as the interview progresses. Ask them as they arise—you’ll be surprised at the answers. A successful interview will give you an understanding of your characters’ motives—good and bad. They will reveal themselves gradually, as people do, with the deeper aspects of their personality emerging as the process continues. If you find, when you start writing the novel, that your character is lacking depth, than you are unsure of his nature. Go back and redo the interview. People change and so must the characters. Each individual will learn from the conflicts, grow through challenges, and be ready to admit shortcomings. Physical descriptions should be worked into conversations (I’ve always envied your long red hair), or be the result of an action (His six-foot height enabled him to reach the stranded child.). Straight narrative is the least effective way of describing your character to your reader. Characters must be believably motivated by love, hate, jealousy, greed, fear—all the human emotions. Most new writers fall into the trap of allowing their people to act out of character. No character should be motivated by something that isn’t consistent with his personality. Remember that your characters have to change. They must learn from their mistakes and gain insight into themselves throughout the story. Those who grow, logically, are the ones who convince and involve the reader. As in real life, a fictional character may not realize that he’s intelligent or he may think that he’s more astute than he really is. This adds to the believability and continues to hold our interest. Those characters we admire are the ones that do something we wish we could do; achieve a lifelong dream that is ours; are alert to the world in a way we could never be. Showing characters moving through life is more difficult than having the narrator tell the reader what each are doing. My first writing attempts were rejected with the advice, “show—don’t tell.” Obviously, this was something I was supposed to understand—but I didn’t. The best way to learn how to do this is to dramatize how your character responds, step-by-step, exactly as if you were writing a play. Try doing one page, showing the character in action. Don’t get into his mind. This exercise reduces the story to something is happening and my character must react. When you know your characters inside and out, have strong feelings about them, and understand their motivation, you will suddenly discover they live with you. They will become a large part of your life for the time it takes to write the novel—and possibly for a long time afterwards. The substance of the novel comes from absorbing your reader in the characters’ world. You do this by involving him in everything they hear, see, feel, touch, and smell. If the reader is involved, he will be hooked on the story.
Jerry Stamatelos is an educator, freelance writer, and translator based in Montreal, Canada.
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