Tag Archives: characterisation

Characterization in three steps

23 Friday Jun 2017

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As a manuscript assessor with over 200 full length assessments under my belt, I’ve seen the whole spectrum of fictional characters, from You’re so real I can almost smell you to Oh dear, he’s made of cardboard. Pity…

We all want our characters to step off the page as living breathing individuals, so I’d like to give you my three most cited reasons for characterization failure and how to correct it.

Use of cliches

The moment I read He was so angry, steam came out his ears, I want to put the book down. Seriously? Do you not realize that readers are highly visual? Unless this is a fantasy/children’s book, your character doesn’t actually have steam lifting their cap, or daggers shooting out of their eyes.

Instead of giving us a cliche (and turning your character into generic angry man) show us how your character is unique. We all experience and express anger in different ways. Some people get theatrical and throw things. Others (scary people) go really quiet and just stare at you. When you’re writing a scene, spend time thinking about your character and how they’re likely to feel anger (physical sensations and thoughts) and how they’re likely to express it (dialogue and action). Then let that flow into the scene.

Sloppy Viewpoint

For those of you who don’t understand viewpoint, it’s the perspective of the character whose eyes/sensations/feelings/thoughts you’re choosing to filter the story through. I’ve grabbed an image from Grand Theft Auto to show you what I mean: your character looking at the world of your story (or their phone as the case may be):

GTA V Online

It’s your job as the author to pick a character in a scene and show us the scene through their viewpoint, along with all their opinions about what’s happening and why and what they think of others etc. When you leave us inside their mind for extended periods of time (not head-hopping from one character to the next), we grow comfortable there and drop deeply into the story, coming to understand that character’s natural biases, interests, memories, desires and fears. This is how you build characterization via the Show don’t tell method, and it’s also the reason that you try to give your main characters the lion’s share of the viewpoint, so their characterization will be strong.

What I don’t want to see is you stepping in as narrator to “tell” me:

Mary was fat and ugly. No man ever asked her out. She often gorged on food instead of taking time to care for her appearance.

I’d rather you sit me inside Mary’s head and “show” me:

Mary slumped onto the stained couch and wondered if there was a spring loose before she dug a half-eaten Toblerone out from under her butt-cheek. She tossed it into the ashtray before reaching for the sticky remote control. Nothing decent on the box, as usual. Only dating shows and they gave her indigestion. Stupid women spending ten hours in hair and makeup just so they could get on tv.

Bitches. Mary reached past the sleeping cat into the opened pizza box and took out the last slice of a family-sized cheesy crust. “Any loser can marry a farmer”, she told Princess Jasmine, who slept on, blissfully unaware of the mozzarella dotting her fur. “If they want to live in the middle of woop woop.”

Not exactly deathless prose, but the difference between what you “tell” the reader (narrative summary) and what you “show” them via Mary’s viewpoint (in a scene with setting, dialogue and action) is the difference between a cookie-cutter character and one that’s starting to come to life. It’s still a little generic, but as the story progresses, you’d have ample opportunity to make Mary truly unique as you show us the world through her eyes so we can really empathize with her.

Stereotyping:

I can’t tell you the number of times I’ve read a character who’s so stereotypical they feel like they stepped out of a board game. You know the type: the sexy secretary, the big bad biker, the gruff boss, the dotty aunt, the feisty grandma, the cherub child, etc, ad nauseam.

I’m not saying kids can’t be cute, but no child is cute 24/7. Neither is every child ‘bouncing off the walls’ (see Cliches above) 24/7. Some secretaries are just good at their job and aren’t there to be lusted over or objectified. Ditto shirtless construction-workers.

Real people are never just one thing. Neither are good characters. For seat-of-the-pants writers, this can be a real problem because as they start the book they might not know their character very well. But by the end of writing a book in draft they should know their character inside-out, and that’s the time to go back and change anything that feels generic or stereotyped. If the secretary in your story is sexy, what if she’s also a math whiz or a kick-boxer or has a house full of adopted pets?

I’m not telling you to go mental with quirks, but try to think past the characterization shorthand we all use when we’re looking at characters from the outside, and get inside them, under their skin, inside their heads. Even sub-characters who never have viewpoint in the story should still come across as unique individuals.

So, there you have it my friends. Three easy tips to make your fictional characters more realistic. If you’ve got questions or further tips, please pop them into the questions below. And if you’re looking for a good book to help with fiction writing, I can heartily recommend this one. My copy is dog-eared!

index

How do you build characterization?

13 Friday Nov 2015

Posted by in Uncategorized, Workshop Wednesday series

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I taught a workshop on characterization over the weekend at the beautiful Gold Coast, and was thrilled to be able to meet the local writers and share some of the craft lessons I’ve learned through assessing over 200 manuscripts. At the end of the workshop, one piece of feedback I heard over and over was, “Thanks for giving us specifics to work on.”

On the drive home, I couldn’t help remembering the first time I’d had feedback on a story I’d written. The competition judge told me that my characterization was “thin”, and I remember feeling really confused, because to me, those characters were very real. I clearly had to do something, but I had no practical method of making my characterization stronger.

If only I could go back in time and tell that young writer what I know now!

Of course I can’t. But I can share my hard-earned craft tips with you: so the first and foremost (with both characterization and plotting) has to be Goal Motivation Conflict (or GMC as we call it in the trade).

gmc

Write this out for every main character in the story. I keep mine on a file card next to my computer so I can pull it out each time a character is about to step into a scene. I want to remind myself about what’s important to this character and why. Here are a few tips for filling it in:

1. Clarify in your own mind who your main CHARACTER is and give them the lion’s share of viewpoint in the novel (if it’s a two-hander, say a romance novel, give them equal share of the viewpoint). The more viewpoint a character has, the more their characterization develops through the Show Don’t Tell method.

2. Clarify early in the story what GOAL the character is trying to achieve, and ensure there are serious consequences (either physically or emotionally) if they are unsuccessful. This creates a high-stakes novel with a clear thread for the reader to follow through the story (NOTE: ensure all subplots either help or hinder the main character achieve their goal. If they don’t, the plot can feel loose and unfocused).

3. Create strong MOTIVATION for the character to pursue their goal. You’ll want to put obstacles in their path to create tension and reader empathy, but that will only work if readers believe in the character’s motivation to stick with the goal. The last thing you want is readers wondering “Why don’t they just go home?”

4. Create a balance of Internal (emotional) and External (physical) conflicts for your character to overcome on their way to the goal. The genre of your novel will dictate some of this balance. At one end of the spectrum, Romance novels are usually heavy on Internal Conflict, while Action Adventure tales tend to have much more External Conflicts and less emotional angsting.

My next tip is that CHARACTER TRAITS MUST SERVE A PURPOSE:

AidenTurnerToplessYes, well, of course I’d prefer it if this picture actually had anything to do with the topic, but I suspect it’s simply a good looking man with no shirt on. The things you find while you’re looking for content…

Anyway. Character traits. Don’t invent virtues and flaws for your characters unless they’re going to serve a plot purpose. If you do, your novel will feel loose and unfocused. If a character’s virtue is honesty, put them in a situation where they’re forced to steal or lie (for some greater purpose, of course). The take home here is: A strong plotline tests the character’s virtues and highlights their flaws. Try not to forget that.

And my final tip on characterization is on VIEWPOINT, sometimes called Point of View. The more you are in a character’s viewpoint, the more readers will learn about the way they perceive the world (what they actually notice of the world around them), what their biases and preferences are, what emotional baggage they’re carrying, etc. When you are delivering the story from inside a character’s viewpoint, the character’s internal life becomes obvious via their internalizations (thoughts) which Show Don’t Tell us why they’re doing what they’re doing and saying what they’re saying.

When unimportant characters come into the story, don’t give them viewpoint unless you absolutely have to (they have a piece of information to deliver that we can’t find out from inside the main character’s viewpoint). The more you hand out viewpoint in a story, the more you dilute characterization. You can’t bond us to everyone, so make damn sure you use viewpoint to bond us to the main character/s!

If you don’t understand what Viewpoint is or how to do it, please learn! Viewpoint is the most important tool in a writer’s toolbox. Learn it and use it carefully to craft your story.

I hope this is helps you develop your characterization. Naturally it doesn’t cover all the details I’d get across in a 2hr or a day workshop, but it should give you a few ideas to work with. If you have any questions, please feel free to pop them into the comments below. Cheers!

 

Writers: The Power of Viewpoint

21 Sunday Apr 2013

Posted by in Getting Published series, Uncategorized, Workshop Wednesday series

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Last year 7 of my clients were contracted for the first time by some pretty prestigious publishing houses. In the current publishing climate that deserves a Wahoo! But it also warrants a bit of analysis. Why did those 7 manuscripts get across the line and not manuscripts from the other 15 clients who I either mentored or did manuscript assessments for. In a word, their strength was…

Viewpoint.

Each of those 7 ‘lucky’ authors had a strong grasp of viewpoint hold (sometimes called point of view) and as a result their characters came alive on the page. We saw the world through the filter of the character’s senses (sight, smell, touch, taste, hearing) and were privy to the character’s internal life (thoughts and feelings) which revealed inner conflicts that upped the ante of the external conflicts the character was already facing. Each genre has it’s own formula for how much of the character’s internal life should make it onto the page. Action adventure novels at the low end, romance and women’s fiction at the high end. But wherever your novel fits into that spectrum, you do need to understand and use viewpoint to make us care enough about your characters to read a whole book about them.

I recently assessed a manuscript that had viewpoint problems and I’d like to share here a small section of that report:

iStock_000017868898XSmallTo create an internal life for the characters and thus build characterization, we need to know what characters are thinking and feeling. If the majority of the novel is action and dialogue with hardly any thoughts and feelings expressed, it doesn’t help us get to know your characters. And if we don’t know him and care about his journey, why should we bother to read about it?

The proviso here is that you only give us the thoughts of the character who has viewpoint at the time. Stay deep in their thoughts, feelings, physical reactions, to help us bond with them and feel as if we are them for the period of time that we’re reading.

We need to feel the character’s fear, not just see the circumstances that would inspire fear. And I don’t mean to write He was scared. In a story written for adults you have to pull us into the character’s emotions by ‘showing’ them, not ‘telling’ us about them. Does his pulse jump when he’s excited? Does his heart slow when he’s scared? Does it thump unevenly when he’s terrified? Can he stride when he’s confident and stagger when he’s overwhelmed? Show us how his emotions affect him, and above all keep us in the loop with his thoughts. Not just thoughts about what’s happening right now.  Memories, and visualizations of what you think the future may hold, both have the power to evoke emotion. You need to create a depth to the story because action and dialogue just skims the surface of the character’s experience of what’s happening. You have to make us feel if you want us to care!

Whenever I meet agents or publishers and ask them what they’re looking for, they always give me some version of “An interesting story with characters that I care about.” Every time. Interesting story (plot). Characters I care about (characterization).

Your number one tool to build characterization is viewpoint. Learn it (there are heaps of resources on the internet to help you and I’ve got one on my website here). Practise it. Get published!

Workshop Wednesday: Characterisation with Dr Kim

08 Wednesday Aug 2012

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Today’s Workshop Wednesday guest is Kim Wilkins (aka Kimberley Freeman) sharing her tips on how to develop characterisation.

Firstly, here’s a little about our guest today: Kim Wilkins was born in London, and grew up at the seaside north of Brisbane, Australia. She has degrees in literature and creative writing, and teaches at the University of Queensland and in the community. Her first novel, The Infernal, a supernatural thriller was published in 1997. Since then, she has published across many genres and for many different age groups. Her latest books, contemporary epic romances, are published under the pseudonym Kimberley Freeman. Kim has won many awards and is published all over the world. She lives in Brisbane with a bunch of lovable people and pets.

Kim’s upcoming release is Lighthouse Bay:

1901: Isabella Winterbourne has suffered the worst loss a woman can know. She can no longer bear her husband nor his oppressive upper-class family. On a voyage between London and Sydney to accompany a priceless gift to the Australian parliament, Isabella is the sole survivor of a shipwreck off the sun-drenched Queensland coast. But in this strange new place, she finds she cannot escape her past quite as easily as she’d hoped.

2011: A woman returns from Paris to her beachside home town to reconcile with her sister. But she, too, has a past that is hard to escape and her sister is not in a mood to forgive her. Strange noises at night and activity at the abandoned lighthouse raise her curiosity, and she finds herself investigating a century-old town mystery.

Nothing better than a good mystery! I’ve loved all the Kimberley Freeman novels and am really looking forward to this release. And to show that Kim can not only write beautifully, but is an amazing teacher as well, here are her top characterisation tips:

Four ways to get to know your characters

When embarking on a story, writers often agonise over their characters. It takes a while for a clear sense of them to emerge, and they seem always poised to fall into stereotype. Try these methods to flesh your characters out.

1. Fears and desires

To start with, you need to know the character’s greatest fear, and their greatest desire. These are what I call the “big engines” that drive characters at a fundamental level. But don’t ask your characters to tell you, as often they won’t even know what their greatest fears or desires are, let alone be able or willing to articulate them. Those things might be secret, or unacknowledged, or repressed. (Yes, yes, I know they’re not real people).

2.  To list or not to list?

How-to-write books often suggest that you make lists of character traits. While there’s no great harm in doing this, these abstract facts are meaningless in themselves. If you decide that your protagonist is a Catholic socialist whose favourite colour is yellow, you don’t necessarily know him or her any better. Far more interesting is the character’s relationship with those traits. That is, how does the character feel about being a Catholic and a socialist? Does he talk about socialism in church? And how does yellow make him feel? What associations does it have for him? Use character traits as prompts to think about deeper complexities.

3. Off-stage life

Sometimes you’ll read a book where it seems the characters pop out of the box for their scenes, then go back into it when they’re not required. Instead, aim to give a sense that the characters have something to do when they’re not “on-stage”: that way they seem real and textured. Photocopy a blank diary page and nut out—hour by hour—what your character does in a typical week. Sure they will sleep: but how long? What time do they get up? Do they work? What kind of tasks do they perform? Do they eat regular meals? And so on. You can gain great insight into a character this way, even if you never use most of the information you create.

4. Write your way in

Really, the best way to understand your characters is to write about them. It’s like any relationship: spending extended time with somebody is the only authentic way to get to know them, and it can’t be forced. You must be brave enough to write your way into their heads and hearts, and trust that by the end of the story you’ll know them well enough to come back and fix the beginning.

Louise: Great advice! I can heartily recommend all those methods, and my favourite is simply to write the characters and see what they reveal to me. If you’ve got characterisation tips you’d like to share, or would like to comment on one of the methods above, please drop in a comment below. I’d love to keep the conversation going.

And if you’re interested in other Workshop Wednesday topics, try: Deep Point of View, Writers working with the Media and From Writing Contest to Contract.

Getting Published Part 3: Editing your fiction manuscript

08 Sunday Jul 2012

Posted by in Getting Published series, Uncategorized

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This photo on the left shows what editing used to look like (quite some time ago).  After I’d finished a story in draft and typed The End, I’d drink an embarrassing amount of celebratory alcohol.  Then it would be time to edit.  In a perfect world you would have a good long break away from the story and come back to it with fresh eyes.  Often, however, you just had to find a way to look at the story from a different perspective because time wasn’t on your side.  My way of doing that was to print the manuscript out and look at it in hardcopy.  That always read differently to the screen.  It also allowed me to paperclip chapters together, spread sections across the floor, stick post-it notes on sections then replace them if I changed my mind, and scribble lots of ideas down on butcher paper.  In other words, it allowed me to pull myself away from metaphorically bumping up against bark (writing draft) to rise up and see the shape of the forest.

The first two questions I’d ask myself were: Whose story is this? and What’s their GMC: goal / motivation / conflict?  If the answer to both wasn’t 100% clear by the end of the story, I had a lot of work to do.  For those unfamiliar with GMC, another way to look at it is:

This is a story about………………………………………(CHARACTER)

Who wants…………………………………………………..(GOAL)

Because……………………………………………………….(MOTIVATION)

But………………………………………………………………(CONFLICT)

Each of these elements is vital in it’s own way, and must be crystal clear to the reader.  Structural editing is about making this GMC obvious to the reader, and clearing away anything that’s clung onto it (like barnacles) while you were sailing down plot river.  I’ll talk more about GMC below, but I’d like to clarify that in tightly plotted genre novels everything in the story needs to relate to the GMC – which means every element you’ve introduced should either help or thwart the main character in achieving their goal.  If, by the time you’re at The End, you realise you’ve got a cute subplot that didn’t actually impact on the GMC, this is the time to toss it.  Kill your babies.  Mercilessly.  Your readers will thank you.

But back to GMC, the character’s goal is important because that’s what drives the plot forward.  Once the reader knows what the goal is (to find a missing person, to fall in love, to quest for a magical sword, to be free) they know where the story is heading and you’ve caught their attention.  Don’t spend chapters waffling on with set up.  Let us know what the character wants and why they can’t have it in the opening chapter.  Also vitally important is the character’s motivation for attaining the goal.  As the going gets tough for the character, the reader has to believe that they’ll keep hanging in there (and not give up and go home), so the character’s motivation to achieve a goal must be a strong, believable one.  Make it clear to the reader what’s at stake: what will happen if the character doesn’t achieve the goal.  If the answer is ‘nothing’ then why should the reader care?  Make sure there’s a consequence to not achieving the goal.  Then there’s conflict – either internal (fears, doubts, insecurity) or external (villain, storm, the ‘other woman’, car crash) which stops the character achieving their goal instantly.  You want the character to make some progress, but one-step-forward-and-two-steps-back will keep readers turning pages.

There’s a saying that a lot of writers have on their desks – Make it hard. Then make it harder.  This is talking about conflict.  Make things hard for your character.  Then make it harder.  What’s the one thing your character never wants to have to do?  Make them do it.  Who’s the one person they rely on?  Take that person away.  Readers should always be worried for the character, wondering how they’ll solve their problems and achieve their goal.  There’s no space for ‘downtime’ in modern fiction.  If the reader stops feeling tense their attention drifts, they might skim pages or worse, put the book down.  Make sure there’s something on every page to keep them tense, to keep them intrigued, to keep them reading on.

Check that you haven’t given viewpoint to characters who don’t need to have it – the lion’s share belongs with the main characters, and a strongly held viewpoint is your best tool in developing characterisation.  Readers like to identify with the main character, and editors are always looking for “an interesting story with characters I care about”.  The best way to get an editor to care about a character is to give the character lots of viewpoint, so we’re inside their head a lot.  (Next Wednesday I’m starting a series called Workshop Wednesday which opens with an article on Deep Viewpoint, so look out for that!)  But back to editing: check also that you haven’t summarised information that we need to see shown as scenes.  Remember the writing maxim Show, Don’t Tell.  All the important turning points in the story must be shown, not mentioned in passing.

When you’re confident you have the structure solid, then and only then is it time to do line editing (or copy editing as it’s also called).  Check your grammar, spelling, tenses, clarity of sentence structure and punctuation.  When that’s done, you’re ready for some critique, and that’s the subject of the next section in this GETTING PUBLISHED series.  Happy writing until then!

(Links to Getting Published Part 1: Making the Commitment, and Getting Published Part 2: Doing the Work)