5 Tips to Creating Characters

Let's focus on Characters!  I absolutely love to create new characters. Creating them from scratch can seem like a daunting prospect, but you don't need to do all the work. Look around! Use what you know and who you know. This is your chance as a writer to make that boyfriend with the small irritations into a perfect man ready for love. Or you can make that awful boss over into the total idiot you think she is and next she is the one who gets killed or fired. All you have to do is exaggerate some of those terrible faults or correct the bad ones. 


Okay, that sounds like such a delightful exercise, but there are other things to consider as you go about making up new characters.  You want them to be lifelike, but what could be easier than looking around you.  Here are five tips for creating characters.


1. Use what or who you know. This is where that boyfriend or boss comes in.  Look at the people around you and by taking their worst or best attributes you can begin to frame a real person. I've never used my mother as a person in a book, but I have used some of her phrases in more than one and I often look to her personality as a basis for characters. I have often thought of her determination and gumption when it comes to creating a strong woman. She was all of 4'11, but when she got something into her mind to make happen, she was going to get it done.


2. Look beyond the obvious.  Don't think that because you show a character one way they can't learn or develop in another.  Again I return to my mother. She was quick to tears so people often underestimated her because of her size and her emotions. They thought she was frail and weak. But like I said, when she made up her mind, she could become an 8 foot wave of power. I use those traits in some of the women in my books.


3. Search for characters wherever you go.  I always try to be aware of my surroundings wherever I am and whatever I am doing, studying everything from people in the crowds to the temperature in summer and winter to the smell of different locations.  Engaging the senses helps me not only bring setting and feeling into a story, but it also helps me as I develop characters. Meeting someone new, I might be aware of their soft voice or their firm handshake. What are they wearing? What about a strange little habit that they might not be aware of, like tapping a finger or whistling under their breath.  Those can all be taken and given to characters somewhere and sometime.


4. Make up characters from people you know.  I am always thinking of new ways to use the people I know in a book, again taking some of those small traits and making them larger than life or taking a trait (like stubbornness) and giving it to a character. In a book I can change that stubborn person to realize how wrong their behavior is. (something I might not be able to teach a person I know)


5. Use your childhood heroes.  As a child in a small town I didn't get to meet people who were larger than life. I often had to make up my own heroes and heroines.  Didn't we all play make believe as children and make up people around us? We can still use some of those made up villains and heroes today as writers. Recently while I was working on a book, I remembered one of the first heroines I ever created as an imaginary friend. I welcomed her back into my life in a book.  I won't say when and where she's appearing, but she's there.


The final tip I would give is to always keep looking.  Every time you meet a new person you might be meeting the next hero or heroine in a story. And if you don't like them, you can always make them always turn them into a villain!  


Need some help with building the characters for your next book?  I'll be teaching a class starting next week at Savvy Authors:  savvyauthors.com or you can also look for my new book on characters available at Amazon.

  

5 Tips for Preparing for NaNoWriMo

NaNoWriMo starts tomorrow and if you are like many writers who make the commitment to write 50-thousand words in 30 days, you need to be getting ready.  There are only a few hours left to put everything into place, so if you still have things to do, here are some things to consider.

1. Get your plot prepared ahead of time. Whether you write by the seat of your pants (like I do) or outline, you should have something ready to get you started tomorrow morning.  If you don’t already have a plot outline in place, you can still get your writing done. You simply need to be ready to stay one step of your writing for the next 30 days.

2. Don't start out cold. Before you end each day, know where you will begin the following day. Have a couple of scenes prepared to get your writing started every morning.  If you hit a spot that where you can’t think of the next scene, then write one you know you will need later. You can always go back and fix it.

3.  Have your characters under control. If you haven’t prepared a character outline or profile, then you need to work on it as you go. Think of the various events you know will need to take place during your book and get an idea of how your character should handle them. That should help you get ready to write the scene. But don’t just write the scene.

4. Make yourself a character profile sheet. Keep it handy and add to it or change it as you go along and develop  your character. You don’t want the person doing something uncharacteristic halfway through your book.

5. Know your ending. Even if you end up changing it, know in advance what youwant your ending to be so you can keep working in that direction. Think in terms of a road map. You may not know how you are going from one location to another but you need to know where you want to end up. 

It may be too late to completely plot your novel now, but if you keep working ahead you can keep writing toward that 50-thousand word goal. Just think about it, every day the goal will be a little less.  If you hit your target tomorrow and the coming days, by next week you’ll be down to only 38,000 words to go! Good luck! 

5 Tips for Starting to Write a Story

This month I am teaching a class on writing short stories and while working on it I came up with my own idea for writing a story. It's in a genre (young adult) that I haven't written before so as I sat down to get started it occurred to me I had no idea what I wanted to say or how. I had a concept, but where do you go from there? That got me to thinking about how I normally start out writing a story. I realized there isn't one set way that I start. I just do.


It's something I started learning many years ago when I started out in writing for TV news. You don't have much time to think about how you want to get started. You have to do it or the time will pass and your story won't make it on the air. So I would just start. As Nora Roberts says, "you can't edit a blank page." Anything else can be fixed. So start. How and where? Anywhere can be a beginning. You don't need to sit and consider the perfect first line.


1. Begin with a conversation. This was how I started on that young adult story. I had a concept and I wasn't sure how to introduce the characters or get their story started, so I began with two of the main characters caught up in a conversation. It isn't necessarily the first one they have, but it will explain one of their early actions. But writing the dialogue made me understand several things about each character and from there I was able to begin a character sketch. or....


2. Begin with a Character sketch. I've often done that in the past. I know what my story is about, and I have a vague idea of the character, but starting with a sketch (that can be used or discarded in the book) can be a good way to start off your writing. You get a picture of your character and even if you don't use the description exactly in a later scene you start off knowing more about you character.


3. Start off with a description of the setting. Now I say that not as the idea for the opening of your book any more than you would start off the opening scene with a character sketch. This is just a way to begin your writing. Write a scene setter so that you can place your characters there. Again, this can become preliminary work or you can use parts of it as you start to write. What you want to write down in the book is not so much this description as the "feel" you get from this description. Show it in your story.


4. Write a scene you know will be in the book.  I've even written the final scene as a way of starting off. In a mystery that can really be helpful because you then know how your main character is going to solve the crime.


5. Write the first thing that comes into your mind about the book. It can be anything -- from character to plot to a simple line about the story itself.  Again, this is just a way of getting started. Too often we get caught up in looking at that blank page and we don't know where or how to begin. Look at your notes about the story or look into your head to think about the story.


When I was writing for a newscast I'd have at least reporter notes or wire copy to go from. We never start out with nothing, and your stories are that way too. Think about what is in your head and just get started. Some times that is a good way to get started in the morning too. Don't let yourself get bogged down with worrying about how perfect the writing needs to be.  Once you make getting started a common practice you may find you don't need as much editing.

5 Tips to Making your Characters Unique

Developing characters is never simple, and how do you keep coming up with characters after you’ve written several books?  Sometimes it seems like the characters you are working on now are just further extensions of those people you created two stories ago.

Don’t let yourself fall into that trap.  Characters need to be as individual as the people you know. Certainly the people around you all have their individual characteristics that make you laugh, make you nuts and irritate you. 

Consider doing the same thing with your characters. Here are five tips to make them unique.

1. Give them a flaw.  No one is perfect and your characters shouldn’t be either. Don’t make your hero so heroic that no one can relate to him. Give him a weak spot or a flaw that he can work on. Perhaps it is spending money or smoking too much. This can be something to keep that hero from being perfect. We don’t want perfect heroes who never make a mistake. At the same time, we don’t want a hero with such a nasty flaw they will never recover from it.  Make it simple, but give the character something to work on besides the main issue of the story.
2. Give them a real life.  No one has the same sort of life, whether it is rescuing damsels in distress or just trying to survive day to day. Give the characters a real life that gets in  the way of the story or what the character is trying to accomplish. Does her mother constantly demand things of him or her? Does her brother constantly get in trouble and she has to stop her life to bail him out?
3. Make your characters come alive through emotions. This is absolutely critical and one of the main ways to make all your characters unique.  Look for a range of emotions and determine how those emotional reactions will feed into how the character reacts to events in the story. Now you’re going to come up with a character who is different from every other cardboard character out there.
4. Give your character a secret trait – something they might not even recognize at the beginning. Is she stronger than she realizes and only the test of the story makes her discover that hidden truth about herself? Bring that out. Show the character, first at her worst and then at her best. Or show her at her best before she realizes her worth and how that trait can turn the tide in her favor.
5. Give your character a quirk. No, we are not talking about a flaw, as we did earlier. This is something different, something unique, yes, something quirky. Like what you ask? Well, what are those things that drive you crazy about the people around you? Does he tend to fall asleep at a moment’s notice? Does she always check the doors over and over to make certain they are locked? Does he not bother washing his coffee cup from the previous day, but just refill it until you take it and put it in the dishwasher? How about refusing to get rid of that old jacket he’s had for years? My Dad had a thing about cars, and he was constantly stopping at car lots when we drove through different towns, “just to check.” A few times we came home with a new car.
    
   This are all unique things that can make your characters different. They can make your characters someone memorable. Come up with some ideas of your own and then think about how to use them next time you develop a character.

5 Tips for Getting Started on your Book

We all go through it when we are writing -- the beginning of a new project and starting to write those first few pages of the new book. The blank page is daunting at any time but when you're face with 100 or 200 blank pages, well, that is even worse.


How to begin?  Of course, many people begin with research, but too many let that take over their lives and spend an overabundance of time with it.  Others want to dive right in, but then the overwhelming prospect of writing it all gets to be too much.


So how do you get started?  I've been thinking that through and have some tips for beginning that next book.


1. Set a Limit on your Research & Stick to It -- Yes, you do need to do that research. If you're writing historical novels, you need to have started that long before you begin the writing. If you are writing a specific location or about a particular industry you'll need to conduct research for sure.  Just don't get bogged down in it.  Set a time limit on that research.  Know when you're going to end it and then be ready to start writing on a certain date or month.  Don't waver from that date -- it gets too easy to put things off.


2.  Get to know your characters before you start. Part of that research should be doing character profiles or studies.  Know who your characters are so that they don't continually turn against you as you write. You need to know their emotional interior as well as the physical exterior.  Get to know them and spend time with them so that when you actually write them, you don't find them acting in uncharacteristic ways.


3.  Know how you want to start the story.  What will your first scene be?  What is going to get to the action quickly and get the story moving?  As readers we don't want a long, involved set up so don't give that to YOUR readers. Bring in your characters and get them involved in something. Throw them off and challenge them from the beginning.


4.  Have a general idea of how your story will end. If you're writing a romance you already have some part of an idea. A romance is going to have a Happily Ever After ending so you know you will need to bring your hero and heroine together. But you might also have an idea of how you're going to do that. You can do that by going back to item #3.  Have a general idea of your character arc. If you know where the character is starting from, that can help you determine what it will take to get the character into a different position by the end of the story. This is true for romance, but it can be true for mystery, science fiction or fantasy too. Knowing who your character is can help you decide who you want the character to be at the end.


5. Start writing.  There is no way around that. Begin writing your opening scenes.  Don't worry if they don't sound perfect and don't wait for that perfect sentence to hit you.  Bestselling author and super agent Donald Maass told us at a recent workshop not to sweat those opening pages because they will take care of themselves.  You can always go back and fix them, but you need to get them started.


If you are working on a new project these ideas can help you get from the vague planning stages to the actual written word, which is what you need to get that next project going.


The bottom line goes back to START WRITING.