The writing lair

Love learning about personality types?

Characters. Fun to invent, occasional hell to develop. Sometimes you end up with a flat, two-dimensional character that just falls short of being interesting or recognizable. How we do fix this? We fix by humanizing them, making them more recognizable by giving them character aspects of traits. Even if your character isn’t necessarily human, you still need to humanize them in some way. Humanizing allows for likeable and believable characters and allows the reader to empathize with your character, which we want them to. We want identifiable characters, because when your character is identifiable, we are far more likely to suck poor unfortunate souls into the worlds we’ve created and make sure they never, ever, leave. Having a character that is perfect and lives a perfect life and never does anything that any regular person would do is kind of silly. So how do we go about creating a humanized character?

For the purpose of this post, we’re going to create a character. We’ll take a chiseled chin, throw in a nice Armani suit, dark curly locks, and eyes like the sea before a storm. He has a very big intellect, a heart of gold, and musical talent as well. He moonlights as a superhero. He is a perfect man. A delicious, perfect man. But wait! A perfect man is too intimidating and your readers will have trouble forming an attachment to him! He’s two dimensional!  How do we fix this? Here are some quick solutions.

QUICK THROW SOME FLAWS AT HIM. Wait, what? Flawed character are human characters. No one is perfect, and we all know that on some deep personal level, so why should your characters be? Okay, so we’re going throw a crippling fear of water at him, an inability to properly manage his funds, and a habit of cutting himself when he’s peeling apples and then swearing like a sailor. Woah, suddenly he’s become a little more developed and human and a little more interesting now.

GIVE HIM REAL LIFE ACTIVITIES AND EXPLORE THE MUNDANE. This includes both the good and the bad. People do things. People have to make their own beds, do their own laundry, and bathe and feed themselves. It brings your characters back down to earth. A very good friend pointed out the other day while we were skyping and I was squeezing the pus out of my cat’s behind (abscesses, everyone), that while gross, the activity is still something that I have to do in the midst of my oh-so-glamourous life. There are things that can’t be avoided. So we’re going to have him taking care of his cat’s swollen bum when he gets home from a long day fighting crime, give him a dirty roommate to pick up after, and a wilting tomato plant to take care of. On that note, let’s…

GIVE HIM SOME HOBBIES. Hobbies are huge in figuring out a personality, and almost everyone has one. Some of mine include weeping quietly over books, wine, and wondering who turned the damn heat off in the middle of a Canadian March. Hobbies are importantly in both bringing down and fleshing out your character. So our superhero’s hobbies will include video games (where he plays a version of himself), writing bad poetry, and trying to figure out the perfect butter chicken recipe. Remember though, he can’t be good at everything, so we’ll also…

GIVE HIM SOME REAL EMOTIONS. Everyone gets sad now and again. Make him sad. Everyone gets silly now and then. Make him crack a joke. Perhaps he has a favourite one involving the pope, a bar, and a testy crocodile that he tells over, and over, and over again. Perhaps he’s sorting through his feelings or has a bit of anger problem. He doesn’t always respond appropriately, and sometimes he has a tendency to be overly dramatic and monologue to villains. Emotion is a force all itself, and almost nobody has full control over them.

Phew, doesn’t our character seem a little more human now, a little more interesting and identifiable while still being a bit of a total dreamboat? That’s because we tried to humanize him. These are just a few short things you can do, but they all have to do with the one thing you absolutely HAVE to remember when humanizing your character…. 

          5. JUST KEEP IT REAL BRO. People are complex and messy masses of bone and tissues and spirit. Write real people, because real people are easy to identify. I’ve said it over, and over and over again, but that’s only because making an identifiable character is so important. Having your readers identify with your character, that’s what makes them really real. Your readers are the people that make your characters come alive over and over again. Characterization is so important, and there are a lot of things you have to keep in mind. People are deep, and your characters should be too. Complexity is key.

There are a million ways to humanize your characters, and I could go on and on and on, but the most important point is the last one. Your characters are human if they are real. People are real, so don’t forget to include everything that makes people real into your character. Yes, creating someone who’s interesting and deep and complex is hard work, but no one ever said writing was easy, and if they do, they’re clearly a witch and need to be dealt with accordingly.

Writer’s Block

A picture says a thousand words. Write them.

Mission: Write a story, a description, a poem, a metaphor, a commentary, or a critique about this picture. Write something about this picture.

(A table of contents is available. It will be kept updated throughout the series. This series will remain open for additional posts.)

Part Twelve: Trust Your Readers

I know, I know, Pear, stop repeating yourself! I will, but not before I impress upon you the importance of this one fact:

Your readers are not as dense as you may accidentally be treating them. Part of the reason that writers struggle with the strain of world-builder’s disease that is characterized by an overabundance of details in the story is partly because of an enthusiasm for their world, but also because they’re unsure if the audience got the point. We writers are trying to paint a very complex image of a very complex world, so we include as much information as we think is necessary for the audience to either imagine the set we’re describing or understand the cultural implications of an event. We want our audiences to feel and see and hear and smell and taste our worlds as much as we do!

There’s a fine line between too much and too little, and the more often seen solution is the adage “Two heads are better than one.” The thought is, “If I just include this one thing more, it can’t hurt. More is better than less, right?” Unfortunately, this overindulgence can become a problem.

By including more, and explaining more, sometimes we are accidentally speaking to our audience in a way that underestimates their intelligence. Readers are smart! Smarter than we give them credit for! They are perfectly capable of reading between the lines, inferring, and understanding things by comparing them to things in our own world. Finding that line too much and too little is very difficult, since:

They’re not mind-readers either. Feeding in the necessary information to get your readers into your world is a bit like watering a cactus: too much and they drown, too little and they shrivel up and die. You have to give your readers enough, but not too much. So where is that line? How do you know when you’ve gone too far? How do you know when you haven’t put enough in?

Do you care if your readers get the image wrong? I’m not talking about completely wrong, but is it completely required for the readers to know all the details you’ve included for them to understand your characters are celebrating a festival? How much of the festival’s history is actually required for the audience to understand it? If they don’t know all of what you’ve built behind the scenes, will it be detrimental to their understanding the single fact that matters to the immediate story: that there is a festival going on and your characters are participating? Leaving out some of your initial world building is crucial not to bog down the story and leave your readers wondering what’s actually important.

Here’s a huge tip, one that I function on: You’re writing through the lens of characters who live in that world, not through your own lens of living in another world. Write in ways that make sense to those characters. Treat ordinary things ordinarily and extraordinary things extraordinarily, even when those ordinary things seem extraordinary from our world’s point of view. If the festival is annual, they’ve probably been participating in it since they were born. It’s no big deal to them. Don’t go on a history of it–your character wouldn’t be thinking about its origins in the agricultural yield and a veneration of the sun. Your character would be buying the same spray of wheat sheaves they’ve bought every year to tack on their door this time of year, and pulling out their oil jars to refill their lamps, as is traditional. That’s it. Your readers don’t need to know everything about everything. They need the pertinent details, and that’s it. Seeing it through your characters, noting things they would note and not a lot more, keeping your moments of world building short and character-focused will help eliminate all the extra fluff. Your readers will understand. They’ll fill in the rest. We all have active imaginations–let theirs do some of the work.

When this posts, there will only be a few days until Nation Novel Writing Month begins and that is one of the most exciting parts of the event. That first sentence, that first chapter, set the stage for the month. You might go back and change all of it in the future, but that is your starting point.

Here are some ideas to consider for the start of your story:

Start at the very beginning

That’s the “Sound of Music” suggestion. It’s how Maria taught the kids how to sing in a single song after all. It should work for you too, right? So why should you start at the beginning in your story?

Advantages:You establish the elements of the story. You can have time to build your story.

Disadvantages: It can be a slow start. Not as exciting.

Examples: The Hobbit by JRR Tolkein, The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins.

Start in the middle of the action

If you want to get attention right from the get go, then this may be the options for you.

Advantages: Start with action and catch the attention of your readers.

Disadvantages: It can be confusing to start in the middle.

Examples:

Start at the end of the story

This can be very tricky and takes a very delicate touch. (Not recommended for pantsers at all.)

Advantages: Makes the reader curious to know how the story gets to that point.

Disadvantages: Gives away a lot of the story

Examples: Rose’s last episode on Doctor Who, Water for Elephants (thanks iamhappyandproud)

Super-extreme info dump!!!!!

Advantages: Saves you from having to explain things during the story.

Disadvantages: Extremely lazy