Crazy Characters

"However great a man's natural talent may be, the art of writing cannot be learned all at once." Jean Jacques Rousseau
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Characterization

This week we’re going to learn about characterization. Characterization is basically getting to know your character like you would any friend that you have. Their thoughts, their likes and dislikes, maybe their skin color or eye color and lastly, a name. Yes your characters become some of your nearest and dearest friends. You spend mornings, noons and many nights with them so the least you should do is know them, intimately.

As an exercise, we ask for your character to tell us about you! What would they see your life as being? Are you a bored housewife living vicariously through your character, Lola. Or are you a busy stay at home mom who colors her world with the likes of Beth and Bob?

When you climb inside your characters head, and look out into the real world, what would they see? Is there life exciting compared to yours or are you more exciting than them. Oh goodness... you better make your character’s life more exciting than yours.

Can you imagine reading a book, and the character appears as a cardboard cutout; meaning, stiff, colorless, flat, no real connection to the reader? If that’s the case then for sure you’ve lost your reader. We have to give our readers more to sink their teeth into. They, as you well know, don’t pick up a book to be bored out of their skin. They pick it up so they can jump into a fantasy world alive with conflict, pain, struggle and hopefully a resolution.

Now I don’t pick up a book for the fantasy elements, I, personal preference here, like the reality elements. I like a character who could be me, or my sister or maybe my mother or brother. I like to see within characters elements of my real world. I like to see possible struggles that I went through and want to see how they get resolved in a book.

Keep in mind I’ve had a colorful life, maybe not to some, but daily, monthly, yearly struggles are my forte. So when I read a book I want the character to survive the unconscionable blood of the past. I want them to soar like no eagle has soared before. They need to take whatever obstacle is thrown at them and either overcome it, or die.

You’re going to lose the reader if your main character is a wimp and dies; also spells out a boring story.  And trust me, you don’t need a voluptuous maiden to be a main character either, although everyone loves a good ‘Damsel in Distress’ novel, don’t they?

Get inside your characters head, know every mole, every pimple that has surfaced, every flaw on their skin, and everything that makes him or her tick on a daily basis. By allowing the character to interview you, you in return will be learning intricate aspects of them, without even knowing it. Try it, you might like it. :)

Characterization

Ps 1:3 He is like a tree planted by streams of water, which yields its fruit in season and whose leaf does not wither. Whatever he does prospers. (NIV)
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Wow, we’re on the fifth lesson at F2K (the free writing course at WVU.) These seven weeks go by so fast, we’re almost ready to start a new one. That’s a good thing because we get more and more people learning the craft of writing, whether for a living or for a hobby, writing and learning is what life is all about. Okay, not really but that’s what it seems like to me. :)

This week we’re hopping into Characterization and this is where we learn our characters minds. We dig deep within, pull out our best, and place it on the boards. Through dialog with someone, say a job interview, or doctor, or whoever you choose to interview your character, you will ask questions that will bring up emotions in your character, have it all bubble at the surface, and you will spray your reader with insight.

Now some people have many characters in their story, of course, and this is a good exercise to practice on all your characters. Take John and feed him to the psych ward, or maybe Jane, is trying out for the police Academy, or maybe, a mother is scolding her child and is questioning where the said child has been.

Through this dialog phase, our characters will take on new meaning for us. We’ll see them as living entity’s. These characters will then haunt our every step in our day until we write and get everything down on paper and we can see where they have come from and where they are going.

Sometimes, the interviewee becomes more a part of the story because he/she is more interesting. That is okay if this happens, we just just squeeze them in there but always remember the main character is going to need depth. With depth, you character will add living color to your palette of words.

While you’re molding and shaping your character, many different elements will surface and you’ll find yourself on a treadmill of writing. Words will come faster and faster, paragraphs will leap off the page and in the end you’ll have a story with a rainbow of colorful people on your page.

Through this lesson, you will surely have lightning flashing all over the place as you give your characters the sizzle that they need. What better way to get a story constructed than to have in depth, unique characters bouncing off your page?

The choice is yours. Cardboard cutouts of what other authors have already done, or a magical reprieve into the land of mystical destiny? I choose Mystical Destiny any old time. :)

You've got Character

Eph 4:[23] And be renewed in the spirit of your mind;[24] And that ye put on the new man, which after God is created in righteousness and true holiness.
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Well we’re on our way. Like linking lego’s together we’re building our characters. Like an erector set, all the pieces are going together and fitting nice and tight, but we still have a few screws loose.

Now we need to tighten up the bolts and make the character unique. I was thinking of this today. Dean Koontz likes to give a lot of his characters, too many to mention, green eyes. I think, “It is not every day that you see a dazzling emerald green eyed person pass you by.” Koontz thinks it is unique enough to use it all the time but dang Mr. Koontz, it is getting old!

In his Odd Thomas series, Odd (the main character) has blue eyes that when closely looked at, and when the sun bounces off of them in a certain way, have a purple hue. Now that is odd! Unique. But you can’t give tons of characters purple eyes now can you?
By the way, that is an excellent book, a must read!

This is where we’re at. We know that there has to be something unique when we have a character in mind. Sometimes it can be a big nose with black framed eyeglasses, or it can be a skull tattoo across the mans face! Or maybe it is an unusual piercing, like in the fingernail or something. Whatever the case, you need something that is going to make the reader want to come back to this character and by making them unique in many ways, is almost a sure fire hit; one that will keep your reader reading and keep them coming back for more.

The characters are going to carry the story, so if they aren’t unique or stand-outish, you better get back to the drawing board. The setting might help a bit but it is the antagonist and protagonists that are going to melt the tale together and form the building of your dreams, all out of out of the erector set that you started with as just a bunch of pieces laying on the floor. :-)

My friends and new writer’s at f2k are well on their way to constructing the masterpiece of their dreams. I’ll find the holes, weed out the inconsistencies, pluck away a ton of adverbs, scrape a ‘but’ here and there, never overlook the over-use of the word AND, then we’ll revise the tale until it is whole and maybe, just maybe they’ll get a submission out of it.

And maybe I too will get some writing done. This is looking like a good start to Twenty 10 to me! May it be for all of you, too.

Build - a - Character

It is not who you know or what you know, it is what you create in this world that will be your living legacy. ~ joni
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Okay, we’re off to a great start at f2k. The students have all met one another, they have been rolling through the halls like snowplows on a blizzardy day. They’ve sat at the cafe, posted some work, talked a little about themselves and just basically did everything the orientation week calls for and that is “Get to know your peers.”

We have a lively bunch too, with a sense of humor, intelligence that would make Gates sit in awe, friendliness that Mother Teresa would be proud of, and then there is the camaraderie. It can be found nowhere else on the web except through writers.

We have a tendency to be accepting and friendly and it rubs off on even the most scared of the bunch, that would be the newbs. Newbies means new folk to the forum for those of you, not in the know.

We’re learning already about each others likes and dislikes, style and originality, we’re getting to know one person at a time and this is always a highlight of my year when I can share with others a part of myself, while growing and learning at the same time.

Which reminds me, this week we learn about our characters. Nice segue by the way, right? From living breathing characters to our fictional characters? Yeah, that’s what we’re doing this week. We’re getting to know our characters intimately. I mean all the way down to a well produced pimple! If a character has one, write about it, we need to know our characters right down to the hairs spurting out on their heads.

Building a character is as much fun as the ‘Build-a-bear’ workshop. But as adults, we get more out of it than the eager child. We are like the eager child as we build our characters to form a part of a story that we writer’s are writing. It builds and builds until we have a an outline, a story, then either a novel or a short story.

Be an eager beaver today and start building a Character! Use this link to get you started on a profile of your characters. Try it on the four main characters as you get to know them inside and out. Like a worn out paper bag you'll need to get all the wrinkles out, but it is worth holding onto, because they just don't make bags or characters like they used to.

Write Right friends!