Are you in Pain? Question for your character.

So, I’m sitting at the hosptial, waiting for my husband to follow in Harry Smith’s footsteps and get the Couric Procedure (screening colonoscopy). Every wall has a sign asking, “Are you in pain?

• 0 No Pain/Happy face
• 1-3 Mild Pain/straight line mouth
• 4-6 Moderate pain/small frown
• 7-9 Severe pain/big frown
• 10 Worst pain/deep frown and tears

Of course, it made me think about character pain.

Physical pain may or may not be present in a story. But it’s the emotional pain that creates strong stories.

No pain. In general, a character should never feel a 0 on the Pain Scale, even in the opening; well, maybe in the conclusion, but even there, characters often has residual pain.

Mild pain. This is appropriate for the opening of a story, before the conflict which sends the character into act 2. It’s also appropriate for the conclusion, where the story is wrapped up. You’d never want this for the middle of the story or especially the climax.

Moderate pain. Act 2 should be characerized by at least this level of pain throughout, with mild or severe pain for places of emotional rest or stress.

Severe pain. Act 2 and 3 should have spikes of severe pain, as the emotional crisis of the story heats up.

Worst pain. This would normally be reserved for the climax of the story.

Subjective Scale

The pain scale is a subjective scale, asking a patient how much s/he hurts. My husband has a higher pain threshold than I do, for sure. And my number 10 is about his number 5. Likewise, there are stories with severe pain scales and some with mild pain scales. A pain scale for a children’s picture book is very different from a pain scale for a horror story.

Pain Scale Determines Main Character

It’s also helpful to consider the pain scale when thinking about which character is the main character. In general, the character who hurts the most should be the main character. Ask each of your characters to rate their pain at key points throughout the story. Which one has the most pain? Could the story be stronger with a different main character? If there characters with no pain or only mild pain, could you either delete that character or find a way to add emotional pain?

Revise with confidence.

Doing the character checklist this week, I realized that I hadn’t written much about dialogue. Oh, I have a couple times.

Talking About Dialogue

Once, I recorded dialogue (shh! I eavesdropped!) for a morning and talked about what you can learn from doing this.

Or, I did a post on how to make sure each character has unique dialogue.

But I’ve not tackled dialogue in general.
What topics interest you about dialogue?

• Turning talking heads into great characters
• The difference in dialogue and real conversation
• Punctuating dialogue
• Using dialogue to inject conflict
• What else?

So, I’m open for comments, suggestions, input! Where do you go for help on dialogue? What books help you the most? Any posts that help? Sure, put a link to your site in the comments if you’ve done a helpful post on dialogue!

Revise with confidence.

Character Checklist

EXTERNALS

1. Name or Nickname: Does the character’s name evoke something about him or her? Does it resonate in the story?
2. Character Roles and Jobs. Have you fully explored the possibilities of family and community roles? Are they working at cliche jobs or fascinating jobs?



INTERNALS

3. Inner Character. How’s your characters’ intelligence, intuition, curiosity, honesty and spirituality?
4. Character Desires Answer the all-important question: What does s/he want?
5. Characters Flaws and Paradoxes. Perfect characters are boring: mix it up!
6. This I Believe . Write an essay in the character’s voice about what s/he believes.
7. Why? Character motivation. Characters don’t act randomly. Why is your character doing this right now?
8. Characters’ Backstory Interesting characters have back story. What’s your character hiding

The Writing: PUTTING THEM ON THE PAGE

9. Character Descriptions. Bland descriptions are out. Go for memorable.
10. Setting Details that Reveal Character. OK – what kind of junk does this character have it his/her house or apartment?
11. Body Language. 55% of communication is body language. Get him or her moving to help communication.
12. Characters’ Voices Voices can enhance our image of a character.
13. Likeable, Sympathetic Characters. Is this a character I want to spend time with? Do I care what happens to him/her?
14. Consistent Characters . Have you given the same reader (with all his/her complexity) page after page?

SPECIAL CHARACTERS

15. Villains Don’t Always Wear Black
16. Supporting Characters. Who is walking around with your main character?
17. Sports Novels. Are your characters cliche jocks? Why?

Revise with confidence.

Use Character Traits to Make Your Character Sympathetic

Yesterday, we looked at 9 character traits that can be used to develop sympathy for your character. Today, we’ll look at using those traits in your story. It’s not enough just to tell yourself, or write on a checklist, that your character has these traits and is, therefore, instantly sympathetic. You must USE these traits. How?

Literary agent Donald Maass is a master of telling us how to use traits to create break out novels. He pushes you to go farther and deeper at ever turn.

Using the Character Traits

• Flaws. For character flaws – a necessary part of a sympathetic character, since perfect characters are not sympathetic – try making the character aware of his/her problem. When the character berates him/herself for being so grouchy in the morning, we have sympathy. When I announced to my 5:45 a.m. spinning class that I was a Grouch, that I had gotten up on the wrong side of bed, they all laughed and were extra kind to me that day. (The instructor still made me work hard, but at least I didn’t have to talk to anyone and pretend to be nice.)
• Hero or Heroine. Take any of the character traits we talked about before and push or shove it until it becomes heroic. Be careful not to become comic or melodramatic; but push the limits of what you can do with one trait.
• Multiply. Remember we said that victims get a certain amount of sympathy and pity. What if your character is a victim of multiple things? Pile it on and we’ll sympathize even more. Not only is your character in a wheelchair from a car wreck, but the bank is about to foreclose on her business; and she’s about to discover the cure for the common cold. That piles it on AND gives it a wider, public scope. Be careful here or we’ll get that contempt for this poor victim who can’t rise above her circumstances. But multiplying conflict is one way to increase sympathy for a character.
• Inner conflict. Give your character conflicting Dreeds and Plopes (dreams, needs, hopes, plans) and you increase sympathy. How can your character possibly choose between justice and the ineptness of the justice system?
• Paradox: While characters should be consistent, if you can add a believable paradox, you quicken our interest. The key is making it believable. What is it that your character would never say, do or think? Have them say, do or think it! But make sure you make the motivations and emotions clear.
• -Er or -Est a Trait. Push the trait to an extreme: Bigger, smallest, most vulgar, funnier, more clever, clumsiest. Make sure the reader notices your character!
• Raise the Stakes. Take their Dreeds and Plopes and make them matter more, put more at stake. The outcome of the hero/ine’s sacrifice will affect their family, their profession, the world. Why do you think evil men are always trying to “take over the world”? So they have the widest possible stakes. Take a cue from that cliche, though: make the increased stakes believable.
• Inner Change is Apparent. Finally, what character quality, trait, attitude, dream, need changes for your character. Yes, many things should change for a character. But your story should show a reader that people can change this one quality. What is it? Can you map a narrative arc for that one quality? From disbelief to faith; from a loner to accepting help; from defiant to accepting; from dependent to independent. Map it out. Raise some stakes and add some -er and -est.

Wow, I have some work to do on my VNovel! Because I want you to love G, even when he fails.

Revise with confidence.

Creating Sympathetic Characters, Part I

I am working on characters in my VNovel. Apparently, I generate initial sympathy for my protag, but at some point, the reader loses the connection to him. So, there’s work to do. Here are things I’m looking at.

9 Character qualities that generate support

Help Your Readers Identify with Your Characters. We tend to identify with characters who are like us in some way. They play certain roles in a family, do certain types of work, are concerned about things we are concerned about. In my story, G is a big brother who is forced to take care of his little sisters, and does it well, almost heroically well. He’s making sacrifices to do this, which helps also. The problem is that G must leave his sisters behind when he goes on a quest. So, I’ve got to work hard after that to keep him sympathetic.

1. Physical Descriptions. We like beautiful people. Graceful. Striking. Attractive. The problem here is not to over do it and not to rely on it.
2. Altruism. Orson Scott Card, in his classic Characters and Viewpoint, describes three levels of altruism, or the unselfish concern for the welfare of others. (BTW, did you know that Card has a new book out in the Ender series, Ender in Exile? If you’re an Ender fan, you gotta read it!)
   • Victim: A character who is the victim of suffering (jeopardy, pain, evil) will evoke sympathy, but also pity for his/her weakness and a touch of contempt for allowing him/herself to become a victim.
   • Savior: This character is admired because they take action against suffering of someone else; however, it could be conceived as a fool rushing into danger. Three things helps here: the savior is reluctant to intrude; the victim asks for help, indirectly or directly; and, the situation is urgent.
   • Sacrifice: A character who is willing to give up something important (riches, power, position, freedom, life) for a moral cause will almost always get sympathy.
3. Active v. Passive. How active is your character? Their plans, needs, dreams and hopes (DrEeds and PlOpes) are important in developing sympathy. If your character just reacts to events, they will be considered weak. Instead, they should be pursuing some plan, need, dream or hope and that action is interrupted by the story’s events.
   • Plan. Immediate plan of action, plus long term plans.
   • Needs. Ongoing needs for food, shelter, money, sleep, information, love, conversation, Reese Peanut Butter cups, 1/2 inch steaks, etc. Weave these into the plot.
   • Dreams. Let the character daydream about the outcome of plans.
   • Hopes. What is the ultimate hope that draws the character onward and won’t let him/her stop?
4. Morality. Courage, sense of fair play, noble causes–all the character issues relating to moral issues are extremely important.
   • Courage: Will a character take physical, mental, emotional and financial risks for what is right?
   • Fair Play: Don’t we love it when football players refuse to gloat after a win? Are they coached on how to respond to the press, or do they really believe that the credit goes to the whole team, that so-and-so was crucial to the success. They don’t gloat, cheat, do anything sneaky or underhanded. We love our football players brave and with a strong sense of fair play. No cowards or cheats allowed.
   • Noble causes: Characters who recognize a noble cause – the underlying morality of an event – will usually be considered sympathetic and worthy of our attention.
5. Drafted or a Volunteer. Here the question is “What’s in it for me?” If the character volunteers to do a nasty task because it’s the right thing to do, we will praise him. If, however, the character is asked to do something that will give him a worldwide reputation, be careful. For that kind of task, one that will give him great rewards in return, he must be drafted, or risk our disdain.
6. Promise Keeper. This is a crucial one: once s/he gives her/his word, will s/he keep it? Sympathetic characters would rather die than go back on a promise. Literally die.
7. Intelligence. Well, a little bit goes a long way here. Geeks, geniuses who speak in big words, and know-it-alls can be very annoying. Instead, pattern your character after Indiana Jones who is just smart enough to figure his way out of trouble, but not so smart to stay out of trouble to begin with.
8. Flaws. Also crucial is the flaws that you give to your character. In From The Mixed up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler, the brother, Jamie, cheats at cards. Yes, in a kid’s book, we love this sympathetic secondary character and part of the reason we love him is that he cheats at cards. Strange, but it’s true: we like him.
9. Loved by someone else. Ever wonder why so many stories have sidekicks? If someone is loved by someone else, it establishes the character as someone worthy of love. Give them a pet. Or add a weaker character who admires them.

Tomorrow, Part II will talk about using these character traits in creative ways.

Villains. You may also be interested in this 3 part series on Villains:

• Villains Don’t Always Wear Black
• Villains to Imitate
• Strengthen Your Villain

Revise with confidence.

More Than One POV? Split to Revise

My current draft of my WIP novel has two point of view characters. I’ve just copied each POV into its own separate file to revise and edit.

• Voice. The main reason for this is to work on getting a consistent voice for each point of view. When they are intertwined, I’m afraid I’m getting them confused, it’s hard to hear each one. In the past, I’ve also done separate files for the dialogue or speech of different novel characters to make sure each sounds unique, yet consistent.



• Chronology. A second reason for new files is to keep the time line straight for each of the novel’s characters. The POV alternates throughout and while I’m reasonable sure that the time line works, this separation will allow me to make sure each character has a significant part in each section of story time.
• Contrast. Finally, I want to make sure there’s a good reason for this alternate POV in this novel. I’m looking for a contrast, or at least something going oblique to the first story line. When the characters throw each other into profile by their contrast, it will be even better.

Revise with confidence.

Random Prompts for Character Development

Last year, I bought Natalie Goldberg’s book, Old Friend from Far Away: The Practice of Writing Memoir. A friend saw Goldberg present at a bookstore about this book and was impressed, so I bit.

Now, I’m not much into writing a memoir. My life has been pretty average. But I’ve kept this book close for the last six weeks or so as I work through the revision on my novel-in-progress. Why? Because it centers on character description and a character’s inner life, and has tons of prompts.

Yesterday I reached a point where I knew that A was thinking about B and needed to decide to invite her over to visit. But how could A justify this, since they were so different?

Old Friend prompt: The Half-n-Half chapter (p. 199-200) reminded me to look around the setting. Goldberg says, “Public school had it all wrong with their topics: justice, morality, liberty, freedom, education.”

Instead, she suggests you look around your setting. Apparently, she was writing that chapter at a coffee shop, because here is part of her list: “half and half, sugar, cherry jelly, peppermint tea, Pepsi. . . .”

Oh, I remember now. Characters live in the particulars, the specifics of who they are, not in the generalities. When you describe your character and put him/her into action, the character description must include details. It took me only a few seconds of brainstorming to come up with band-aids. Yes, band-aids. A reflects on how B decided to get a plain skin-colored band-aids, not a neon color, or a Barbie or GI Joe one, or some other weird pattern, but just a plain one. That made B an okay person in A’s eyes. Short paragraph, in and out of A’s head in a blink.

That worked for me. Much better than the rambling thing I had tried before.

Old Friend has tons of short prompts, anything from one sentence prompt to a couple pages to explain something. It’s not that I couldn’t have come up with band-aids eventually; it’s just that these prompts, chosen randomly, seem to help me speed up the writing time, while deepening character.

Revise with confidence.

I’ve been working on my plot this week – which means I’ve been working on character.

I’ve been struck again by how interwoven these two are. We artificially separate them out to talk about them, but in practice, you can’t work on plot without considering character.

• Conflict. For example, when I tried to decide on what conflict would enhance this plot, I realized I needed to know my villain better. This surprised me. I thought it would be enough to know the main character of this subplot better; but she’s in direct opposition to her villain and without knowing his motivations, skills, weaknesses, likes, dislikes, I couldn’t develop the conflict.


Photo from http://www.flickr.com/photos/jaxxon/22907128/

• Life events. Also, my main character has just had a traumatic event in her life and many issues remain unresolved. I sorta knew her basic character, but I did some reading about child psychology and how kids typically deal with similar events. Apathy and daydreaming were mentioned. I realized that while my character might be generally cheerful, these events in her life might make her forgetful, she might lapse into daydreaming at the wrong moments. Ah, conflict.
• From the beginning. The worst of it is that I had to go back to the beginning of the story again and start to weave in character traits and make slight modifications to conflict. Sigh. But in the end, the story will be more consistent and much stronger. It’s been a good revision this week.

Revise with confidence.

4 Stages of Character Development

When you write a first draft, there are really two novels at that point. There’s the one on the paper and there’s the one in your head and they are not the same.

I know this. But I’m experiencing it again as I’m working through this revision. In order to put on paper what is in my head, I’ve had to pay attention to feedback.

Blurry Characters
http://www.flickr.com/photos/hugovk/217155496/

Confusing Characters. The second round of feedback told me the same thing: my readers were confused. Here’s the problem: I thought that readers would understand relationships from implications in the text. But that was making them work too hard; they lost confidence in my storytelling. I realized that I had to lay it all out there, in other words, put it on the page.

Now, this does NOT mean that I put in the whole kitchen sink. No. I didn’t want to overwhelm readers with backstory. But naming a relationship was OK: “she’s my almost-adoptive-mother.” The reader still doesn’t know all of what that “almost” means but at least there’s now a frame of reference.

For the secondary character, I added a tiny bit of flashback, only 3-4 lines. It’s active, unusual, with good segues in and out of it. I almost want to take it out, because I don’t like backstory in the first chapter. But I think it’s crucial for the reader to understand the nature of what this character faces.

Deeper Characters. Finally, this third time around, my reader says my characters are deeper, motivations are clear and I’ve created great sympathy for the characters’ plight. Now, I’m just inconsistent.

Inconsistent Characters. My job on the next pass was to make sure the characters’ voices stayed consistent, the characters didn’t do or say anything that was out of character for their age or situation, and that the story itself remained consistent in tone and voice.

Exactly What I Envisioned. Well, almost, anyway. Nothing is set in stone yet, but I’m pretty pleased with how these characters are behaving right now. Pleased enough to move on and not bother my readers with this section again, but wait until there’s a whole revised novel to read.

Do your characters progress through similar stages? Blurry, confusing, deeper, inconsistent, exactly what I envisioned. Notice what was needed at each point: feedback. I only knew how well I was doing by checking in with a reader. Sometimes, especially in the early chapters, I need several rounds of feedback with my readers to make sure I’m making the needed changes. Now, with these chapters as my benchmark, I’m hoping to progress without so much feedback.

How would you describe your character’s progression through drafts? What feeds your revision cycle?

Revise with confidence.

I’m worried. :-/
Are my characters boring?

One-Note Characters

One common difficulty is to create characters with a wide range of emotions. Yes, your character may be chronically sad or mad; but if that note is hit over and over and over, it becomes boring. And unrealistic.

I’m afraid I’m on the verge of doing this for my main character. I’ve got to go back and track the small shifts of emotion within a scene, as well as the overall tone set for each scene. One technique is to simply write the dominant emotion in the margins of the mss and track what you’ve done.

The harder part is to build in those emotional changes in a book character. First, I’ll tackle the overall tone of the scene, lightening it up. This means small choices throughout, favoring more upbeat language throughout. It doesn’t mean I can’ use sad or mad as one of the emotions; it doesn’t mean that the character is overwhelmingly cheerful. It only means there needs to be a dominant tone of mad, but trying to get over it! And there needs to be lighter moments within the story.

For more on how to revise a novel see this series:
30 Days to a Stronger Novel

Revise with confidence.