In our continuing quest to write 750 words per day for a month, today we will look at unlikeable main characters.

Which One is Unlovable? The Eye of the Beholder

Donald Maass, in How to Write the Breakout Novel, says to make this type character self-aware. They know what they are doing is wrong, they acknowledge it. They take the sting out of the behavior by telling the reader they understand it is unacceptable. Nevertheless, they must do it. And of course, you’ll then add in the reasons why this behavior is reasonable.

The date jerk was dumped when he was 13 and has never gotten over it.
The guy in anguish is grieving over the loss of his family to a drunk driver. The guy who hurts puppies–oh, that’s a hard one! How WOULD you justify that? Oh, isn’t that the story, OF MICE AND MEN?

A second way to turn a jerk into a lovable character is to have someone demonstrate that they do indeed love him or her. Scarlett O’Hara is jealous, conniving and a drama queen. But the family’s nanny still loves her. Because the nanny loves her, we feel more tender toward Scarlett.

Today, write about an unlovable character.

• They must say, do and think awful things.
• Then, soften the character by having someone do a loving act toward them.
• Soften the character farther by having him or her acknowledge the errors of his or her ways.

Think like a writer: make me want to read about that unlovable character.

Goodreads Book Giveaway

Wisdom, the Midway Albatross

by Darcy Pattison

Giveaway ends March 11, 2012.

See the giveaway details at Goodreads.

Enter to win

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.

Goodreads Book Giveaway

Wisdom, the Midway Albatross

by Darcy Pattison

Giveaway ends March 11, 2012.

See the giveaway details at Goodreads.

Enter to win

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

Goodreads Book Giveaway

Wisdom, the Midway Albatross

by Darcy Pattison

Giveaway ends March 11, 2012.

See the giveaway details at Goodreads.

Enter to win