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.


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• 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.

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Wisdom, the Midway Albatross

by Darcy Pattison

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Still working on revising my WIP novel, scene by scene. In the novel’s scene I just worked on, the main character is sitting at a school assembly. It’s an important assembly which sets up the main point of the story; however, as in most such assemblies, the action of the novel’s scene takes place on stage and adults are doing the most important thing.

Not good. My character is just passively watching.

Activate the Character

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What if he’s in charge of the media for the presentation? He would have to sit in a different place and I can play with how to make that a minor obstacle: perhaps, he has to sit with the kindergarten kids on the first row to reach the projector. He’ll also be closer to the stage when a big disaster happens and be more directly involved. That’s a good start.

My protag also needs an active goal for the scene: supporting his step-mother as she presents. When the event falls apart, he’ll blame himself. That’s much better.

Is your character active in every scene? If not, try these:

• Character traits. Look carefully at your character to find something for him/her to do that is consistent with their interests. There’s probably something around in the setting, the event, the dialogue – somewhere.
• Setting. Move the character around if necessary, putting him/her in a different place. Draw a map and put an X on the character’s current spot. Point to other places on the map and think about what the character could do if positioned in one of these places.
• Scene Goal: Put yourself in the character’s POV. What is the character’s goal for the scene? Find something for him/her to care about intensely and work from there to find actions for the character.

Goodreads Book Giveaway

Wisdom, the Midway Albatross

by Darcy Pattison

Giveaway ends March 11, 2012.

See the giveaway details at Goodreads.

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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