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.

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

Answering the WHY? question

It’s the WHY question that is plaguing me right now.

Why does my character want to participate in this project?
Why does she want this so much that she will jump out of her comfort zone in order to make it work? Why, why, why?

Oh, how I hate that question! It’s obvious to me that the character wants this because, well, because that’s the story I’m writing. Of course, she wants to do this. Boy, am I in trouble.

I have to go back to the basics – again.

Interview the character. Find the back story details that answers the WHY? I’m such a private person that I hate telling people the whys of anything I do, so why should I expect my characters to be more forthcoming?

But how do you describe a fascination with something? For example: There’s no logical reason for me to like quilting, yet I do. I can make up something that will satisfy you, something about the puzzle of cutting up fabric and sewing it back together; but in the end, quilting transcends those explanations and I just wind up weakly saying, I love to play with color. Really, that’s it. I love to play with color and love the feel of the fabrics and love the semi-precision of sewing, fitting things together into a larger pattern.

How can I describe for a character a fascination with the tasks needed in this new story? There are multiple motivations: the inherent fascination with a hands-on process; the feeling of connection with a missing loved one; the reluctant joy of being pushed out of comfort zones to meet more people and to open up more; the surprise of watching how the project affects others. It’s so many small things that motivate my character. How to put those into the story?

Maybe part of the answer is that I was looking for a single answer, a single incident that motivates her and in reality, it must be multiple small things, which are woven into multiple scenes.

I’m wrestling today with that awful WHY? What are you wrestling with?

Goodreads Book Giveaway

Wisdom, the Midway Albatross

by Darcy Pattison

Giveaway ends March 11, 2012.

See the giveaway details at Goodreads.

Enter to win

What does your character want more than anything else? Sharpen and deepen the desires of your major characters, and your story will be richer.

5 Questions to Ask Your Characters

I want to win a race!

1. Character Goal
   What do you want? Or not want? Need? Or not Need?
   This question lays out the character’s goal for the entire story. What is the character trying to achieve as s/he faces the challenges of this story?
2. Changing Goals
   Does the character’s desires change as the story progresses?
   One paradigm for stories says that the character’s goal should change halfway through a story. Think of the “Lion King,” where Simba’s goal at first is to have a good time, and later, to take his place as leader of the pride. Changing goals represent character growth. It could also represent a changing from External Goals (can I win the trophy for this race) to Internal Goals (can I run with integrity, no doping, no cheating, etc.).
3. Obstacles to Goal
   What prevents the character from obtaining his/her desire?
   Strong obstacles, including strong villains, makes for a more exciting plot. Create a series of increasingly difficult obstacles.
4. Sacrifices for Goal
   What must the character give up to obtain his/her desire?
   This isn’t present in every story, but it’s something to consider. What must a character give up, in order to obtain this thing. Freedom, some privelege, money, integrity?
5. Satisfied or Disappointed
   What will the character feel when they obtain his/her desire?
   Ultimately, will the character be satisfied if s/he obtains his/her desire? There are 4 options:
   • Character achieves Goal/Goal satisfies (happiest ending);
   • Character achieves goal/Goal does not satisfy (tragedy);
   • Character fails to achieve Goal/Failure satisfies (still a happy ending, possible character growth because character now understands why it was a bad goal to begin with);
   • Character does not achieve Goal/ Failure does not satisfy (tragedy)

Think hard about your character’s goals because it affects the plot, the outcome, and the overall tone of your story.

Read more in 15 Days to a Stronger 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

Great Character Descriptions come from Unique Characters

Do you want a great example of unusual characters? Read Chris Crutcher’s amazing book, Whale Talk. On the school’s swim team, there are unusual characters:

1. a mixed-race kid who organizes the team
2. a kid who’s been abused and can’t think quite straight and his physical appearance reflects this
3. and a kid with a missing leg — yes, a one-legged swim team member

What a whacky, interesting and varied set of characters: they naturally demand an interesting description of the character.

Physical Characteristics for Your Characters

1. Go for the unexpected, the contrast. Follow Crutcher’s lead and think of the roles, jobs, expectations for your character and think about going for the opposite in physical characteristics. Villains are beautiful and heroes are ugly. Swimmers have only one leg, and athletes don’t care about winning.
2. Support the other character qualities with the physical description. Here, villains are horrendously ugly, and heroes are walking gods. Swimmers are svelte and muscled.
3. Don’t just use visual details, but also include kinesthetic details, or how the character moves. Graceful, limping, stutter-step, lumbers, waddles, stomps. Lots of great verbs to add interest here.
4. Think about clothes. Clothing should match the time period, of course, but even within that, there’s room for your character to show some personality. Bland, business clothes say one thing about a person, while brightly colored, latest style clothes say something else. Be careful not to date your story by including just the most recent style of clothes in the description. Be specific, but vague enough that the story can remain a classic–unless, of course, you want the time period stamped on the story indelibly.
5. Hair styles change, too. But my favorite is to think about beards or facial hair. Marc McCutcheon, in his book Building Believable Characters lists 102 types of facial hair and 41 types of hair.

   Here are a couple of the beards: Assyrian beards are long with plaits or spiral curls; a barbiche is a small tuft of hair under the bottom lip; a cathedral bears is a full flowing beard that splits like a fish tail at the bottom, worn by the clergy in mid sixteenth to the seventeenth centuries; and the peach fuzz of a young man. And yes, women can have facial hair, too, especially as they grow older. In fact, an older woman who has her mustache lasered off, says something about her vanity.

If you have trouble visualizing characters, some writers like to find a picture(s) of a real person(s) to set beside their computer as a model for their character(s). National Geographic magazine and other magazines who feature photos of people are popular for this.

Read more in 15 Days to a Stronger 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