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.

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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.

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When you write something as long as a novel, how do you make sure the character stays in character? When you revise, there are several ways to check.

Creating Consistent Characters

• Create a Bible for your character. It doesn’t have to be complicated, but have one file, or a couple note cards that list characteristics. Left handed, blue eyes, lopsided smile to the right, hates licorice, loves flannel sheets, wears a cross necklace, right ear is pierced, etc. It’s surprising how such little details can escape your notice. In one of my picture books, a character suddenly changed from left-handed to right-handed and the illustrator had to redo that bit of art.
• Create separate dialogue files for each character. More than anything else, a character’s dialogue needs to sound consistent (unless, of course, you’re using it to indicate character changes). By creating separate files, I can read straight through just what a character says and edit, then put it back into the novel.
• If there are long spaces between writing and editing sessions, then be sure to re-read the previous sections. It sounds obvious, but it’s easy to neglect.
• Immerse yourself with a character for a day. For an entire day, walk around and think about what your character would say, do, feel about the world around you. Immerse yourself in your character’s outlook on life. Then, go back and re-read and tweak. (It makes for great conversation: Why are you so weird today? You don’t usually like gingerbread. Today, I’m being Gretel/Hansel!
• Write an obituary of your character. It’s another way to focus on the main character traits, dreams, hopes, goals. What DID your character accomplish during their lifetime? Then go back and make sure your character more or less consistently works toward that goal

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Characters Who Move

According to Mehrabian, 55% of communication depends on body language, 38% on tone-of-voice, and 7% on the words used. That’s bad news for novelists because we don’t have direct access to the body language as we work with our fictional characters – they are just words on a page. Adding body language to a character description puts the character into action and enriches the overall profile.

When you write a novel, you can describe body language and with the right descriptions, the communication embedded is apparent and you don’t have to interpret it for the reader.

Examples:

• Fingertip kiss–praise
• Nose tap–keep it secret
• Head toss–negatives
• Chin Flick–disinterest
• Eyelid pull–I am alert

Think also about giving your character(s) their own typical body language to mean certain things. For example, a girlfirend holds up her hand palm out and makes a shoving motion toward her boyfriend in a gesture that means STOP.

The Definitive Book of Body Language is focused on business communication, but it has interesting information.

Beware of overusing common forms of body language. For example, “he turned” is often used when a character shifts focus from one thing to another. Look for other actions to fill in here by putting something in the character’s hands or using something from the setting.

Read more in 15 Days to a Stronger Character

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Wisdom, the Midway Albatross

by Darcy Pattison

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This is part of a series, 15 Days to a Stronger Character

Names and Nicknames: Echo Character Traits

Let’s start with the basics. What do you call this character? What difference does a name make to effective characterization?

I recently heard of an inner city family whose oldest child is named Chris and the second oldest is named Kilo. Think about what those names would mean to the kids. Would the second be more likely to turn to drugs? Would the first be more likely to escape the poverty he grew up in?

A rose by any other name–is it a rose or not?

What if you named a child Alexander, after Alexander the Great? What sort of expectations does this build for the child? If you adopt a Chinese daughter, do you give her an American name only; or, do you use her Chinese name as her middle name? What difference does it make?

Obviously, I think all of these things matter and matter a great deal. When I name a character, I take great care with the name, even looking up the name’s meaning in several books, websites, to find the variations that might exist.

Here are two online sources for names:
Baby Names World
Parenthood.com’s resource for name meanings

Nicknames

While names often say something about family expectations, nicknames reflect family or friends’ perception of a person. Someone nicknamed Snake would be very different from a person nicknamed, Grumpy.

Think about your character’s skills in personal relationships, physical characteristics, intelligence (or lack of intelligence), friends, skills or interests, etc. Give them a nickname that will reflect a contrasting characteristic and you’re on the way to an interesting character.

Examples of Nickname Strategies

• Old West: Abilene, Bronco, Lightfoot, Banjo
• Animal: Goose, Fang, Bulldog, Crow
• Automobile: Hot Rod, Honk, Lugnut, Mustang
• Aviation: Bomber, May Day, Rocket
• Cute: Snuffy, Sweet Pea, Wiggles
• Descriptive: Bones, Whiskey, Cap
• Famous Person: Shakespeare, Socrates, Michael Jordan
• Food: Burp, Cupcake, Soupy, T-Bone
• Games & Sports: Lefty, Blitz, Swish, Tenpin
• Geographic: Burma, Montana, Sahara, Frisco, ‘Bama, Broadway Joe
• Initials: ZZ, TJ, KK, PC, OJ
• Military: Sarge, Tank, Torpedo, Wharf
• Music: BeBop, Jazz, Yodel, Whistler
• Strange or Exotic: Abracadabra, Shadrack, Yo-Yo, Hoochee
• Villainous: Fist, Scar, Stabber, Wart, Weasel
• Weather: Cyclone, Sprinkle, Snowball

For more detailed lists of nicknames and many other characteristics, see Creating Characters: A Writer’s Reference to the Personality Traits That Bring Fictional People to Life by Howard Lauther.

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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