We’ve been talking for a few days now on how to create characters. We’ve talked about the fusion of “physiology” and “sociology” to create “psychology.” Now it’s time to open things up for discussion.
Gina asked:
Randy, how do YOU get to know your characters? My characters reveal themselves over the course of my writing. No long walks or conversations, they just pop up and tell me things whenever the mood strikes.
Randy sez: I often get a strong auditory image of my characters all at once and I’ll know how they talk. For me, a strong and unique voice for each character is important. I really can hear them talking in my head. Not quite audible, but I definitely can hear them as strongly as I can remember the voices of my friends.
For visual images of my characters, I go online and do a search for faces. I’ll find several people who look somewhat like my character and will choose the best features of each. In writing proposals, I sometimes include a graphic showing these faces.
For my character’s personal history, I just sit down and make stuff up that I think will fit. I work through the character charts (one of the steps in my Snowflake Method). I know what sort of person each character needs to be in order to fill in the slot in the story that I created them for. But then I augment what they “need to be” with just random stuff. Often, I’ll take personality attributes from several people I’ve known.
Of course, once I start writing, all of the above is subject to change. Often, it feels a bit like magic. You start writing, and suddenly the character gells. This happened when John Olson and I were writing OXYGEN. We had a character named Nate. Neither of us really knew what Nate would be like, but I wrote a sample scene early on with Nate as the POV character. The Nate who showed up was rude and surly and tough, but had an underlying softness to him. John really liked that Nate, so we agreed to keep him. If we hadn’t liked that Nate, we’d have thrown him away and created a new one.
Barb wrote:
Once I’ve worked out the basic plot for my story, I write a personal letter from the main character to the reader. Of course, the reader will never see this, but I guess it works things out in my head. In the letter, the character begins by telling his past and why he is the way he is today. Then he tells the story from his/her point of view.
I can’t tell you the surprises my characters have come up with on their own. I used to laugh at people who said their characters talked to them, but I’m telling you, it’s true. Since I’m writing as a Christian, I like to think the Holy Spirit has a lot to do with this. So many times, I’m amazed at how plot and characters come together with an incredible story AND message of God’s work in a normal person’s life.
So . . . when the main character is finished, I have the antagonist write a letter in rebuttal. He, too, begins by telling his past and why he is the person he is, but then tells the entire story from his point of view-thoughts, feelings, actions included.
After that, I usually do one more letter by the protagonist’s romantic partner or confidant.
Randy sez: I really like this idea. It’s similar to one I read last week in James N. Frey’s book HOW TO WRITE A DAMN GOOD MYSTERY, which I blogged about just before I went to the ACFW conference. I think this method should really work well, and I intend to try it myself on my next novel, which I am composting in my mind right now.
I think we can plan our characters all we want, but when we sit down to start writing, that character will come alive in ways we never planned. That’s what makes writing fun for me and I know a lot of other writers who feel the same way. It feels like magic!
Any other questions on character creation? Go ahead and leave a comment. I’ll try to answer as many questions as possible on Friday night, since I’m going out of town (again) over the weekend to go to a wedding in California. I’ll be back blogging again late Monday night.
Any special tips to females writing male characters? Once in a while, my male main character starts thinking like a girl. When I notice it, I slap him.
Since I don’t think like a guy (actually, I don’t think like a girl, either) I’m afraid this guy could turn out ridiculous in the eyes of any man who has the nerve to read it. (And along the same lines, not only is this character of foreign gender, he’s a foreigner, period. From a country I’ve never been to. There’s a lack of challenge in my life, apparently)
How do I make sure his manliness is believable without making him cliche or sterotypical?
I guess I could try talking to the 4 adult guys who live in my house. Duh.
I was going to ask the same thing, as by no choice of mine my two main characters are male and I am not.
How do I work with a character’s voice if he carries a different diction level than I am used to? My novel involves high-born people. I have been trying to absorb myself in high diction in my reading and research, but the colloquial keeps cropping up in the actual writing. In narrative summary, the character’s voice often holds strong and true, but during scenes it fades. Are there any specific techniques for holding a character’s voice like this?
Is it wise to base one of the characters in a work of fiction, including her storyline, on a real person and certain disasters that really happened to her? Particularly where this lady is the widow of a famous international bestselling author?
I sit down and write a character for some time, finish it, but then I find I always create perfect people. People I would love to be. People with amazing powers and things like that (though not always perfect personalities) and then I get all bogged down and add some things bad about the character which don’t suit him/her at all. What do you think I should do?
Good question, Camille! I need to know that, too.
I’m totally blocked with my new character. I’ve never been this blocked. It’s like he won’t reveal himself to me. I can see his face, but I can’t hear his voice or thoughts.
Hmmmmmm . . . as I write this, I’m wondering if that’s the way I should write him in the beginning. But I didn’t picture him that way. ARGH!!
I am loving this topic.
I hear my characters voices, too. I see them, too. I see how they walk and move and what they wear. I see their houses and where they live. It’s so strange. I guess all that daydreaming in school is finally paying off.
Two things I’m going to start doing as a result of reading this post:
1. I’m going to search for faces on google like you do, Randy! What FUN! That’s a great idea. (That is, unless I’ve already seen someone at the mall or church that fits and I’ve created them from that.)
2. BARB!! I am going to write letters, too! I think that’s an incredibly good idea and one I will use with my students. I love it.
What awesome ideas!
When I was in high school writing plays our teacher would put pictures she had cut out of magazines up on the board to inspire us. I just thought I’d mention that as an idea of scene settings or character creating. To this day when I see a particularly moving or unique picture, I keep it so I can refer to it. I tell myself it’s to inspire my students but to be honest, it’s also to inspire myself.
Just as another little aspect on the topic of character creation:
I used to do a bit of ventriloquism, and one my main methods of creating the character of my “partner” was to really “talk” with the puppet.
I would for example put the puppet on the passenger seat of my car while driving (don’t forget to buckle up!).
We could discuss all kinds of issues, for example how to deliver the punchline of a joke during our upcoming gig.
After the gig we might make fun of the annoying guy in the audience or just ordinary stuff like what we should have for dinner.
During those “conversations” the puppet often revealed new and sometimes unexpected characteristics.
Finally:
Make sure that nobody sees you talking to a puppet, they might just think you’re a lunatic….
I usually cheat and cast the movie version of my book in my head (hey, if you’re going to dream, dream big!). It helps me to think, “Oh, this is the kind of character that Morgan Freeman would play,” or something along those lines.
For women writing male characters, I think the big thing to remember is that most men are usually goal-oriented, and focused on the task at hand. Men can compartmentalize their thoughts, so they aren’t usually thinking about their problems at home when they’re at work, and vice versa.
The letter writing is a great idea!
I’m having problems coming up with different voices for my characters. The setting is planet Olim in a time far past. If I give them accents or colloquialisms, it sounds phony. Have I painted myself into a box? Help!
I guess if I had a question about characters, it would be regarding the difference between internal voice and dialogue voice for any given character. If you have a character that was raised on the streets or in a slum and speaks with a lot of slang and bad grammar and the like, I’m assuming you don’t want to write the narrative that way when you’re in the character’s pov. I’ve also heard not to overdo slang and such, even in dialogue because it’s hard for the reader to pick through. Yet, how do you give such a character a voice if you can’t write the words the way he/she would think/say them? How do you differentiate between the country boy, the kid from the slums and the scholar?
This conversation is very helpful. Oddly enough, my main character is also male. I’ve been considering recasting him as a young woman, but it just isn’t working, so I’ll keep Mark’s advice in mind. One question: how do men deal with guilt, as a rule? Can it haunt them until it will not stay neatly in its compartment and spills out at inconvenient times?
I love the letter writing idea, and I’m planning on googling some faces and collecting pictures for inspiration. My Grade 3 teacher (Canadian terminology, eh!)used pictures that way. It was a fun way to write.
Here’s a cool site to find people, Getty Images
It has a search tool. It can get pretty detailed, as in you’re looking for a photo of an asian woman in her 60’s, or a brown hair + brown eyed young caucasian woman, etc. There’s another site like this, I forget what it is now … maybe someone else knows. I heard an editor advised a writer to search this site for character look alikes to include in her proposal, I found my perfect “Emily” there. I have a celeb for “Ian”. Both photos are pasted into my character summary worksheet so I can gaze at them once in a while for inspiration.
Also: Internet Movie Database if you’re not familiar with this, will find celeb photos for you, if that’s what you’re looking for. Use the drop down search box and select names, type in your celeb.
Ok, my MC is also a male, but what I want to know is how do men think? It’s not often in the story that he actually sits still long enough to think about much of anything, but there is one part where he’s been imprisoned and therefore has a while to contemplate all that’s happened. Would a man think about all the bad things that have happened, or would he just ignore his feelings and concentrate on getting out of there? Sorry guys, but I KNOW you have feelings in there somewhere whether you show it or not. But how much thinking do you actually do about things bothering you?
Ok, my MC is also a male, but what I want to know is how do men think? It’s not often in the story that he actually sits still long enough to think about much of anything, but there is one part where he’s been imprisoned and therefore has a while to contemplate all that’s happened. Would a man think about all the bad things that have happened, or would he just ignore his feelings and concentrate on getting out of there? Sorry guys, but I KNOW you have feelings in there somewhere whether you show it or not. But how much thinking do you actually do about things bothering you?
Hey Mark, thanks for the insight about compartmentalizing. Do you think in a romance, this would help to create conflict? If he constantly thinks of her while he’s at work, would that annoy him, or make him realize she might be someone special?
Looks like this thread may be really hard for Randy to Lasso and control!
Jenny
Pam, my male character is loosely based on a tv actor, so that helps me with voice, facial expression and mannerisms, at least.
Maybe Randy would let a couple of us girls post a snippet of our male internal monologue and tell us what’s right & wrong about it. Subtle hint.
Our crit group recently brainstormed actors and movies set in a certain place and time for one writer to come up with a character’s distinct voice, dialect, speech patterns, etc. But I wonder if this is cheating.
Okay, ladies. I have THE answer you’re looking for. It’s a book called For Women Only-What You Need to Know About the Inner Lives of Men by Shaunti Feldhahn. When she was working on her second novel,The Lights of Tenth Street, she wanted a male character’s thought life to closely resemble what real men deal with. So she started interview males-family, friends, strangers, people on airplanes, attorneys, COSCO employees, etc. More than one thousand spoken and written interviews with men. This book is a result of those talks.
One other thing. I wrote a novel with a male character and presented it at a writers conference. One editor asked to see the entire thing, but later came back and said his review committee didn’t favor the idea of a female writing about a male protagonist. Hmmmmm. I wonder how many publishers would second that. Be nice to know before we spend all the time writing, huh?
Barb Haley
I’m flattered that I’m getting all these questions about writing male characters, since I’ve never published a blessed thing! One thing to remember is that there are always exceptions to any rule. I’m sure some guys aren’t as good at compartmentalizing. I just see it as a general rule for men.
Charlotte–absolutely, guilt can spill out at inopportune times. I wasn’t saying that men don’t have any feelings whatsoever. I think something could happen that would trigger a memory or a feeling of guilt, and bring emotional pain with it. A man might feel that pain, and then be angry at the fact that he can’t just shut it out and ignore it, like he’s been able to all of his life.
Jenny–I think a man who finds his thoughts constantly turning to a woman would make him realize that she’s someone special. It could annoy him if he needs to concentrate on something important, though. He would also probably be spending time trying to come up with ways to get her interested in him.
D.E.–in your scenario, I think the man would spend time contemplating what has gone wrong. But again, think of it from a man’s desire to problem-solve. We contemplate how we got ourselves into this mess so that we can keep it from ever happening again. Is there emotion involved? Sure. We’re frustrated, angry, downcast. And that’s why we want to make sure it doesn’t happen, or scheme at ways to get ourselves out of this mess as efficiently as possible.
Randy, I’d love to hear your thoughts. I hope I’m not hijacking the thread here. After all, you’re the pro–I don’t want to steer anyone down the wrong path.
Barb, thanks for the info about that book. I need one of those. I mean, for the most part I have the external actions of my male MC down, it’s the inner-workings that confuse me.
One of my favorite authors – Karen Hancock – wrote a quadrilogy (is that a word?)with a male MC, so maybe it’s just the preference of each particular publisher.
Barb, thanks for the info about that book. I need one of those. I mean, for the most part I have the external actions of my male MC down, it’s the inner-workings that confuse me.
One of my favorite authors – Karen Hancock – wrote a quadrilogy (is that a word?)with a male MC, so maybe it’s just the preference of each particular publisher.
I guess my question would be, when and how much?
We’ve spent all this time creating a character, backstory, and a “real life” for this person, so now we dump it all on the reader in the first chapter. Bad idea.
When we meet a new person they don’t usually tell us their whole life story in the first 20 minutes, if they did we’d walk away thinking TMI, and I’m sure our readers would do the same. Instead we learn about people gradually as they chose to reveal themselves to us.
So now it’s our novel and we’re in charge, how do you decide when to tell what and how much?
I used to write seat of the pants, tell it as you create it. Now that I’ve learned about planning and plotting I’m getting bogged down in the process of creating and not doing any writing. Maybe ignorance really is bliss…
Mark, thanks for the insight. We must have posted right after each other and I didn’t notice. Yes, problem solving! My hubby does this constantly! Thank goodness he can look over my novels when I’m done, and let me know if my MC is on “par” with how a man would think. I actually TRIED to write my trilogy with a female MC, but it just didn’t work.
Mark, thanks for the insight. We must have posted right after each other and I didn’t notice. Yes, problem solving! My hubby does this constantly! Thank goodness he can look over my novels when I’m done, and let me know if my MC is on “par” with how a man would think. I actually TRIED to write my trilogy with a female MC, but it just didn’t work.