Christina posted this question on my “Ask A Question For My Blog” page:
What do you do if you can’t get your characters to ‘speak’ to you? I’m attempting to write my first novel, and I’m stuck just creating the characters! I’ve tried asking questions, but she isn’t forthcoming and very tight-lipped. I’ve tried a journal, but all I heard was my own voice instead of my characters’. Do you have any suggestions?
Randy sez: The key thing here is in your second sentence: You’re just starting your first novel. And you’re hoping that the same methods that work for experienced novelists will work for you. Those methods will work for you some day, when you’ve put in hundreds or possibly thousands of hours of learning the craft. Not until.
I’ll bet Danica Patrick’s car “speaks” to her. Mine doesn’t, other than to whine in an indecipherable mutter sometimes when the engine’s cold and I’m in a hurry. I haven’t put in the thousands of hours behind the wheel of a high-performance engine for my car to talk to me.
I’ll bet Lance Armstrong’s bike “speaks” to him. I used to have a bike. It never said a darned word to me. My legs did — mostly things I can’t print in a family-oriented blog. But the bike — never.
I spent two or three years writing before my characters began to get real to me. I remember the first time it happened. I was doing my daily writing in my “notebook computer” — in those days it was a real notebook, made out of actual paper, and you wrote on it with a pen that left permanent black marks on the white paper. I was writing a scene about a certain historical character and I was fictionalizing an event that actually happened. And at the end of the scene, I found that I was crying. And I thought, “Wow, I actually got inside the skin of that character. Finally.”
That novel never got published, but years later I was working on another novel that I had already sold to a publisher. And I wanted to fictionalize that same event from the point of view of another character. I looked up that scene from my old novel, typed it up in a new POV, and the same thing happened. I connected viscerally with the characters and the scene brought those pesky tears to my eyes. That scene is, in my opinion, one of the strongest scenes in that novel. [If you’re wondering, the novel is RETRIBUTION and the scene is in chapter 22 and ends on page 176.]
If you’re just beginning to write fiction, this probably won’t happen right away. That’s okay. Put in a thousand or two thousand hours of writing, and you’ll probably start connecting amazingly well with your characters, if you have any talent for fiction whatsoever. (If you have a desire to write fiction, then you almost certainly have some talent.)
Put in your hours at learning the craft by doing the craft. Eventually, either your characters will start speaking to you or you’ll realize that you were created to listen to a car or a bike or a spreadsheet instead. You can’t forge the gift of fiction and you can’t force it, but if you just put in the time, the gift will show up on its own. Or not.
If you’ve got a question you’d like me to answer in public on this blog, hop on over to my “Ask A Question For My Blog” page and submit your question. I’ll answer them in the order they come in.
Christina should try playing RPG. It helps to develop a character and “wear” it. The game and the story embrace you and you character.
It’s quite a good experience on developing some characters.
I wrote my first (and only) 125,000 worded fiction, and two of the four main characters “spoke” to me from the start. I was a bit worried about the other two, especially since one of them was the PoV character.
Then I invested in Randy’s “Writing Fiction for Dummies”, and it contained some great tips. I created strong memories for the characters (like worst childhood memory/best memory, most embarrassing memory in school, childhood friends etc.) and then I implemented it into my novel. Now the characters are much, much stronger. I ended up doing this for all of the characters and created a character bible.
Hmmm … I encounter a similar problem:
I’m a beginner in writing fiction.
I’m writing non-fiction for more than 15 years now – mainly marketing texts like mailings or texts for brochures or web pages. I have published two books and am nearly finished with my third book on three different cities in Germany. So I think, basically, I know how to write. Inspired by research for my second book I am working on a historical novel which takes place in the 17th century (30 years’ war) since October 2009. I am still researching and plotting and I have create a whole bunch of characters which I think I will need. Some of them speak to me, the protagonist for example does, so does the antagonist. But some don’t, especially the female character I have invented for a love plot line and to have at least one active female character.
Now, the advice “it will come when you have invested a few thousand hours” is actually not really helpful. Sometimes beginners can feel so stuck that it’s even impossible to accumulate those hours. What can we do to fill in the gap? How did you overcome such hindrances?
Thanks,
Birgit
Randy sez: Context is important. In Christina’s case, it was clear that she had tried the usual things that novelists suggest, such as interviewing the character or trying to write the character’s journal, and those weren’t working for her. So, for her, given that this is her first novel, the most likely problem is that she just needs to log some hours in actually writing fiction.
In your case, Birgit, it may be helpful to try interviewing your characters. As Tessa mentioned in her comment above, I show an example of this in my Writing Fiction for Dummies book, in which I imagine J.R.R. Tolkien interviewing Frodo the hobbit to figure out why in the world he’s willing to leave his beloved Shire on a fool’s errand. This may work for you, and it may not. But it’s a common tool writers use, and you should try it.
However, I want to make it clear that experience in writing nonfiction does not necessarily translate into skill in writing fiction. When I began writing fiction, I had several years experience writing scientific papers. That experience really wasn’t very helpful in learning to write fiction. I needed to unlearn a few things I had learned in writing physics papers. I also needed a few years of experience in trying (and failing) to write good fiction. When I put in my time, the skills came.
There is a rule of thumb that says that if you want to get good at something, you need to put in about 2000 hours. And if you want to become world-class, you need to put in about 10000 hours. This is true whether we’re talking about playing tennis or doing brain surgery or writing a novel. You can speed up the process a bit by getting training and critiques, but unless you also put in the time “just doing it,” you won’t get good. I can’t change that. I can provide the training — that’s one of my missions in life. I sometimes also provide the critiques (in writing conferences and in my hometown critique group). But I can’t put in your time at the keyboard. You have to do that.
End of Randy’s long comment.
I’m just starting my first “novel” too, but that said I actually have many hours of fiction writing under my belt. Since I was thirteen I’ve been writing “stories”. I call them stories and not novels because I have no intention to ever get them published, nonetheless, my longest is about 200,000 words.
I guess I was lucky, because when I was writing my first one, the 200,000 word one at thirteen, the protagonist spoke to me immediately. I think the trick was that I really liked her. She was such a nice, happy character, and by the end of the book almost like a friend. Beyond character design it also really helped me write because I wanted to tell her story.
However, I don’t think you need to “like” your characters to get along with them, you just need to find some common ground. My character and I had both lost someone very close to us, and I talked to her about that (I guess you’d call it an interview.) Somehow this really worked, maybe it was my own experience leaking into her.
Especially as your character is ‘tight lipped’, this idea might break the ice. It doesn’t have to be something important. Have you both had a break up, do you both love the sea, is your favorite season summer? What does she like about it? Why does she like it so much? And once you’re talking a bit, start talking about the story.
I have many hours, and many words behind me, but remember I’m talking about my very first story here, and even though I don’t want to get it published, I still happen to think that the plot and my protagonist are top notch. In terms of craft, I reckon I’m about a hundred times better than the thirteen year old me, so maybe that will be something you find you need to work on, but I don’t think there’s anything to say you can’t have great characters and a great plot right from the get go.
Good luck!
Randy, those pesky tears are wonderful!
Hmmm… My evil characters speak to me more readily than my righteous ones. What does that say?
My motto, taken from a great editor, Lisa Rector, is “Go deeper faster”.
When re-writing a scene, I ask myself, what is the deepest stuff my characters are talking/doing about here.
I get to the tear producing stuff a lot faster these days.
Ah. It’s the old problem about making a thousand mile journey. How do you make a thousand mile journey? One step at a time.
I’ve been painting for over thirty years. It took years before I was comfortable enough with the medium to think I could do anything a client asked me to do.
Several years later, I leanred that I’ll never know that much!
I liked Randy’s initial answer because it addresses the basic problem most of us face and that’s wanting to be at the top of the game from the very start.
To Christina I would say: What’s wrong with hearing your own voice when you talk to your character? You have to start somewhere and I’m guessing that everyone who’s written anything has at least one character that’s very close to a mirror image.
Start with that. Listen to what you write. Then listen some more. Write a lot. You will discover things about yourself that surprise you and that journey will help you to later develop characters that aren’t like you.
It may also be that you’re the sort of writer who develops a story line first and characters come later. Have you tried just writing the story and seeing what happens with the characters?
The bottom line is that in order to learn to write well, you have to learn to write often and you have to back that up with learning to write regularly. Once a week every week for two hours will get you to the magic 2,000 hour mark, but not as quickly as writing once a day every day for two hours.
Interesting discussion. It sparks these thoughts:
1. To what extent are we talking about writing as altering one’s consciousness? For example, when my daughter (an only child) was age 4 to 5, she was heavily into playing in her room, (it appeared to the parental observer) lost in her imagination playing with her various animals, each of whom in fact does have a separate personality and its own voice. She left the door open while she was playing like that, and then at about age 6 was playing the same way but started shutting her door. So maybe a character speaking to a writer has something to do with that child state of consciousness.
2. This is sparked by Christina’s comment: I started practicing for fiction writing using Dorothy Brande’s method of writing (anything) for 15 or 20 minutes right after I woke up. (The Julie Cameron morning pages are a similar kind of exercise.) One day, after a couple of months of that exercise, what came to mind was a crystal clear non-fiction article — something I just had to write (and managed to sell to a local newspaper — a one-shot, admittedly).
The Brandes exercise goes on from the morning pages to just writing at a more awake time of day (say, after lunch). Her point is to get practiced in entering that “fiction” state of mind — which ties in with Randy’s point of putting in the hours.
@ Randy
to make it easier for other readers to follow, I quote what you wrote:
“In your case, Birgit, it may be helpful to try interviewing your characters. As Tessa mentioned in her comment above, I show an example of this in my Writing Fiction for Dummies book, in which I imagine J.R.R. Tolkien interviewing Frodo the hobbit to figure out why in the world he’s willing to leave his beloved Shire on a fool’s errand. This may work for you, and it may not. But it’s a common tool writers use, and you should try it.”
First, thanks a lot for your answer. Perhaps I did not express myself well enough (I’m not a native speaker of English). When I said that some characters did not talk to me this happened exactly when I was trying to interview them. Seems a vicious circle. Anyway, I own your book (and I like it very much) – I think I will check the part you mentioned and try again. Thanks again.
Birgit
Wow! Thanks Randy and everyone for the great advice. You’re all exactly right… I need to learn to be disciplined in writing. (I could use my preschooler and baby to excuse my lack of actual writing, but to be honest… if I was disciplined I would find the time to write.)
Thanks also for taking a load off regarding the characters. I am a beginner, and I shouldn’t expect to write like a professional!
I tend to be a backwards perfectionist (avoiding doing something because I know it won’t be perfect) and your advice Randy was very helpful. You’ve encouraged me and given me something to strive for – all with a dash of your trademark humour!