Today is 'C' day. The word of the day is 'Characters'.
char ac ter
noun
plural noun: characters
1. the mental moral qualities distinctive to an individual
synonyms: personality, nature, disposition, temperament, temper,
mentality, makeup
2. a person in a novel, play, or movie
synonyms: persona, role, part
Recently, my publisher, Melanie Fountain, of Fountain Blue Publishing, ran an article for her authors about the importance of characters to the story. I didn't believe I could present a post to you that would outdo her words. I asked Melanie to guest host today and share her article with all of you.
Welcome, Melanie.
Melanie Fountain:
Whether
you are a plotter (spend hours refining the outline for your novel) or a
pantser (sit down and write your novel by the seat of your pants), your
characters believability and relatability make all the difference.
I
use visualization for my character development. I imagine that I am at a
gathering, party, lunch, etc., with one, some, or all of my characters. I pay
attention to how each one behaves, talks, and interacts with the others. No two
of my friends or family members use the same word choices or phrases. No two
have the same beliefs or views. No two have the same body language, so why
would my characters? Each person has their own ‘voice’.
There
are many components that go into giving each character their individual voice
and I would like give you a helpful list that you can use to help you define a
characters voice.
Male
or Female
Education
level
Age
Outgoing
or Shy
Snarky
or Sweet
Naïve
or Street Smart
Manipulative
or Giving
Inflection
(regional accent)
Idioms
(one might say; “He passed away.” and another may say, “He kicked the bucket.”
Divulge
your character to your reader in a natural way. Let your reader learn about
your character’s quirks and personality in a similar way that you learn about
people you meet. We learn about people in bits and pieces through dialog,
interaction, and observation. If you spend three pages of your novel giving
your reader every detail about your character, your reader will get board and
the introduction will feel awkward and forced.
Your
character needs to have a goal, a quest, a dilemma, a question that he or she
must answer. The reader needs to be drawn into your character’s journey. The
reader must feel for your character, either routing for them or hating them and
wanting to witness their demise. Without creating an emotional attachment
between your character and your reader, why would the reader read on?
Character
development is not a simple process and is always subject to change as your
book develops. Create characters who are believable and who your reader must
know more about.
**Narrative Must Be
Shaped by Voice**
Think
about writing a scene in the POV of a six-year-old girl who is a spoiled, rich
only child. Let’s say the scene takes place at the dinner table, and while she
is eating, her parents get in an argument about money, and the father says she
will not be allowed to take ballet anymore, and then smacks her precious puppy
when it tries to get a piece of meat from off the table.
That
narrative must sound like a six-year-old rich spoiled girl’s voice. She is going to notice, react, and think her age. She
isn’t going to comment on the details of her parents’ argument. She’s going to
be confused and upset as to why she can’t take ballet, and she’s going to be
mad and scared when her father hits her dog. She will not use an adult
vocabulary or think obtusely, abstractly, or using metaphor. The reader should
feel and wholly believe she is experiencing and reacting to all that happens in
the scene (and there should be a good reason to use her as a POV character
too).
All
too often I find, in the novels I edit and critique, scenes in a character’s
POV that does not have the appropriate voice. Children sound like adults. Old
women sound like young men. So much goes into voice: education, background,
past pain, fears, likes and dislikes, opinions, personality traits, ethnicity,
and so on. Just like dialog. In fact, if you can think of voice as just an
extension of dialog—as the POV character speaking through the entire narrative
of the scene—it may help you to get a handle on voice.
**Getting into
Character**
One
thing that helps me with voice is to pretend I’m the character. I try to
immerse myself so much into the role as I’m writing the scene that I am that
character. This is what actors do—they get into character. Some actors say that
when they’re shooting a movie, they stay in character all the time—even when they
leave the set and go home for the night.
Which
makes me think of a funny bit on one of the CDs for The Lord of the Rings, that
showed director Peter Jackson’s
amazement when he heard actor Brad Dourif (Wormtongue) speak in an American
Southern drawl, thinking the actor was just joking around (he wasn’t; that was
his “real” voice). In the films, Dourif’s character has a kind of rich British
accent. Clearly, Dourif stayed “in character” while not filming, which no doubt
helped him do such a terrific job in creating the voice of Wormtongue. And
here, too, I’m not just talking about his accent. That voice went deep into
character, shown through his inflection, mannerisms, facial expressions, and
tone. All this relates to voice.
**Voice is all
about characters—not about you!**
There,
I said it. It’s so simple, really. Every character in your novel has his or her
own voice, whether a child, a man or woman, a dog, or a robot. Every POV
character in your novel has a unique voice—both internally, in the way they think,
as well as in their audible speech.
**Voice Isn’t Just
Speech**
In
addition, any character that speaks out loud (not a POV character) has a voice
as well. I don’t mean literally here—for of course they have a voice if they
can speak (and if they use sign language, that’s speech too). But what we’re
talking about pertains to the manner, style, and presentation of that speech.
With these characters, their voice comes out only in the words they actually
say and how they’re said—since the writer is not going into their heads.
With
POV characters, voice embodies more than spoken words or direct thoughts in
their heads. The narrative should as well. When you craft a scene in a
character’s POV, every line in that scene has to feel as though it is being processed,
chewed, and spit out by that character. Everything that happens in that scene
is witnessed, experienced, felt, and reacted to by that character. And so, even
the narrative must have “voice.”
**Voice Isn’t Just
How Someone Sounds**
So
as you richly develop all the characters in your novel—and we’ve looked at many
ways in many posts on how to do this with both your protagonist
and your secondary characters—be sure to spend a good amount
of time on voice. Not just thinking about how the character sounds when she
talks out loud but how who she is shapes and determines her
mind-set—what and how she thinks about things.
In
order to construct a strong novel, those character pillars must be made of
unique, believable characters. By spending time giving those characters a rich
past and a core need, greatest fear, a lie they believe, you will have characters that
jump off the page. But . . . if you do not give them the appropriate
voice, those pillars will crumble.
As
I mentioned in the example above of the six-year-old girl—if you, the
author, intrude in the scene by narrating or showing a character
thinking in a style that does not fit who she is, the reader will notice. Yes,
it’s a challenge to write every word in every scene in POV, but that’s required
with either a first-, second-, or third-person POV. And this is one of the
biggest flaws I see in novels.
**What about an
Omniscient POV?**
If
you are going to use an omniscient voice to tell the story, you can slip in and
out of voices as you portray the different characters, and in addition, you
have the narrator’s omniscient storytelling voice over all (which must be
developed in the same way as any other character’s voice). Not many writers can
pull off an omniscient voice well, and the downside and challenge to using such
a voice is its tendency to distance the reader and tell the story
rather than show it. And as most of us have been taught, readers these days
don’t want to be told stories; they want to see them happening before their
eyes, through the eyes of the POV characters.
So
think of voice as each character’s voice: unique and specific for each one. The
writing style of a scene will be influenced and shaped by that voice.
Visit C.S. Lakin at http://www.livewritethrive.com/
And visit me at www.fountainbluepublishing.com/
Keep writing and stay creative!
Melanie Fountain
Editor in Chief/Owner
Fountain Blue Publishing
info@fountainbluepulishing.com
Thank-you, Melanie for hosting today. I hope you all benefited as much as I have from this informative post.
Visit C.S. Lakin at http://www.livewritethrive.com/
And visit me at www.fountainbluepublishing.com/
Keep writing and stay creative!
Melanie Fountain
Editor in Chief/Owner
Fountain Blue Publishing
info@fountainbluepulishing.com
Thank-you, Melanie for hosting today. I hope you all benefited as much as I have from this informative post.
Keep on keeping on writing!
Visit me on my Facebook Author Page HERE.
