Tuesday Lunchbox Forum

August 19, 2008

Creating Characters in The Scene

 

Mary Rosenblum:  I wanted to talk about creating character in the scene today. I could talk about characterization forever and not entirely cover the topic. It's probably the most difficult aspect of fiction to master. And part of the reason it's difficult is that no one technique will 'create a character'. Some of the really bad books on writing will tell you to give your characters a distinctive habit, such as tugging at their hair or biting their lips. But that's very superficial and gives no real sense of who that person is or what that person is really like as a person Building character...whether it's your Point of View character or not...takes a lot of small, deliberate steps.

 

Think about how you evaluate a stranger. What do you notice and what does that tell you about the person? The more you analyze how YOU evaluate that person sitting across from you on the bus or the new person in the office, the more quickly you'll understand how to create that same sense of a person on the page.

 

Generally, we notice stranger's clothing, face, and hair first. If your POV character meets a new person, that POV character's attention to the stranger's features allow you to begin to create a 'real person'. What do the clothes tell us? Rich, poor, sloppy, meticulously groomed? Once we get beyond visuals, it's all about actions, words, and...if you're creating a Point of View character...thoughts. Even though you can't reveal the thoughts of a non-POV character, you can reveal emotion through that person's body language. So as your character...POV character or non-POV character...reacts to events in a scene, you reveal that person's world view, personality, and background in those actions and dialogue and thought if he/she is your POV.

 

This is where most novice writers fall down.

 

They concentrate on making the character react to the plot events and they don't think about how that character is reaction. So the character reflects only the author, not the person the author means to reveal. And that's not apparent to you as a novice writer, because you KNOW that character intimately, so it's very obvious TO YOU that this person is revealing himself or herself to the readers. And that's not apparent to you as a novice writer, because you KNOW that character intimately, so it's very obvious TO YOU that this person is revealing himself or herself to the readers.

 

Think about how your character can reveal himself or herself to the readers. If your character sneers at the ragged kid begging in the market, kicks the kid aside, and comments to his companion that the guard should just ride through the market place and clear out all this scum, readers know a lot about how your character feels in regards the less fortunate. If your character stops to ask that kid questions and then tells him to follow, that he has a job in the stable for him, we get a completely different character. This one is obviously compassionate and maybe something in his past caused him to connect especially with that kid.

 

Say that's what you want to foreshadow...that this character lived on the street as a child, had a really tough start. You could deepen this suggestion by having that person initially be compassionate but distant to an adult beggar, maybe giving that person a copper or two, or sending him to the backdoor of the palace with a token that will get the cook to share leftovers with him. So then, when he meets the bedraggled ten year old and instead, tells the kid to follow and sets him up working in the stable, we realize there's some special significance to this kid for him. Nice little puzzle for the reader to wonder about, too. What IS that connection.

 

Now if you simply have your character go from whatever he was doing into that market place and suddenly tell that beggar boy to follow, the characterization is less deep. We have no sense of this man's level of compassion, no clue as to why he did this. Same puzzle...'why'...but with less depth. In the first example, we know he's generally compassionate but in this case, something more is there. In the second example, we don't know whether he's compassionate or not, we just know that he wants the boy for something. So we know less about the character here. It's that added depth, revealed through the character's actions and dialogue that deepen our sense of 'person'.

 

It's even easier in dialogue. Your speaker's word choices reveal a lot about that person's world view...which should not be YOUR world view all the time! Is that kid in the market place a parasite or a kid with dirty face and defiant eyes? The way the character notices that kid tells us a lot about what he is thinking. Is he a raider or an insurgent? Is he an outlaw or a rebel? English is a language full of nuanced words. Use them.  And use them appropriately! If your grumpy, life-hating old hermit sees a kid in the park and notices his apple cheeks, freckles dusting his nose, and innocent blue eyes....is this the grump, life-hating hermit's thought or is it the author talking? See what I mean?

 

Gwanny:  Mary can you talk about 'Location" as a character. I have a problem with becoming to flowery in my description of place?

 

Mary Rosenblum: Indeed, gwanny. I see this problem a LOT with novice fiction. It goes right along with my hermit noticing all the 'cute' aspects of a kid he probably hates. J Your description of the location should be filtered through your POV character. What is that character likely to notice and how will that character describe it? If my POV is a woman, an artist, then she might notice the palatte of an English country garden and if she's also a gardener, might notice the various flowers by name as well as noticing the lovely, color and texture effects. If my POV is a tough, hard-boiled detective who can' t tell a rose from a skunk cabbage that description is NOT going to fit. He's going to notice an overgrown yard and if he has allergies, he's going to maybe glare at all the flowers, but he won't know any names.

 

Gwanny:  I am afraid I tend to go to narration when I have to describe location. I wind up with an info dump. It's a flowery info dump tho…

 

Mary Rosenblum: Most novice writers do, gwanny, and it's why characterization is weak in most novice fiction.  It is very diluted with 'author'. We all want to paint more pretty pictures than our stories can hold. If you can't stand it, just write a lovely, descriptive scene to get it out of your system, save it separately, and then write the scene your POV would notice. We DO love our own words and they're lovable, but not always right for this story. I used to do it a lot! I still do sometimes, when the poetic bug bites me.

 

Laina:  As a novice, when you are writing, how do you remember all these rules? Do they come naturally the more you write?

 

Mary Rosenblum: Laina, when they still seem like 'rules' they really ARE hard to remember! But what they are, are not 'rules' but rather techniques for creating powerful stories. As you use them, as you internalize them, you do them without thinking because that's how the story works best. But at the start, they seem very external and artificial. They did to me, too. I have had to analyze what I do without thinking so that I can explain to students how to do it, too.

 

Laina: Did you sit and ask yourself questions as you wrote in the beginning?

 

Mary Rosenblum: Oooooh yes!  And struggled with frustration because I knew what I wanted to do and couldn't make it happen! That's craft...the step by step mastery of the techniques that let you do waht you want to do.

 

Laina: What would be good practice to master those techniques?

 

Mary Rosenblum:  Writing a lot. Don't try always for the Pullitzer. Do exercises that serve some purpose. Write a scene meant to reveal a character's emotions from the outside, without thoughts to help us. Write a scene with NO narrative that reveals a specific thing. Write an action scene that really flows. It's like practicing the piano. Play that scale, that exercise, until you can really do it right.

 

Straightshooter:  Is there a character sheet standard that you use to develop pov, a particular author's standard sheet?

 

Mary Rosenblum:  Nothing standard, straight. I evolve my characters from birth. How and where were they born, what was their childhood like, what major events shaped them as a person, what are their weaknesses, what drives them that they don't really comprehend? I keep logic-error notes: physical traits, dates things happened. That way I don't make mistakes in the manuscript. Know what motivates your character deep down...the 'hidden motivator'. Is this guy really trying to impress the dead father who thought he was a failure? Is she trying to outdo her stellar mother? Put your character on the couch and play shrink. It will really help you create consistent reactions to people and events.

 

Gwanny:  The POV character I am working on now is making me crazy. She is 'fluid' and won't solidify. Like nailing jello to a tree. What do I do?

 

Mary Rosenblum:  I suspect you really don't know who your character is yet, gwanny. When I realize that my character is trying to behave erratically, that's a red flag to me. I STOP writing the story until I have that character sold and 3-D in my head. Sometimes they evolve more quickly than other times. Often if they're too close to you, they're hard to pin down. You play hide and seek with yourself.

 

Sally Franklin Christie:  Could you give an example of 'logic-error' notes?

 

Mary Rosenblum:  My character on page 43 shivers when she sees a spider. If I have her sorting through a dusty hay barn thick with old spider webs without a qualm, we've got a logic error. Same as if her Toyota is blue on page 46 and green on page 145.

 

Straightshooter:  How does a mild mannered, nice guy author successfully write the personality of a psyco perv killer?

 

Mary Rosenblum:  Straight, while we all have elements of 'evil' behaviors inside of us such as murder, it can be more difficult to create someone who is very unlike most people. I can extrapolate from losing my temper to flying into enough of a rage to kill someone. Creating a person to whom killing multiple people is logical, doable, is much more of a challenge. That's why it's VERY difficult to do an insane person or someone really unusual like a serial killer well. Most are shallow stereotypes.

 

LtSonya:  When do you 'know' your character enough that you can start writing? Or is it something you jump into after a while and when you find yourself getting stuck (i.e. how does this person react to so-and-so's comment), stop and figure out what you're missing?

 

Mary Rosenblum: Sonya, I work on evolving that character and then I jump in. As soon as I bog down...'what would she do here?... I stop writing and evolve some more. My characters are never complete until I type 'the end' at the conclusion of the first draft. Sometimes I have to take a long break to figure that person out...he wasn't really as evolved as I thought...and other times I keep writing and evolve as I write.

 

Gwanny:  I think that’s one reason I am having trouble with this character too. She is so many things I am not, yet it's written in 1rst POV...making it difficult.  I have never been a prostitute, am not a lesbian, and have no inclination toward suicide. And yet my POV is all of these things.

 

Mary Rosenblum: You may be having a hard time getting a sense of her as a person if she is very unlike you, gwanny. It's like acting, I guess. Some people find it easier to 'become' someone unlike them than others do. I spend a LOT of time paying attention to how people behave, what makes them 'tick' as a person. And maybe you have simply bitten off more than you can chew here, Gwanny. It's very hard to create a rich character unless there is something there than you can relate to. And that goes for villains. Maybe you just need to spend more time creating a person you can like who CAN be a prostitute and a lesbian. The real person has real reasons for doing what he/she does and once we see those real reasons, that person is real. Too often, characters are created simply be something...The Prostitute. The Lesbian. They have no other reality than that particular aspect of their lives. Then they are cardboard. You're going to have to like her Gwanny in spite of her life choices. You're going to have tu understand why she is what she is.