Creating characters

A lot of my teaching focuses on characters (they are at the heart of my classes, they are, after all, our major tools as writers).
So how do you create them? Here’s some thoughts:
* Maybe base them on people you know but beware of the law. Don’t lift your local vicar wholesale and turn him/her into a cold-blooded killer! Make your characters composites of several people
*Describe their physical characteristics You can do it one bit or slot descriptions in as you go.   Describe their clothing etc but move beyond simple facts, try to capture their demeanour. How do they speak? Brusque, garrulous? How do they walk? Don’t overdo it, though, too much description slows down stories. I often think a line or two will suffice
* Visualise the person, think of small things which make them stand out
* Describe their views, their emotions, their thoughts
* Maybe come up with something that makes them different. A hobby, an odd phrase that they keep using
* If this is a major character get to know them particularly well. How do they react to things? Make sure they are strong enough to carry the story on their shoulders. And we must care about them - not necessarily like but care.
*Take care with minor characters as well as major, they’re important, not cardboard cut-outs.
Above all, ask yourself are your characters REAL?

John Dean

Creating characters

A lot of my teaching focuses on characters. They are, after all, our major tools as writers.
So how do you create them? Here’s some thoughts:

* Maybe base them on people you know but beware of the law. Don’t lift your local vicar wholesale and turn him/her into a cold-blooded killer! Make your characters composites of several people

*Describe their physical characteristics You can do it one bit or slot descriptions in as you go.   Describe their clothing etc but move beyond simple facts, try to capture their demeanour. How do they speak? Brusque, garrulous? How do they walk? Don’t overdo it, though, too much description slows down stories. I often think a line or two will suffice

* Visualise the person, think of small things which make them stand out

* Describe their views, their emotions, their thoughts

* Maybe come up with something that makes them different. A hobby, an odd phrase that they keep using

* If this is a major character get to know them particularly well. How do they react to things? Make sure they are strong enough to carry the story on their shoulders. And we must care about them - not necessarily like but care.

*Take care with minor characters as well as major, they’re important, not cardboard cut-outs.

Above all, ask yourself are your characters REAL?

John Dean

Creating characters

A lot of my teaching focuses on characters. They are, after all, our major tools as writers.

So how do you create them? Here’s some thoughts:
* Maybe base them on people you know but beware of the law. Don’t lift your local vicar wholesale and turn him/her into a cold-blooded killer! Make your characters composites of several people

*Describe their physical characteristics You can do it one bit or slot descriptions in as you go.   Describe their clothing etc but move beyond simple facts, try to capture their demeanour. How do they speak? Brusque, garrulous? How do they walk? Don’t overdo it, though, too much description slows down stories. I often think a line or two will suffice

* Visualise the person, think of small things which make them stand out

* Describe their views, their emotions, their thoughts

* Maybe come up with something that makes them different. A hobby, an odd phrase that they keep using

* If this is a major character get to know them particularly well. How do they react to things? Make sure they are strong enough to carry the story on their shoulders. And we must care about them - not necessarily like but care.

*Take care with minor characters as well as major, they’re important, not cardboard cut-outs.

Above all, ask yourself are your characters REAL?

John Dean

Getting characters right

A lot of my teaching focuses on characters. They are, after all, our major tools as writers.

So how do you create them? Here’s some thoughts:
* Maybe base them on people you know but beware of the law. Don’t lift your local vicar wholesale and turn him/her into a cold-blooded killer! Make your characters composites of several people

*Describe their physical characteristics You can do it one bit or slot descriptions in as you go.   Describe their clothing etc but move beyond simple facts, try to capture their demeanour. How do they speak? Brusque, garrulous? How do they walk? Don’t overdo it, though, too much description slows down stories. I often think a line or two will suffice

* Visualise the person, think of small things which make them stand out

* Describe their views, their emotions, their thoughts

* Maybe come up with something that makes them different. A hobby, an odd phrase that they keep using

* If this is a major character get to know them particularly well. How do they react to things? Make sure they are strong enough to carry the story on their shoulders. And we must care about them - not necessarily like but care.

*Take care with minor characters as well as major, they’re important, not cardboard cut-outs.

Above all, ask yourself are your characters REAL?

John Dean

Creating characters

I am teaching a course on characters and came across this quote from Bill Eaton: “Some writers start thinking about their story in terms of a plot; something to give them a map to write by. Others will not start writing until they have a setting for their piece established in great detail. Personally, I think the best starting place is in the characters you are going to write about.

“According to the great American writer F Scott Fitzgerald, "Character is plot, plot is character." There is no fiction without characters, so this seems to me to be the ideal place to begin.

“Stories do not exist in a vacuum. It is through the interaction of characters with a variety of needs, situations and personalities that stories emerge and develop. Get a few characters together, give them conflicting motivations, don’t give them a chance to escape and you will have a compelling tale in the making!”

Me, I start with place but character follows very quickly and I am one of those writers who takes them from real life.

In the same way that you can base characters upon yourself, you can use your observations and knowledge of others as starting points.  Perhaps as little as a snippet of overheard conversation, or a hair style, or bits of several people mixed together, can be enough. By fusing these traits together the sources of your character will be left behind and a new person will emerge.

 

John Dean

Getting characters right

Characters can make or break a story. You can create the finest landscapes, the greatest stories, the most remarkable writing but you cannot make your stories live unless you have characters.

This came to mind with some entries into this quarter’s Global Short Story Competition. Here’s some thoughts on how those writers got it right.

They described their physical characteristics but picked only the salient information

They made the reader visualise the person by thinking about the small things which make them stand out, make them live.

They captured their demeanour.

They described their views, their emotions, they type of character.

They did not pack the information in all at once, rather revealing the character as the story progressed.

They made sure the main characters are strong enough to carry the story on their shoulders.

And they made sure we care about them - not necessarily like but care.

Above all, their characters were REAL.

Still time to enter this quarter’s competition at www.inscribemedia.co.uk

John Dean

Hints on character and place in fiction

These are some of the handy hints from our free writers’ toolkit . We’ll be running a few more over the days to come but the full guide can be downloaded from the home page of our website at www.inscribemedia.co.uk
　



A sense of place

It is crucial if you write about a place that the reader can see it.

You have choices: do you write rich and vivid prose to paint a word picture or do you keep it minimalist - describe a tree in a park and we all see a different tree and a different park? Perhaps we only need to say it is a tree in a park?

Whatever you do, do not make it too long, you do not have a lot of words to play with in a short story.

If you seek to describe the setting, and the reader does need something to focus on, seek to use the following components:

1 Physical characteristics - what does it look like, any quirks which bring it to life?

2 Use your reader’s senses - what does the place smell, taste, sounds like?

3 What does it feel like to be there?


A sense of being

Creating characters

You can create the finest landscapes, the greatest stories, the most remarkable writing but you can not make your stories live unless you have characters. They are your vehicle to tell the story.

Characters have jobs to do within the story, making things happen, imparting information, allowing other characters to react to them etc

They should also be realistic (unless in over-the-top comedy where stereotypes can sometimes work) - your reader should feel that your characters can actually walk into the room.

When creating a character, describe what they look like and how they move, speak, react, dress etc but also try to get into their head - how do they think?

Keep secrets, reveal the character as the story progresses.
John Dean

Do I know you?

My teaching of writers is based around the idea of engaging the reader and much of that comes from creating compelling main characters.

Most leading characters tend to be a Dynamic Character (sometimes called Round or Developing), a character who changes during the course of a story or novel.

I always think it helps to see how much you know about your character - you may not use all the information but it informs your writing, especially when it comes to changing them as the story progresses.

Here’s your starter for ten

1 Where does your character live?

2 How old is your character?

3 Have you got the right name for him/her?

4 What does your character look like?

5 What kind of childhood did he or she have?

6 What does your character do for a living?

7 What does your character do as a hobby

8 How does your character deal with conflict and change?

9 Who else is in your character’s life?

10 What is your character’s goal or motivation in this story?
Struggle with any of them and there’s more work to be done in developing them. Struggle with them all and you have created a cardboard cut-out!

Oh, and don’t forget to let them grow - lists are all very well but the key to real characters is the organic development that happens when you write.

John Dean

Creating characters

Characters can make or break a story. You can create the finest landscapes, the greatest stories, the most remarkable writing but you cannot make your stories live unless you have characters.

This came to mind with some entries into this month’s Global Short Story Competition. Here’s some thoughts on how those writers got it right.

They described their physical characteristics but picked only the salient information

They made the reader visualise the person by thinking about the small things which make them stand out, make them live.

They captured their demeanour.

They described their views, their emotions, they type of character.

They did not pack the information in all at once, rather revealing the character as the story progressed.

They made sure the main characters are strong enough to carry the story on their shoulders.

And they made sure we care about them - not necessarily like but care.

Above all, their characters were REAL.

Still time to enter at www.inscribemedia.co.uk

John Dean