How To Create Strong and Memorable Characters

Did you know your stories could be getting rejected based on your characters? Frightening thought, isn’t it?

If you’ve ever wondered how you can create multi-layered characters that will become so real they live on in the minds of your reader, pop over to From The Write Angle where I’m sharing five surefire, easy tips on how to create strong, memorable characters.

See you over there.

True That!: Characters and Keepin’ it Real

Okay, so I’ve been talking about characters a lot lately. Or so it feels. (Maybe it’s all just actually swirling in my head and isn’t coming out all over the place like I think it might be.) Anyway, today I was getting blood work done and was chatting with the lab lady while she was prepping and drawing blood. As I was leaving she wished me and the kids a good day and I wished her the same. I added, “I hope nobody passes out in your chair and falls out!” (Thinking of how someone I know happened to do that once.) Because really, when you’ve been talking about how you and the kids are going swimming and going to have a lovely day and she’s saying she’s stuck at work all day… what do you say to wish her a good one?

Funny enough… she was actually kind of appreciative of my comment and said, “Thanks. It’s actually been a really bad month for that. All the lab techs have been noticing that, even in the next town over.” Huh.

I was so surprised I didn’t quite know what to say. And, of course, I was burning with curiosity. (As usual.) Why are people passing out? Is it the weather? Fasting? Rushed lab techs who give too sharp a jab with the ol’ needle? (Mine was amazing actually, hardly felt the needle go in.) Are they looking at the vials fill with blood and getting woozy? (Really, you shouldn’t do that! Watching vital life fluid drain from your body is never a good idea.)

And being a writer, I, of course, turned this juicy tidbit back to my writing. Hmmm. My characters… what would constitute a good day or bad day at work? What would be strange for them? What leads to a good day, a bad day, a busy day, an interesting day, boring day, etc.? And how do I find that out? Research! Imagination! And chatting with people in the profession. Speaking of which, I think I’d better go make one of my characters into a lab tech….
Have a good one and may your keyboard’s keys resist the urge to pop off!

On Backstory: Part 3

I was yammering on about backstory this week, which was kind of fun, actually. (See Part 1 here and Part 2 here.) It’s much more fun than cleaning the house and all those other things I’ve been meaning to do. I realized afterwards that I should probably toss out some examples on what I think are some stellar displays of weaving in a character’s backstory. These examples are a form of ‘telling’, yes, but it is done in such a simple and straight forward way that it does not slow down the story, is a nice little tidbit where we need it/want it in the story and it gives the reader more than one might realize at first glance.
Here are two examples that I like:

“It didn’t spill over so that he could relax, and instead he grew angry at his mother for crashing her car, at the doctors for not saving her, at his father for being his father, at himself for drinking, at Ming for being scared.” (From Bloodletting and Miraculous Cures by Vincent Lamb. Fitzgerald is a pre-med student and Ming is his love interest. She has rejected him, and he is getting drunk.)

A bit on what is important here. The orange bit, to me, says why he wants to become a doctor. It speaks to his motivations as a character and where he is mentally and physically as well as speaks to an event that has shaped his life and continues to shape it. Lamb could have gone on for a few paragraphs about Fitzgerald’s motivations and how his mother’s death affected him and that he aspires to be that doctor who doesn’t let moms die, etc, etc. Or, he could have done like he did. Simple. To the point. And for me, so much more effective.

The second example is trickier to show. It is from Meg Cabot’s Size 14 Is Not Fat Either. It is a sequel to Size 12 is Not Fat and it covers a lot of ground in the first 2-3 pages in terms of catching new readers up on who this Heather Wells person is. Yet, it is still entertaining for those readers who are already familiar with Heather Wells and what she stands for. In the second paragraph we are already discovering that she is a musician when she is getting a coffee on the way to work. She slips it in with comments referring to the barista and back to herself like so: “I bet he plays the guitar. I bet he stays up way too late at night, strumming, the way I do.” And later in the paragraph: “No time to shower before work, because he was up so late practicing. Just like me.” So, by having the main character comparing herself to another character, we learn a lot about her. A few paragraphs later we learn that she is a former popstar, she is overweight, she has a new job, she doubts her song writing talents, and on and on. But the important thing here is that we discover this all in an entertaining way that pulls us deeper into the story, gets us feeling those same emotions as Heather and keeps tugging that story forward. We are so interested in finding out if this cute 20-something barista is going to ask her out (he did check her out after all), that we breeze right past all these backstory tidbits, right up to the burn at the end of the scene. Ouch! That rejection totally stung!

In a nutshell: brilliant.

Tell The Truth

…and nothing but the truth when it comes to your characters.

I’m working my way through Ray Bradbury’s Zen and the Art of Writing and every few pages I come across something that goes *ping* in my writer’s brain. Last night, he described how a character he never intended to write about came to him and said, “Tell the truth about me.” (Page 113) And because he is a writer who listens, he had to. The result? An honest and acclaimed piece.

Every day when a writer sits down at their paper or keyboard, their characters ask us to do this. In our best work we not only listen, but we comply. We relax our minds and shut the doors to thinking and we bring forth something honest and true. (And sometimes discover something so shocking it jolts us, such as our beloved character is having an extramarital affair.)

When we don’t listen, when we don’t comply, when we push and shove our ideas of story onto our characters, that is when we fall apart, get writers block, and create stilted stories that don’t work, that don’t speak.

I’ve been procrastinating on my work in progress because I am at a point where I have to sit back and think. Or so I thought. Maybe all I need to do is sit back, relax, and channel my characters’ inner truths and those character arcs will place themselves on the page, weaving and tying themselves to the other characters in a way that wouldn’t happen if I pushed it.

How about you? Do your characters force you to tell the truth?

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When Characters Do Bad Things

I was peacefully writing away yesterday afternoon.

La, la, la.

That was me. I began a new chapter with a new character. He carefully slipped out of the house in the morning, being extra careful not to wake his wife who didn’t need to get up for a few more hours. Off he went to work, the ever-so safety conscious employee. All day he works alongside his longtime buddy. Then he shocks me. As he is driving away from the plant, he drives downtown and meets his buddy’s wife for a long-standing affair! They even have a hotel room booked for every Wednesday from 3:30 to 5:30. I was shocked. So shocked I almost stopped writing. Seriously. My fingers paused. My brain leapt scrambled against the brick wall it had been flung against and my jaw dropped.

I stuttered. I blinked. I couldn’t believe it. Sure, in the past my characters have done some pretty zany stuff. But they have never, NEVER done anything that I would disapprove of. And this guy did. I created a cheater and I didn’t know. I’m really quite choked at him. Why would he do this? He’s a good guy with good relationships. Or, at least, so I thought.

I had to stop writing. I left him at the hotel room door. It was hard writing about this as it came so out of left field. The character will stay. The affair will stay. And I will get over it.

What surprised me the most was maybe not his affair, but how shocked I was. I started jumping on what was flowing from my fingers onto the screen. I was getting in the way when I was in the groove and the right, honest words were hitting the page.

I honour the groove, and yet, my brain was stuttering at my fingers, so I had to quit. I was afraid I was going to spoil it. That I was going to get in the way of the story.

Has that ever happened to you? Have your characters shocked you so thoroughly you had to put down the story and compose yourself?