This past Saturday I was lucky enough to
present to the Downstate IL SCBWI. We talked about characterization and how to
make our characters leap from the page. Below are a few key points we touched
on, but let's hear from you. Help add to our discussion. How do you create your
characters? Where do you start? How do you make them worth reading?
What
are your character's scars?
Love it or loathe it, we all have a past
and that past has taught us to respond to the world around us. If your
character was ignored or treated badly when they were little, that’s going to
affect her as a teenager: she might search for comfort with a bad crowd, she
might dread turning off the lights, because a man broke into her parents' home
when she was little and she's never gotten over it. Scars like that makes your
characters human. We all have something that happened to us that still bothers
us, or we wish we could erase. It's what makes a real.
So...devil's advocate her, let's say
your character has no scars, maybe they had it too good. They grew up in a good
upstanding family. They were comfortable and happy. Their parents weren't pushy
or domineering, they literally grew up in that all American cookie cutter
family, that in most cases really doesn't exist, but let's say for the sake of
your story, it does. So use that to your advantage. Maybe that lack of pain in
their history, makes they easily susceptible to bad people or bad things,
they're too trusting, too easily swayed, or maybe their parents were so nice,
they spoiled them and they don't understand someone else's pain because they
never lived it. They never had that angst that most people have, so how can
they relate? That, in and of itself, is their scar.
Give
your character a driving force
What fixates your character? We need
them to care about something bigger than themselves. That said, turn your
character's passion into an obsession. When a character is obsessed with
something or someone, it drives urgency, conflict, in other words, your story.
Obsessions also show us a lot about the person.
Keep in mind, the obsession can be a
number of things. They can be obsessed with another person. Someone they love.
Someone they hate. Someone they don't even know. They can be obsessed with
winning something, like the championship game or even something as simple as
the gold medal for baking at the state fair. Stories with that angle
can be funny too. Think about, sixteen-year-olds Francine and Betty fighting it
out cage-match style in a livestock pen over who had the best Dutch apple? Your
characters can also be obsessed with a concept. You know, like the alien movie
where everyone who's "been called" paints that darn mountain in their
mashed potatoes and goes to find the spaceship? (Insert Close Encounters music
here.)
Don't
bore with backstory
You create your characters for the sake
of the story…but your readers need to feel they've been around a lot longer
than the time it takes to read your book.
Backstory is an excellent tool for
building characters, but don't make the mistake of giving too much. If you
spend too much time creating a character's history it will be at the cost of
your actual story. You'll end up bogging your readers down with too much
detail. Your readers are smart, so let them be. They will fill in the blanks on
their own and in so many ways that's better because not only are they seeing
your world, but the parts you leave out will be created in the minds of your
readers, making that world somewhere they really
want to be. You can have steadfast parts of your world that the reader can't
change, but for the rest, the reader may only need hints, suggestions, to know
the rest of the world exists. Once the reader is embedded in the world both you
and they created, they'll be in it for the long haul.
So, give us your tips on great
characters. Who are your favorite characters in children's lit? Give us some
advice on how to make our characters great, while avoiding the pitfalls!
Thanks so much to Anastasia, Linda,
Sherry, and John, the SCBWI network reps, for making our day so great and
productive!
You can always recognize Hilary's posts immediately, because she finds the best pictures.
ReplyDeleteLOL CATS RULE!
DeleteGreat post! I always try to identify what a character fears, because then I can make them face that fear in the story.
ReplyDeleteI love the lolcat! ha! This is timely because I'm finding one of my characters in this new project is pretty wooden. I like the idea of an obsession or something that clearly drives him, because I think that has a domino effect: if he's obsessed about A, then he'll be into B, and spend his time at C.
ReplyDeleteGreat suggestions!