Who Do You Love To Hate?
Who Do You Love To Hate?
How to Create Better Characters
How to create better characters is often a topic of discussion with writers. It’s generally agreed that to create great books, it’s important to create great characters. But how exactly do you do this? Is there a formula that one can recreate with each book or is this a subliminal instinctual process that gets better with practice?
Let’s Get Writing weekly character gems
Recently, in the course of my conversation on Let’s Get Writing with Susan Flanagan, author of Supermarket Baby and all-round interesting person, we discussed how characters in a book become real and insist on telling their story their way. Do they, indeed, develop themselves? An interesting thought. Or is it because we’ve created them, and we know them well enough to weave them into the story from their point of view?
In my interviews with many of my guests, I have often heard the same sentiment that characters emerge to tell their stories. But Susan took it one step farther. She suggested that when you reach a block in your writing and can’t move the story forward, you need to go back and get to know your characters better. Something is out of sync. Could writer’s block be a characterization issue?
Know your characters as well as your best friend or… enemy
If we know our characters well, we can better unveil how they might react in a situation or understand what we need to do to bring out their best or worst attributes. I think Emily Hepditch does that beautifully in her most recent book Alone on the Trail. She plants seeds in the earlier interactions and when she puts her characters under pressure, it raises the game to a whole new level.
What are some ways we can develop characters?
Sometimes I imagine my characters spending a day with me. I envision what that day might be like and what I might learn about them as we go about our business. There are questions I’ve learned to ask. Sometimes it takes a bottle of wine before they loosen up. Just saying…lol! You might even find it interesting to turn these questions on yourself as a fun exercise in self-discovery. (Definitely don’t forget the wine.) Here they are…
- How would you describe yourself in one sentence?
- What are you afraid of?
- What makes you vulnerable?
- What is your favourite food? Drink? Outfit? Addiction?
- Who’s hurt you? What scars can’t I see?
- Who do you love? Why?
- What are you obsessed with?
- What (or who) would you die for?
- What’s the best thing that’s ever happened to you? The worst?
- What do you love about yourself? What do you hate about you?
- Do you lie well?
- What’s your relationship with money?
Mistakes I’ve made
When I began my writing journey, I wanted to love all my characters. I didn’t want to create anyone who couldn’t be part of my circle of friends. So my antagonists tended to suffer in mediocrity, living two-dimensional lives like a paper cut out. I didn’t spend much alone time with them or think them through because I preferred to spend my time with my best buds. But I’ve come to realize that better stories require my enemies to receive as much respect as my friends. No, I don’t have to love everyone, I just have to tolerate them and figure out how to get even. Taking the time to develop a history and profile of each of your characters can be fun. It’s also a great way to discover those things that don’t connect, that might be fuel for conflict or love.
How do you create characters?
Please share your thoughts on this. Do you create character sketches? Do you feel you’re in control of your characters one hundred percent of the time? I’d enjoy a good discussion.
For more information on my recent guests, please visit Susan Flanagan, author of Supermarket Baby, at www.susanflanagan.ca and Emily Hepditch may be found at www.facebook.com/emilyhepditchbooks.
Meanwhile…
You must excuse me…who is it I love to hate? I think it was that guy in my draft of Betrayal. It was so much fun creating him.
Love,
Kathryn