Creating Character

Wow, hey! Long time… I got sucked up in Nano, then post Nano. What a weird/bad/good/awesome experience that was. 90 something thousand words between two different novels—one very bad, one very good and still a wip I hope to finish in the next couple weeks.

Anyway!

I’m talking to my sister yesterday about 2 of my ms’s. One is an older edit in progress and the second is my current wip. She’s never read any of my stuff before (full time mom of 3, full time job, and a college student doesn’t leave her much spare time) and was very excited over my babies. Yes, they’re my children, lol. She, like many others, said she loved my books. That said, she’s not a writer so I have to take that with a grain of salt. Plus, she’s family. It’s like a given. I only ever really listen to my crit partners.

What she said that got me thinking, though, was that she loved my characters. She thought that while I had awesome stories, my characters were what made them. She loved and hated and felt for them.

So I have to ask myself what it was that I did. What steps did I take to create my characters? And I really had no idea. If you’re anything like me, they speak to you. Seriously, Emma, my latest main character, woke me up in September with something very close to this:

In a world where women are a rare commodity, Emma Tucker is man's greatest enemy. She fights for freedom but is held captive to the love of two men—one her husband, the other her worst enemy. If only she could remember which one is which.

I didn’t have her name, but I knew her story. That, of course, is the refined version which used to be my first paragraph. Emma literally woke me out of a dead sleep and forced me downstairs to my computer. I wrote an entire page for her, then put the ms to bed. This is what I do for my characters. I listen to them.

Can you imagine if I’d not gotten out of bed? That paragraph hovered in that moment of half wake half sleep and I never would have remembered that in the morning. Never. Now I have a pitch.

So, listening, I guess you could say is step one.

Step two: I pay attention! Not just to my favorite characters in books. Don’t you have some favorite TV shows or movies? What makes those characters great? What mannerisms make them unique? Have you ever watched something without the sound? Try it if you haven’t. I swear, you’ll learn even more about that character. There’s so much to learn just by watching.

I truly believe great characters are in the details. Everyone wants to give their male leads these chiseled god-like features, but what makes them unique if you don’t do what Cassie Clare did to Jace in The Mortal Instruments? She gave him a chipped tooth. I’m beginning to hate characters who don’t have minor details like this. And I don’t think they have to be flaws. They can be anything. Laugh lines. A mole. Whatever. Find that actor/actress you’ve chosen to represent your mc and pick them apart. Find that character on television and pick apart how they react to things. Seriously, Chandler on Friends anyone? Lots of arm gestures, the vocal inflections, the way he bounces on his feet and talks with his eyes…. I could go on all day. What a great character.

Lastly, show, don’t tell. We hear it all the time. There is nothing worse than having your mc tell me how hot for teacher she is over the guy in the room. And then goes on and on and on about it. I want to yank my eyeballs out and bleed all over that book. Then request my money back.

Show me how hot that character is in the way he walks, talks, looks around, anything!! Describe them that one time and I’m golden. I don’t need a “Edward’s so sparkly and his eyes are so golden” every other page. I love the way a character can just walk in the room. Or leans against the wall… Take these pics for example. They each tell a different story, am I right?

              

Show. That’s all. Show me what makes them unique to you and they’ll be unique to me.

That’s all I have to say on the subject. Anything to add?