Designing characters

 Flicking through one of my notebooks this morning and found this:

Bad storytelling: 

lack of progression; false motivation; redundant characters; empty subtext .

They all result in bland, boring text. So says Robert McKee in his book STORY published in 1999 and I wouldn't dare disagree with him. Why would I? what he says is true.

Designing a story: 75% of the work goes into deciding who are the characters; what do they want; how do they go about getting it; what stops them; what are the consequences. 

I don't spend long enough on designing. I'm always so keen to get going, to start writing my characters and get into the story. Maybe I should have spent longer on the  consequences of ignoring good advice.

It can be easy or it can be hell

 

My characters are talking to each other. They are a team, so they have to.

Dialogue can be easy or it can be hell.

And how to make them all sound different – more like themselves and not like the other guy. It ain’t easy. The ideal is that you should be able to tell who said what without the dreaded he saids and she saids. Nice work if you can manage it, as someone once said.

I usually get the words down and then add necessary tags so that we don’t get totally lost about who said what to whom. Then I look to make it more interesting and that means adding some action. What are they doing while they have this dialogue? How are they feeling? Is that coming across in what they say, or have I got to resort to telling readers how my characters feel? Maybe I can get away with saying she is angry if I say “her anger rose until it boiled over in a splurge of boiling hot words.” (A bit wordy but you get the idea.)

I like to add northern dialect to some of my characters, but its easy to go overboard with it. I know what they’re saying, and I hear it around me most days but dialect may not carry to the far corners of the world. Sometimes I toss in a glossary at the end and leave it at that.

It’s a balancing act I find entertaining.  Once I’ve done my best shot, I leave it and go back a day or two later when I do a read through. I have to do this. This time I’m glad I did because I’ve found characters talking about something that hasn’t happened in their world. I know it’s going to, but they shouldn’t know about it yet. So easy to get confused with time lines. They almost deserve a post to themselves.

Characters and charisma

 I read an interesting statement this week: 

there are only three ways to influence others: 

force, reason, or charm.

I must remember that when thinking about characters in a book. What do I think the  word charisma  actually means? Too many folk are labelled as celebrities these days. Most of them are unknown to me, so it seems celebrity does not mean global recognition, but recognition in a rather small pond. 

If someone is charismatic they are often described as magnetic, charming and beautiful or handsome. Biographies of these people often hint that at rock bottom they are simply greedy and have used one of those three words - force, reason or charm - to get what they desperately need. Underneath the charm, they are often found to be bullies, or narcissists and most have a need to win any battle that comes their way.

This sort of thinking has come to the fore recently and the buzz word is narcissist; the name Markle comes to mind. 

Authors can build these traits into a character. If your latest creations, like mine, are about crimes and working police, then you have lots of scope, for charismatic people choose jobs that bring them what they need. Many are lawyers, and police figure on the list, along with chefs and surgeons. The villains are often  tarred with the same characteristics. Remember all those murderers who charmed ladies into victimhood?

Early Dublin, Dubhlinn, Dyflinn

Dublin grew up over a 1,000 years ago at the lowest crossing point on the Liffey. The river was wide, shallow, endured high tides reaching far inland as well as flash flooding, and the river mouth was plagued with shifting sandbars. People began to settle on the east-west ridge south of the Liffey in two communities. First to establish itself was Ath Cliath, a trading settlement and then the partly ecclesiastical centre named Dubhlinn for the black pool above which it stood; both were certainly present before the early seventh century though no one can say for sure exactly when the settlements first appeared.

The annals say the Vikings arrived in AD 841 and settled at Dubhlinn, and gave the name their own twist, rendering it as Dyflinn and one or two other variants which very much depended on the spelling powers of the recorder. They moved toward Ath Cliath by AD 900 possibly because the four major highways (defined as a road on which two chariots could pass one another) converged on the town, which would certainly have enhanced Viking trade. The name Ath Cliath means “a ford of hurdle-work,” so presumably it was also right on the crossing point. The river was said to be 300 metres wide at high tide with the ford only passable at low tide and then by a walkway constructed of slippery saplings woven into a mesh and fixed on piles of some kind.

The ninth century Viking longphort (a naval encampment) became a tenth century dun or castle. Across the River Poddle which sweeps around the base of Dyflinn, stood the assembly place called the Thingmot, anglicised as Thingmount, a flat-topped mound where Norse assemblies were held. Nearby are the burial mounds of the Scandinavian kings, known in Old Norse as haugr or haugar and believed to form the basis of the medieval name Hogges or Hoggen green. (I’m rather inclined to believe the name might have something to do with pigs, but what do I know?)

Three hundred metres to the north-east stands the Long Stone, which commemorates either the first landing place, or the re-taking of Dyflinn after one of the Hiberno-Norse battles, or both. One map shows the Long Stone on a small island but as a bridge was built, the quays were dug out, silting up of the river changed the shoreline; the Long Stone appeared to move inland. Amlaib or Olafr Cuaran, father of Sitric Silkenbeard, is given credit for colonising Dyflinn and building the defensive embankments along Wood Quay against the warring Irish. Sitric continued the expansion of the town.

Making changes

 I'm looking through an old notebook to decide if there's anything worth keeping before I bin it, and there are one or two snatches of notes it wouldn't do me any harm to read again from time to time. (I didn't make a note of where I found these nuggets of information, but I went through a stage of buying Maass, Morgan, Snyder and Lyon so it is probably a synthesis of all they've said but in shorthand form a la Jen. The last post concerned scenes, and this post builds on that:

The beginning introduces characters, establishes their motivation and goals and introduces conflict. The middle develops the relationships and builds and intensifies the conflict. The ending brings all the separate pieces together through a climax and satisfying resolution.

Scenes equal action. The reader lives through it with the character. It is a bridge or transition with three elements – an emotional response to something in the previous scene, dilemma (either ongoing or something new) and a decision - how the character intends to go forward.

A sequel has only one character, usually not the person who was POV character in the previous scene – the reader should already have been given his thoughts.

Flashbacks come in the sequel, not in the scene. Two sequels might be needed back to back. They provide logic and plausibility to the story by letting readers know why a character does what he does. He may do the opposite when faced with conflict but then that too can be explained in the sequel.

So now, with all these thoughts at the forefront of my mind, I'm going through the nine chapters of the wip. Already significant details such as names and ages have changed, so I need to get things straight in my head before going on.

Writing - what's gender got to do with it?

I'm like everyone else in that I follow links on Twitter in the hope of finding something good. Sometimes I do, and one of the website I've bookmarked is this one: http://blog.janicehardy.com/  Take a  look at her home page and you'll see (if you are like me, that is) loads of titles to articles you simple must read. They don't disappoint, either.

I keep re-reading the one about the first 250 words of your book being the most important in the hope that eventually, I'll be doing what she suggests by instinct. It will filter through in a process something akin to osmosis. That's my hope, you understand. I think I really ought to read the one about forcing my hero to make moral choices, too.  Many readers, particularly women, I suspect, will dislike Matho for taking the child queen from his mother, and I suspect they'll dislike Meg Douglas even more for the same reason. But my justification is the characters lived in times when choices were hard, and if the characters can justify the act to themselves, if not to us, with out 21st century ethics, surely that is all that matters? They lived in a time when uttering the wrong word could send you to the stake to be burned alive.

My female characters are rarely the simpering type, and Meg Douglas is not a simperer. That some reviewers don't care for my ladies has become obvious to me. My female characters say what they think, and even if they don't say what they think aloud, their thoughts are honest. I didn't have sisters, and there were 40 years between me and my mother, so we didn't have any "girly" contact. She was always a figure of authority in the household, and said what she thought. Consequently, I don't write "girly" females. What you grow up with shapes what you become and it is devilish hard to contradict it. Because I had a brother, I can relate more easily to men, who always seem to me  much less judgemental, say what they think and then let you get on with it.

Perhaps the trick of fine writing is to transcend these things. I'm not saying it can't be done, but it is usually easy to tell if a book  has been written by a male or female author. It's just there in the writing, in the characters and their actions, even in the choice of theme. Possibly all unconscious, too. Writers probably have their audience in mind, and write to them. I can imagine the audience for thrillers, romance, vampires with varying degrees of success and allowing for blurring along the lines and edges as tastes overlap, but I do have a problem deciding the audience for literary fiction. They can't all be university professors, can they?

(Take note: the last comment is definitely tongue in cheek and meant to amuse.) And a further note: today's pic is Loch Crinan, which has nothing whatsoever to do with the content of the post. The black dot is probably a midgie on the lens looking for someone to bite. I still have the red blotches they caused that day.

First chapters

The best advice I ever read about first chapters was “re-write it.”

(The theory behind this advice is that the author is thinking her way through the facts of her characters and story when she first writes Chapter One., so it is usually crap.)

 I did that. Scrapped chapter One, and started with the original chapter 2. (But I wasn't so daft that I didn't keep a copy on my hard drive and a memory stick, just in case!)

Other advice is Start where the conflict begins, and include action. Don’t go into detail about characters that are never mentioned again. Ensure there is a flavour of the genre and a sense of setting and period.

So I removed all the exposition, and gave tantalising clues about future action. But somehow I never really loved that second version of my story.

Months later I decided I wanted the original first chapter back again to give a real feel for what was happening in the book. So I got out the original Chapter One, pared it down to the bone and added some character conflict between Matho and Harry to the main conflict because I know the characters so much better now after two years writing and re-writing. 

Suddenly sentences started flowing together in a way they never had before. Three bald sentences collapsed down into one graceful sentence and I thought I was really getting somewhere. Since it's a story with more than one viewpoint character, I decided to give my second protagonist, Meg, space in chapter one. After all, she's a large part of the conflict.

But now I have a fairly long first chapter. How long is too long? Where should I make the break? But at least the conflict is set up, and there are clues that my two main protagonists are destinied to clash head-on before too long.

That tricky Deep Third

Winter fields

I’m willing to bet I’m not alone in this - when a critiquer points out that my POV has slipped, my immediate reaction is, No it hasn’t! But then it gradually sinks in that the critiquer is correct, and I guiltily alter the wording to suit. Sometimes, occasionally, very occasionally, I look and think, No, it is better as it is.

It is easy to get confused about POV. All this talk of Deep Thirds and Omniscient can make one’s eyes glaze over and sleep is only an eye blink away, but today’s reader tastes must be considered. There was a time when authors could write as much Telling/Narrating as they pleased. Read any book written and published prior to the last decade and you’ll find the stuff I mean all too easily. Jane Austen and her colleagues are excused of course, because they are among the legendary Classic Writers. But try authors of the fifties and sixties – they headhop like mad and include info dumps without apology – things we wouldn’t get away with today.

 
The powers that be – whoever they are in the writing world - claim that having a narrator creates a distance between the character and the reader and that readers are put off by this. At its worse, the author gets onto the page and tells the reader what the character thinks or does. This is the dreaded Author Intrusion. Of course some very famous books have used that style because it best suits their story. 'Dear Reader, I married him' springs to mind.

The aim is to have a reader “walk in the character’s shoes”- and I know which publishing house coined that phrase! So to achieve this close connection between character and reader, we have Deep Third POV, where thoughts and actions are not given by a third party who seems to hovering above the character and telling the reader what’s going on. Oh, no. Thoughts and actions are delivered by the character, as in the examples below from my latest work Victorian Beauty due to be published very soon:-

“With a frustrated sigh, Melanie gripped her bag firmly, brushed through the low hanging branches and strode out across the lawn. If she were shot for it, she would not follow that drive an instant longer.”

“His eyes narrowed, and Melanie’s stomach clenched in response. Her tone had been a little too pert. Lord, it was so difficult to strike the right balance.”

I'm told the need to use italic font disappears when using Deep POV. Direct thoughts in the first person are usually rendered in italic font, and are really not necessary if you've really grasped Deep Third. Sometimes I’m tempted to switch from the third person into the first person, as in:-

“Melanie gripped her bag firmly, brushed through the low hanging branches and strode out across the lawn. If I am shot for it, I will not follow that drive an instant longer.” If I need to use italics,  I've learned it is a clue that something is Not Quite Right.

I look at the examples I’ve given and wonder if they are strictly Deep POV. perhaps there's an English version of Deep POV and an American version. I think I know the theory, but in practice I wobble a bit, and as I said at the beginning, POV can be utterly confusing. I think my reading history over the last xxx years inclines me to something that is almost Deep Third, but not quite.

However, one good thing that happens when writing Deep POV is that Telling virtually disappears except where you really need it. When you’re explaining something that gets your character from A to B, perhaps, or something mundane that must be mentioned but doesn’t require detail. It's Good and Useful then.

Ah well, off to practice some Deep Third POV.

Spring and writing

There may be writers who take half a day to decide where a comma should be placed in the wip, and there may be those who write sixteen thousand words in a day. It doesn’t follow that the former is a better writer or that one finished product is better than the other.

"Efficiency" and writers don’t seem to naturally go together.  Words like “muse” creep into conversations.  I agree with the writer who said that the slowest and dullest writing happens when she didn’t know what happened next in the story. The reason was because her writer's instinct didn't know what they should be trying to do, and so the right words failed to materialise. I agree: it makes an astonishing difference to my writing if I know what’s going to happen, and – just as important - why it is happening.

Thinking time is valuable.  One writer said she found time at the ironing board great for thinking out wriggles in the plot, so the next time I had the ironing board in place, I started thinking about my next chapter. Before I finished ironing the shirt, my mind had wandered to what I was going to cook for dinner. I wrenched it back to plot, and began another garment. Before I completed a sleeve, I was thinking about my last holiday and my next holiday, anything but plot. I need the discipline of sitting down at the computer to concentrate my mind so I do a few notes, or a chapter outline. A few notes about the progression of a scene works for me, too, and saves that awful feeling of getting triumphantly to the end and then realising you’ve omitted the most important fact of all. But if you can focus on plot while doing something else, do, because it is an invaluable skill.

Something else I’ve noticed is that writing about certain characters is easier than others. I assume that means I have more empathy with the character who comes to the page more easily. Subsidiary characters ought not to be cardboard cut-outs, but they are understandably less charismatic than the leading characters.

Most important of all - it’s important to get the story down, to have a first draft that you can then edit. To write effortless prose while working out a plot-line is something only the few can do. Editing too early in the process can soon stifle the flow. No matter how much the story changes as you charge along, getting to the end is vital. You can always go back and edit, as long as you have something to edit.

Yet more on conflict

Greenhouses at Chatsworth

Conflict also has to come through plot though it is not divorced from character.  Having a brand new character suffer tragedy on their first appearance in the pages won’t work because the reader is not emotionally involved with the character. Having said that, let me qualify the statement. The only way it will work is if the tragedy is an early event in the life of the hero or heroine and we’re going to find out in the rest of the book exactly why it mattered so much. This sort of event often sits at the front of the book as a prologue, and it has to grip the reader and make them want to find out what happened next.

Personally I’m not in favour of childhood incidents that then resonate through the life of the major character when we pick up the story thirty years later. For me this would be better handled as a mystery thread, making the reader wonder why the hero acts as he does until we find out at a late point in the story what that dreadful childhood incident was. If it’s something in the near past, say a year ago, then it’s OK to treat that differently, for then it adds a different element to the tale, because the reader knows that the hero will react badly to certain stimuli that are certain to arrive sooner or later.

I heard a tale locally of a writer reading her first page to her writing group. It began with graphic sex, which made everyone uncomfortable, not because of the sex, but because they had no point of reference. They didn’t know either character involved and therefore were not “clued in” to the story or the strangers performing such intimate acts.

 It’s a lesson worth remembering!

Romance secrets

Ovingham

In lots of romance stories, two characters meet – no, sorry, they more often collide – and claim they dislike each other, while as writers we expect our readers to understand that love is simmering just below the surface. Is this premise truly believable or should we dismiss it as absolute tosh?

Always in the romance genre there are problems as to why the two couldn’t possibly be thought of as lovers. He’s too proud, she’s too prejudiced. Rhett Butler is no certainly gentleman, while Scarlett is your true ladylike southern belle. (Put in your own names and see if they match what I’m about to say.) What happens as the story progresses? We find that Scarlett has it in her to cheat, lie and steal in a way that makes Rhett look positively gentlemanly. Darcy proves he has the guts to see his faults and change his ways, while Lizzie recognizes with dismay how hasty and ill-judged her speedy character assessments were - not only of him, but also of Whickham.

Are they really the disparate characters first presented to the reader, or are they much closer to each other in tastes, habits and thought? I think Darcy and Lizzie are alike in many ways. In fact, Darcy and Elizabeth admit as much, and the film Gone with the Wind demonstrates how similar Rhett and Scarlett are in their courage and desperate will to survive and keep their dependents alive.

Perhaps this is the true secret of the romance genre - that couples should share values and traits, however deeply they are hidden or obscured by initial impressions.

They’d have to have something to share, or their lives would be hell. Wouldn’t they?

Characters must have

More words of wisdom, this time on CHARACTERS. First of all, Don't Introduce a Character to No Purpose.

Always remember your character has to have one; he must be more than a gender stereotype. Err on the side of the specific, concentrate on features and qualities.

Above all, Ignore that Mirror!

Remember that a POV character knows what she looks like, and that a POV character "sees" whoever she thinks about.

Don't overdescribe clothes, and don't use politics as an accessory.

Lastly, but important - perfect people are boring.

As for SETTINGS - don't stop in the middle of an action sequence to describe the scenery. If you're running from a murderer you don't think "What a beautiful tree" as you tear by. Well, you wouldn't, would you?
Mention food only to advance the plot or illustrate a mood.

Reading the comments in a list like this, it is so easy to chuckle and think well, of course not. Which idiot would fall into such traps? But beginners do, and occasionally so do we all. I know I have. Food isn't one of my things, I'm happy to say, but I've read many potential books where each meal is described in loving detail and I suspect the author is salivating as she writes. All it does for me is make me groan and skip to the next bit.

My fault line, as it were, is describing outside locations. Less is more, I keep telling myself, hoping I'll learn the lesson eventually.

(Top pic is one of the orchards at Acorn Bank; bottom pic looking north west across Northumberland from the Roman Wall.)

Protagonists

One character takes over a story and sends the intended protagonist reeling. Is there a name for this? I don't know, but I suspect it is happening in my latest wip.

My intention was a male protagonist but I find a female keeps taking up the pages in a most demanding way.

She needs to be kept in check. Or I need to bring them together, perhaps, in a more meaningful way.

I'm thinking my male lead looks something like Aidan Turner in the BBC's "Being Human." (I watched the first episode and the last and thoroughly enjoyed them, but chose not to watch the intervening ones.

Strange decision, but there you go. The ghost (female) was a bit of a drag, forever bemoaning her fate. The werewolf was a sweet character deeply troubled by his present predicament - well, changing into a werewolf every full moon could make anyone a tad hysterical. The vampire, our beautiful AT, swore off blood. They all wanted to be human. Now why didn't I watch the middle episodes?

Possibly because there wasn't a great deal of storyline in episode one. The situation was great, but the action didn't quite match the promise of the premise. Something I must watch out for in the new wip. The main character must lead, must be proactive, must have something to do, a goal to strive for from page one. Publishers and agents pass over heroines who simply react to situations forced upon them. So, with that in mind, I must go do some work on my wip...

Protagonist v antagonist

This is Prudhoe Castle peeping above the trees not a stone's throw from where I live. The trees are magnificent at this time of year - finally in full leaf and so many shades of green.

I am getting to grips with my Regency novel now. I've read enough about writing to appreciate that that though some writers express it better than others, they are basically saying the same thing. The trouble is remembering it when writing!

Constant reminders seem to work for me, so let me jot down what the Gotham writers say about characters. (Remembering that this book is on screenwriting and they have done a separate volume of Fiction which may say something else - I won't know until I get hold of it)

The Protagonist initiates, must be appealing and have the ability to change and demonstrate an arc of change.

The Antagonist presents the strongest obstacle to the Protagonist's goal(s). S/he may/may not be the villain. Sometimes the Antagonist is a force within the Protagonist's mind. (A neat way of expressing the Protagonist's weaknesses)

Minor characters must have desires that integrate with or act against the basic MDQ (Major Dramatic Question, otherwise known as The Plot) They need to be differentiated from each other or they will rapidly become one dimensional.

They like new characters to be introduced in 2-4 lines, not all of it physical description. This I realise I have not done. I've allowed the hero/heroine to describe each other.

Tomorrow - scenes.

and a footnote - I'm still not sure if Gotham is a real place or where Batman hails from. My education is sadly lacking.

Characters

Isn't it strange how much a name matters when writing fiction?

I decided to change the name of my main male lead from Don to Rory in the wip and am slowly discovering that his character is changing as I write. Odd, as all I wanted to change was his name, not his personality. The story was finished, but this is a second draft, so really his character should have been fixed in my mind. It's a little unsettling to find that it isn't. I changed the heroine's name as well, but fortunately she hasn't begun to exhibit any strange quirks - yet!

I have finally decided that Sourcebooks don't want to know me. I sent my sub off in September last year, and waited patiently. I queried at Christmas, and yes, they had it. Since then nothing, in spite of three or four queries. That's sad.

Border Reivers and characters

Yesterday the Border Reivers group met at Morpeth and we all discussed writing blurbs. A weird art, and I'm not sure the meeting was productive as seven of us all had differing views on what was required for a really good blurb. Interesting, none the less, and I came away thinking definitely more practice required at writing the -- things.

I knew character names were important, but had not taken into account - silly me! - the differing views of others. Because I think Don and Julie are good names for H/h, I wonder why they conjure up an image of a forty-somethings in someone else's mind. Why are those names generally deemed old and stodgy? Is it a personal thing? Do they know someone of that age, with that name, and are pre-disposed to think every one called Don is like the man they know?

Or is the name itself dated? H'mmm. More food for thought. I chose Don because it was short, sharp, free of overtones (how wrong I was!) and fairly standard like Richard, James and John, the sort of names that persist through every generation. Call him Jake and I think of a six foot lifeguard I once knew in my distant youth - and that doesn't suit my character at all!

Last night was a late one due to a dinner dance and today will be taken up by dh's imminent departure for France, so I won't get much work done today. But next week - no distractions!

Changing midstream

I have decided to collapse two strands of family into one in my current wip. Makes for less confusion and two fewer characters, which I think will be of benefit. But it now means I have to go through carefully and delete/change all the pertinant references. Gives me a chance to polish at the same time, which is no bad thing.

After receiving the latest rejection from HM&B (after a year and a half!) on my Viking story, I borrowed a Sharon Kendrick from the library. I was tempted to hide The Sheik's Unwilling Wife because dh would scoff, I know he would. Much to my surprise I enjoyed the writing, though the story line is relatively simple. At 184 pages it is relatively short, too.

I've seen Ms Kendrick on brief snippets advertising M&B this year and understand she is one of their best and most successful writers. At last, I realised, by reading her story, how much internal conflict M&B want. I wish I'd done this ages ago, but there you are - we learn as we go. Then I began polishing/changing my latest wip, and thought - I'm not so far away now. I seem to have got the right idea at last. Though I do wonder why I didn't "get this" from all the historical M&B titles I've been reading over the last couple of years. Perhaps Ms Kendrick just does it better.

Oddities of writing

I'm up to 20,000 words and already I'm altering the synopsis to keep up with the way the story is going. Is this bad? I don't know. I read on a lot of blogs that authors use ennegrams, horoscopes and strict character analysis prior to starting a work while others just sit down at their computer and think, "Let's see what happens today."

Some say you have to know your character in detail before you begin, because they drive the story. I agree with the second half of the sentence, but not necessarily with the first. I start with a rough outline in my mind of where the story will go and who the characters are, but beyond that, they (and I) discover each other as we go along.

Hence the changes in the synopsis. Sometimes the characters just don't react the way I thought they would, and rather than force them into a mould they obviously don't want to go, I feel happier bending the synopsis around them. The changes are not huge. The goal will still be met; but it might be met by a different route than I first envisaged.

After all, you don't get to know a friend all in one huge gulp, do you? So why expect to get to know a character before you test them in different and possibly vexing situations?

Just as a footnote - our first taste of winter has arrived and it is quite a shock to the system. We have temperatures below freezing again yesterday, and forecast for tomorrow. Yesterday we walked by the river at Hexham and at midday the sun was beginning to catch the frost-rimmed leaves.

This was the view north across the river into Northumberland. If you click to enlarge, look through the trees and you might see the Roman Wall.
I'm kidding - you won't, but believe me, it is up there, about three miles beyond the river.