Tag Archives: applied techniques

Technique

Your character’s thoughts—in real time

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This entry is part 5 of 14 in the series Deep POV

So we’ve established that it’s important to get your readers into your character’s head right at the start of the scene, and to convey the character’s voice. Once you’ve got that down, we stay in deep POV by living the character’s perceptions and thoughts—including their thought process—along with them.

Show, don’t tell—for real

The deeper the POV, the more important it is to show instead of tell. In a fairly limited POV, you often get simply the conclusions the character reaches: “She was dowdy.” “He was tall.” In deeper POV, we want to see more of the character’s thoughts that led to these conclusions.

Contrast these two:

Andrea turned around to find a very tall, very angry man looming behind her.

Andrea turned around to find a set of shirt buttons. Shirt buttons? She followed the column of buttons up, her neck arching back to peer at the scowl looming above the crisp collar.

In both passages, we get that the man’s considerably taller than Andrea, and that’s he unhappy. You could take the showing further by describing the scowl. This all depends on the context—if she’s only got enough time to catch a glimpse of him before he robs her/hits her/runs away, you’ll want to skip to the conclusion. If meeting this man is important or you want a specific effect, you can draw it out even more.

This showing requires you to create images that your readers can visualize through specific detail.

Use detail

Detail helps us to sets us in place. Using our characters’ interests and passions as a guide to what they notice and how they talk about it, we can convey a stronger sense of the events, people and places in our story.

Be specific in your detail. Specific images convey much more meaning than vague, generic references. A Beemer gives a very different interpretation than a beater, and both of which are more useful to us as writers than the word “car.”

Then draw the conclusion

The conclusions our characters reach about people, places and events are more powerful when they’re supported by details. But instead of laying out the character’s conclusion and then backing it up with the specific evidence, take things in a logical order to make those conclusions comprehensible and powerful.

So, first we notice the details (through showing, not telling), and then we put those specific details together to come to a conclusion. Here’s another comparison to illustrate the difference:

Jack hid in the corner just before Erica walked in. She was eager to see him. She scanned the room for him.

No true details, conclusion first—this comes off to me as very much “telling” instead of “showing.”

Jack hid in the corner just before Erica walked in. Leaning forward, she cast her eyes about hopefully, eyebrows drawn up as if she silently asked herself where he was. She was eager to see him.

This paints a much more vivid picture—we know what Jack sees, and with the detail, we see it ourselves. In this instance, the detail might be so strong we don’t need the conclusion at all.

Now, everything has its reasonable limits. The amount of detail—or even its use at all—depends, of course, on the specific context. We can skip to conclusions in the middle of a car chase. The hero and heroine meeting for the first time calls for a bit more notice of detail. To keep the thoughts “feeling” like real time, be sure to match the amount of detail—and how you work it in—with the pace.

Next week, we’ll look at the words you should—and shouldn’t—avoid for deep POV!

How do you show your characters’ thought process to help portray the places, events and people in your story?

Photo credits: buttons—Emily Lucima; eyes—Charlie Balch

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Technique

Making readers love (or at least understand) unlovable characters

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This entry is part 8 of 11 in the series Creating sympathetic characters

By Julie Wright

There is a song by The Smiths where the first line is, “I know I’m unlovable. You don’t have to tell me . . .”

Sometimes we write characters like that, characters who are hard to relate to, hard to like, hard to care about.

Hi. My name is Julie Wright. I write those kinds of characters. The problem is that I never feel like I’m writing those kinds of characters. I happen to love the unlovable. I think sarcasm is funny. I think bitter people sometimes have a right to a good rant. And I think the flaws in each person—the flaws we all have whether we admit it or not—make us wonderfully human.

Jordan has been doing a blog series on creating sympathetic characters. She’s already mentioned the “street rat” and the princess. So you understand already that flawed does not have to equate to evil. But sometimes we writers forget to add the details of our thief sharing his entire meal with a few beggar children. Sometimes we writers know those details, but never get them on the page. For example:

In my novel My Not-So-Fairy-Tale Life, my heroine is horrible. She is sarcastic, bitter, angry and rebellious. She is angst personified. I love her. But not everybody loves her right at the beginning. She’s one of those characters you have to learn to love. While submitting the book in the beginning, I failed to put in those details about her past and present that made her lovable. I knew those details, but it took me a couple of edits to get them down on the page so the reader knew too. Once those details were there, even if you started out not liking her, you couldn’t help but at least understand her by the end.

To start out with someone who is reprehensible and then grow to love them makes for a fun journey for the reader as well as the character. It allows the reader access to understand other people, other motives, other walks of life. It allows the reader to grow and find compassion and comprehension within themselves.

I don’t write the unlovable as a moral object lesson for readers. I think I write them because I was so unlovable for so many years of my youth and I can relate to the unlovable. I am horribly flawed and yet I feel like I have worth—value. If I feel that way, then surely others do as well.

But how do you write snarky, ill-tempered characters and keep readers from throwing your book across the room, or worse from writing you and demanding a refund?

Daphne Atkeson, someone I know from an online writer’s group for YA novels, created what she calls a “cheat sheet” of ways to establish early empathy (not sympathy, if we feel sorry for our characters, we end up making their journey too easy) for a character. She gathered this information from several craft books by Billy Mernitt, Michael Hague, Donald Maass and Orson Scott Card.

Here is her list with her permission:

  • undeserved misfortune
  • Liked or loved by someone else
  • Good at something, has a strength
  • Trying to improve or be good
  • Wit or boldness
  • Aware of his flaws
  • Has some power
  • Has a familiar flaw
  • Shows forgiveness
  • Self sacrifice

In My Not So Fairy Tale Life, I had to incorporate a lot of these things from this list in order to make her relatable to the reader. She was violently abused and neglected as a child so much of her thorny personality was built on purpose as her way of defending herself from getting hurt (undeserved misfortune). Her brother, who is a really nice guy, loves her irrevocably (liked or loved by someone else). She is actually incredibly intelligent (good at something).

When she finds out she’s pregnant and goes to abort the baby, she recognizes she is on a path she can’t continue down so she doesn’t go through with the procedure and works hard to make sure the baby is healthy through the rest of her pregnancy (trying to improve or be good). She VERY sarcastic and has a comeback for just about everything (wit or boldness). She is painfully aware of her flaws. In spite of the abuse she learns to forgive her parents (shows forgiveness). In the end, she gives her baby up for adoption because she knows she isn’t ready or grown up enough to raise a child. And even though it hurts, she gives the baby to a family who is ready for it (self sacrifice).

Lots of books incorporate the flawed character. Janette Rallison did a smashing job with her book Just One Wish. The character breaks a ton of rules, gets into all kinds of mischief, but she’s doing it all for her little brother who has cancer. You can forgive her the lunacy because you understand the motive.

Never forget motivation. Motivation is the driving factor behind everything we do. Along with motivation, a character must have:

  1. PURPOSE—most important—what he wants, must be specific
  2. CREDIBILITY—believable
  3. EMPATHY—not sympathy, don’t feel sorry for him, identify with problem.
  4. COMPLEXITY—inner conflict, more than one side, surprise us with unseen aspects, contradictions and quirks

To the degree that your character feels passionately invested in his own life, the reader will feel invested, too. We need to be able to root for the character, to care whether or not the character wins the prize. To do so, we need to make sure the character DESERVES to win. In the original movie Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory, we realize that even though Charlie stole a little Fizzy-Lifting Drinks, he still deserved to win because he was a good kid.

The reader also needs to know what is at stake. For Janette’s character in Just One Wish, her brother’s life was very literally at stake. In the book The Hunger Games, the main character’s own life was at stake. She needed to get all of her primal needs met (food, shelter, means of defending herself). In the book Sun and Moon, Ice and Snow by Jessica Day George, the life of her beloved is at stake.

Something has to be on the line and it has to be a big something. Your character needs to stretch and grow and they cannot accomplish that if they have silly, paper-thin conflicts to deal with. When you inflict pain and trouble on your hero, you reveal him for who he is. You learn what motivates him, what is important to him. When you inflict pain and trouble on your hero, you discover what exactly it is that makes him the hero.

About the author
Julie Wright is extremely busy as a wife, a mother of three, a rural grocery store owner, and an author of or contributor to six novels and books on writing craft. She blogs at Scattered Jules and Writing on the Wall. Her latest book, Eyes Like Mine, is available for pre-order now.

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Technique

Creating sympathetic characters – techniques in action

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This entry is part 7 of 11 in the series Creating sympathetic characters

Can I tell you a story?

Once upon a time, there was a young man who was a habitual thief. Even though his family was perfectly capable of providing for him, and even though he was perfectly capable of working to support himself, he stole everything he owned and stole from anyone he could. He even subjugated innocent animals to make them steal for him.

In the same kingdom, there was a beautiful princess. Rich, powerful, handsome, kind men traveled from all over the world at the mere hope of winning her hand. Her doting father gave her everything she could ever want, and all he asked was that she marry, so that he could rest assured that she would be taken care of when he was gone. (Well, okay, he also would have liked to play with his grandkids before he went, too.) But the princess spurned and humiliated every suitor that came her way and simply refused to marry.

I know exactly what you’re thinking—you can’t wait for these two to get together for their happily ever after, huh? (Well, you have to admit, this does sound like it could be a prequel to The Great Gatsby, and then they could retreat into their money or their power or whatever it was that kept them together. . . . Anyway.)

But I’ll bet that you know and love a story with highly similar characters. This princess and this *ahem* street rat got a few new attributes in this retelling to make them a little less sympathetic. But in the hands of masterful character builders, by the time you know all the characters’ names, you’re rooting for them to find one another and fall in love.

How do we make these wretched people likeable? Here’s how it was done in the story I drew this from:

  • Start off with a framing story to set up how important the hero is, how legendary he is, and hint that great things will happen to this “diamond in the rough.”
  • He steals out of necessity—he’s an orphan, and he has to steal to eat.
  • He is persecuted—the city’s guards catch him stealing quite regularly and chase him through the streets.
  • He is smart and charming, and evades the guards through trickery.
  • After working hard to get away with a single loaf of bread (and sharing with his animal sidekick), when he sees two hungry orphans he gives them his whole meal.
  • A rich, haughty guy tries to tell our hero off completely without justification, and the crowd laughs. But our hero will have none of that and throws haughty guy’s words back in his face.
  • But rich, haughty guy gets the last word—he says to our hero, “You are a worthless street rat. You were born a street rat, you’ll die a street rat, and only your fleas will mourn you.” Then the palace doors slam shut, making sure our hero can’t retort and reinforcing just how destitute he is—and in his heart of hearts, we can see he worried that rich, haughty guy is right. (Very like Scarlett.)

And that’s the first seven or eight minutes (and I didn’t even mention how he saved the orphans’ lives). The heroine, of course, wants to marry for love, and all her suitors are only interested in power and money. Her father could easily be cast as a bad guy—the evil tyrant forcing her to marry against her will—but in this treatment, he keeps those nice sentiments that we gave him before.

Okay, if you haven’t guessed it by now, I’ll just tell you: our hero is Aladdin from the Disney animated film. And yeah, it’s a kids’ film, so the characterization can be a little . . . well, strong. (How do you convince a five-year-old that the guy stealing on screen is actually the good guy?) But at the same time, it’s done fairly (or at least relatively) believably.

What do you think? What movies or books do you see good characterization of otherwise yucky characters?

Photo credit: money grabber—Steve Woods

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Technique

Techniques for sympathetic characters

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This entry is part 6 of 11 in the series Creating sympathetic characters

As I mentioned before, I’ve been using the term “sympathetic characters” as shorthand for “characters whom the reader can identify with.” Creating reader identification is the ultimate goal here, because, as James N. Frey says in How to Write a Damn Good Novel, II, a character the reader can identify with is the key to creating the fictive dream—to immersing the reader into the world of the story (not to mention the mind of the character). And in that book, Frey outlines specific techniques to create that reader identification.

Sympathy

Frey goes so far as to say that you have to make the reader feel sorry for the character. I don’t know that I’d say that—but I would say that you have to let the reader see your character struggling. That essentially what Frey conveys—let the reader see the character as lonely, disadvantaged, put upon, sad, confused, unpopular, unfulfilled, imperiled, etc. As Frey concludes:

Sympathy is the doorway through which the reader gains emotional access to a story. Without sympathy, the reader has no emotional involvement in the story. (9-10)

And sympathy is a stepping stone to the next technique:

Identification

The next step is getting the reader to support the character’s goals and aspirations. While a character doesn’t have to be admirable, Frey stresses, the easiest way to get readers to support a character’s goal is to make sure their goal is noble.

And as a side note, it’s good to make that goal clear. It doesn’t have to be the character’s ultimate goal of the story right off the bat, either—but getting that in there pretty soon seldom hurts.

Once you’ve got the reader on board with your character’s noble goals, draw them in deeper with:

Empathy

Now we want to get the reader feeling what the character’s feeling—we want to instill in the reader the same emotions and responses. And, Frey says:

You do it by using the power of suggestion. You use sensuous and emotion-provoking details that suggest to the reader what it is like to be [the character] and to suffer what he is suffering. In other words, you create the story world in such a way that the readers can put themselves in the character’s place. . . .

You can win empathy for a character by detailing the sensuous details in the environment: the sights, sounds, pains, smells, and so on that the character is feeling‐the feelings that trigger his emotions. (19)

This doesn’t mean that every sad sack character should be trudging through the pouring rain (to the courthouse to try to win his freedom from a wrongful conviction)—though it might help. It does mean, however, that it helps for the character to take notice of his environs, and for them to mirror (or, possibly, contrast or mock) his internal emotional state.

But wait! There’s more! And the last step to fully transporting the reader is one we’ve mentioned here before:

Inner conflict

It’s not enough to have the characters struggling against some external forces (to gain sympathy)—we must also see them battling internally. This is the last step here because we need the readers to fully support the character’s goals and feel what they’re feeling before an internal moral debate will matter to the reader.

But once we have the readers feeling what the characters are feeling, then we can use internal conflict to fully transport the reader into the character’s head and the world of the story.

Frey’s book How to Write a Damn Good Novel, II was the one of the best resources I found for detailing the actual techniques of fostering reader’s sympathy for characters (and if this all seems very abstract here, check out the book—it’s replete with examples to make his points clearer, as well as his full arguments, which are much better stated than my summaries).

As I mentioned before, “Sympathy without Saintliness” by Alicia Rasley is another great resource—an online article with a few exercises at the end to help you increase your character’s sympathetic factor. Also, Julie Write posted an “unlovable character checklist” of factors you can use to get your readers onboard with even the most unlovable characters over on Writing on the Wall.

What do you think? How have you striven to create characters your readers can understand and cheer for?

Photo credits: Name tag—Sanja Gjenero; “Rain” (waterfall)—Flávio Takemoto

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