Oct
Creating Character Consistently
Some of you know that I went to the Emerald City Writers’ Conference in Seattle this weekend. What you may or may not know is that I actually learned something there. I know, wicked cool.
This one is simple: don’t forget your characterization when writing your characters.
What Cherry Adair meant by this (and by this, I mean by what I just wrote, since she never mentioned that line specifically) is that we all know the rule of threes: when planting clues, we want to give the reader 3 opportunities to digest the fact(s) before we get to the “payoff” at the end. How this applies to characterization, in particular, is that she recommends dropping in ONE example of your character’s trait in each POV scene. So if your hero is impatient, kind, and obsessed with money, then in Scene 32, show him being impatient. In Scene 33, show him being kind. If his next POV scene is Scene 35, then show him being obsessed with money in it. (Do the same for your heroine & villain’s POV scenes.) Repeat, as fits the story.
I am not consistently, consciously inserting my characters’ traits to my scenes. I think my books, overall, do a good job of showing the characters’ traits. But I’ve never sat down and thought hm, do I show Sean being lazy in this scene? Is Esmeralda excitable in this scene? Is Aunt Doofy loopy in this scene?
What about you? News flash, or News don’t?
Good point, Lacey. I never thought about it like that. However, I’ve noticed sometimes when reading books that some authors seem to want to show all of a character’s traits straight away, and the effect is nothing if not frightening.
I think showing them one at a time as you say is a very good idea. I don’t think I do it like that, at least not conscoiusly. It’s definitely something I have to look at when I go back for edits
October 29th, 2007 at 5:56 pmI’m about 2/3 through reading Dwight Swain’s Techniques of the Selling Writer right now, and one of the things he says is to go ahead and beat the reader over the head with the characterization b/c they’re reading, not analyzing, and if we as authors don’t remind them, they won’t remember, because they’re paying attention to the story, not the psychology. (Uhhh… run-on sentence much? Hopefully that made a little bit of sense.)
For ex, in HJ, my heroine had glasses and one BR mentioned every time the glasses came up she was always surprised again b/c she’d forgotten. “Every time” it came up means it came up often, right? Apparently not often enough. She kept forgetting.
I think characterization may be like that, too. In the first version of one of my stories, I had a hero w/ a bad rep. My pal Lacey pointed out that a bad rep was not enough–he needed to take every available opportunity to live up to that rep. Duh, right? And the story is (I think) so much stronger now that I have my characters acting like themselves. B/c I think that’s what it boils down to, in some ways.
Lacey does a kick-butt job of this. I [heart] her heroine Kitha. Kitha is sooo Kitha, in every single scene. Even when you know it’s going to be a train wreck of an encounter with the hero, you can’t help but flip the pages eagerly b/c the char arcs are so fabulous.
I do agree that overload is overkill, and when introducing a character to the reader for the first time(s), it’s probably best to stick with one key trait/tag at a time, give ‘em a chance to digest, then layer on some more.
Great post, Lace!
October 30th, 2007 at 6:42 amYou brought up a great point, Erica, talking about Daisy’s glasses. Traits and features are sort of the same yarn ball. Also, I think sometimes it really hurts the reader when they put the book down. Small details like glasses are easier to forget than others, but in the end, the author gets blamed for bringing stuff out of left field.
I’m reading a book now, Emily, where the author is banging me over the head with a very few, narrow number of character traits in a very repetitive fashion. I’m not enjoying it. I would like to see how those traits affect the character, but instead I feel like I keep being reminded they exist, like we’re building up to a big pay-off at the end. Subtle is better. Just don’t lose the glasses.
Thanks for the comments!
October 30th, 2007 at 7:26 am