O ETERNAL God, through whose mighty power our fathers won their liberties of old; Grant, we beseech thee, that we and all the people of this land may have grace to maintain these liberties in righteousness and peace; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

The culmination of the promotion is a drawing from the names of all who bought a book during the event for a virtual gift basket of e-books.

Congratulations to the winner, Beatriz Kim!

I have contacted Beatriz by e-mail and sent her an electronic copy of each of the following books:

I hope each person who ordered during June is enjoying both Dream or Destiny and Fern’s Fancies.

And if you missed out on the promotion, it’s never too late to order.

Table of contents for Creating Fictional Characters

1. Creating Fictional Characters—Part 1: Characters Are Story People
2. Creating Fictional Characters—Part 2: Finding and Creating Characters
3. Creating Fictional Characters Part 3: Revealing Characters and Point of View
4. Creating Fictional Characters—Part 4: Fleshing Out Characters with Tags, Traits, and Relationships

You’ve got some basic ideas of what your character is like: gender, age, vocation, manner.

As described in Finding and Creating Characters, you’ve given your character a problem, a need.

Now you’re ready to flesh the character out. Even though you won’t reveal all this information about your character at first, you need to know enough about the character so his or her actions make sense. Tags, traits, and relationships help you turn a one-dimensional stereotype into a three-dimensional unique character.

Tags help readers identify, differentiate, and distinguish between characters.

• Name
  • The name must be consistent with character traits and age. Different names are popular in different generations. Tiffany is more appropriate for a young woman than a senior citizen, and Bruce doesn’t sound like an action/adventure hero.
  • The character’s name should be easy to spell and pronounce. If you need an ethnic name that is hard to spell and pronounce, you can give the character an easy nickname.
  • Keep the name consistent throughout the story. If your heroine is called Jacquie, don’t identify her as Jacqueline Marie and Ms. Morgan except in dialogue.
  • Your characters’ name should have different beginning letters, sounds, and lengths. Readers can be confused if your main characters are named Joe, Josie, and Joni.
  • You can find character names in baby name books and Web sites or The Writer’s Digest Character Naming Sourcebook.
• Appearance
  • Identify them by gender and age. You don’t have to specify an exact age, but twenty-something is different from middle-age or senior.
  • Describe their appearance. You don’t need a detailed description of every aspect of their appearance; you need two or three major elements of their appearance that will create an image for the reader. 
• Other Tags
  • Vocation—The CEO of a construction company will be different in a variety of ways from a laborer on the construction crew.
  • Avocation/hobby—What a person chooses to do for fun tells a lot about them.
  • Speech—Word choice, accent, and jargon can indicate level of education, ethnic or regional background, vocation, and more.
  • Mannerisms—Habits and typical behaviors make characters distinctive.
  • Attitude—Behavior patterns and the character’s typical way of reacting lead  to characters’ actions and reactions.
  • Abilities—Specific combinations of skills and talents make characters unique.

Goals and motivation

• Know what they aim to accomplish. They could be after love, revenge, financial security, adventure, or a myriad of other goals.
• Understand their motivation. Why are they looking for love? What happened to them to motivate them to seek revenge? Why is financial security so important to them?

Traits are characters’ habitual modes of response and habitual behaviors.

• Characters, like people, have distinctive ways of reacting to life’s demands that become habitual. 
• Their influences, memories, history, and emotions have helped to form the way they typically act and respond to crises.
• Give your characters specific traits so you can introduce them by the characters’ actions before a crisis. Your story people should act “in character” in a crisis so your readers find their actions believable. I’ve been known to say, “She would never do that!”

Relationships are the way characters interface with others, the associations and reactions to people they come in contact with.

• Attraction is a paradox:
• Like attracts like.
• Opposites attract.
• People-watch to see how different people relate to others around them.

Cast your character to type or against type.

• To type—The character fits the stereotype of the dominant impression: the nerdy bookkeeper who wears glasses and reads boring academic books.
• Against type—The character doesn’t fit the stereotype of the dominant impression: the bookkeeper who works out regularly and races cars for a hobby.

Make your characters non-perfect—give them weaknesses.

• Readers can’t identify with perfect characters. None of us is perfect, and we want characters to be believable.
• Use the characters’ flaws and weaknesses to control the readers’ reaction to the character.
  • Make them like or dislike the character, accept or reject him or her by the flaws you give your story people.
  • Readers will hate the villain who tortures small animals but will love the hero who procrastinates.

Show, don’t tell.

• Traits are abstract and general; actions are concrete and specific.  Telling the reader that your character procrastinates isn’t nearly as effective as showing him missing a deadline or failing to finish a project. One late project won’t identify an procrastinator, but several such incidents will.
• With the testimonial technique, you can have other characters describe the character by relating incidents: Joe’s coworker can say “Joe was late on his project again. He …”

Where do get material?

• Observing other people—there’s nothing like people-watching to get ideas for your characters.
• Introspection of your own self—you know yourself better than anyone, and your traits can give you ideas for your characters.
• Reading other fiction writers—see what works well and how you can adapt techniques to your own characters.

The next installment will cover developing background and traits using a character chart, bio, diary, or interview.

Share your own character-building tips in comments.

photo credit: Beebit.

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Table of contents for Creating Fictional Characters

1. Creating Fictional Characters—Part 1: Characters Are Story People
2. Creating Fictional Characters—Part 2: Finding and Creating Characters
3. Creating Fictional Characters Part 3: Revealing Characters and Point of View
4. Creating Fictional Characters—Part 4: Fleshing Out Characters with Tags, Traits, and Relationships

In previous installments of this series, we’ve learned what characters are and discussed how to find and create them. Now, let’s talk about how to reveal characters in your story.

Although it may be tempting to describe your characters and tell the reader all about them when you first introduce them, that doesn’t work. After all, when you meet people, you don’t learn all about them right away. You usually notice their physical appearance first, and you probably learn a few facts about them—maybe their name, where they live, what they do for living, their marital/family status. Each time you meet them, you learn more. Reveal your characters the same gradual way.

You can reveal character in several ways:

• Through the eyes of another character: how the other character sees/describes the person, how they respond to him or her, what they say to and about them
• Through dialogue: what the character says and how they say it
• Through actions: what the person does, both large actions and small things like habits and patterns of behavior
• Through inner thoughts and flashbacks: what the person thinks about and remembers when they are faced with a particular situation or person

In revealing character, you must understand point of view (POV). Point of view is the eyes the reader sees through, the camera lens that captures the scene. In real life, we are limited by our POV, and so are our characters.

For example, imagine yourself at a large party. You are in the corner of the room talking with a small group of people. You can probably see other groups and individuals nearby, but you can’t see in the opposite corner of the large room or outside in the hall or in the kitchen.

If an argument breaks out, you might hear it if the people get loud enough to be heard over the sounds of the conversation around you. However, you probably can’t see who is arguing. Whether you know who is involved in the disagreement depends on how well you know them. You’ll recognize the voice of your spouse or best friend, but you won’t know who’s arguing if you just met the individuals in passing at the party.

For you to know everything that happened, someone will have to give you a blow-by-blow description. However, if you run across the room and get close enough to see and hear, you get it all firsthand.

Your characters are in the same situation. They can know only what they can see and hear and experience.

You can tell your story from several different POVs:

• First person (I)—the protagonist tells the story: I did this and thought that.
  • Advantages: It is distinctive, natural, intense, and easy for the writer.
  • Disadvantages: You are limited to what the narrator sees/knows—anything that happens off the stage of the protagonist must be revealed by another character or in some other way (such as reading something in a newspaper), and reading I for hundreds of pages can become boring.
• Third person singular (he/she)—the narrator tells the story from the viewpoint of a single character: He did this and thought that.
  • Advantages: The same advantages apply to third person singular as first person except for immediacy.
  • Disadvantage: Like first person, the action is limited to what the protagonist sees/knows.
• Third person multiple limited (multiple he/she)—the narrator tells the story through the eyes of several people: He did that and thought this. She did this and thought that.
  • Advantage: This POV provides several perspectives and enables reader to feel the emotions of more than one character.
  • Disadvantage: Avoiding head-hopping can be a challenge. In my description above, I “head-hopped,” meaning I jumped from one POV to another. In third person multiple limited POV, most experts advise you you should stay in the POV of one character for a complete scene. I admit I don’t always follow this advice, but however long you stay in one POV, you must keep from confusing the reader. It should be obvious when the reader is seeing the story through the eyes of a different character.

There are two points of view that are generally not recommended:

• Second person (you)—the narrator tells the story as if the reader is the character: You do this and you think that.
  • Advantages: There are no real advantages to second person.
  • Disadvantages: It is cumbersome and tedious, and the reader knows he or she isn’t the character.
• Omniscient (a god-like narrator)—the narrator can see everything everywhere and knows what every character is thinking:  He did that and thought this. She did this and thought that. They did something else and thought other things.
  • Advantage: There are no limits on the action or thoughts you can include in your story.
  • Disadvantages: It can easily confuse the reader, and it keeps the reader from identifying with characters and feeling their emotions.

The most popular point of view in fiction is third person multiple limited. When you write in this POV, you can reveal your characters through their actions and dialogue no matter what character is the POV character at any given moment. You can also reveal character through the thoughts and emotions of the character who is the reader’s eyes at that time.

One of the most important steps in developing your characters and writing your story is to decide on your POV characters. Whose eyes will the reader see the action through? Whose emotions will the reader feel?

In the next installment, we’ll look at fleshing out characters with tags, traits, and relationships.

photo credit: Keyser_ Soze