Many elements go into sculpting the characters and setting of
a book. As I’m in the middle of learning the characters in the fourth book in
my series, I’m finding new truths and new ways to put depth in character and
setting.
For character and setting to become real, it takes
specificity added with a light hand. To do that, I must know these details, not
just pick interesting details out, but I must know them in the history of the
character, in the history of the setting. It is a backstory, of sorts. It isn’t
just the cabin, the landscape; it is the character’s feelings and attitude, too.
It isn’t just the character moving through the story; it is the emotions and
reasons when a character reaches for a hairbrush or a shotgun.
Sometimes, especially when I’m first sculpting a number of
characters to people a book, I need some triggers.
A few tools I use before the Interview Worksheet or
Character Worksheet:
Lists: I make lists, many lists, and lists of tens: ten articles of clothing, pets, likes, hates,
favorites
For ideas, I look through My Listography, My Amazing Life inLists by Lisa Nola or Listography, Lisa Nola, The Book of ME, A Do-it-yourself Memoir. I do either/or, even both, with my main
characters.
I, also, look through, Who Are You? by Malcolm Godwin (1001
ways of seeing yourself). Which reminds
me of an interview I read with Anson Mount about how he has developed his character
in Hell on Wheels. (I found this such an interesting approach, and as I’ve
thought the way actors develop character very helpful to a novelist’s
development of character, I remember it.)He thinks of himself as a horse.
Horses react in specific ways as horses, they’re watchful, and have their own
set of rules for right and wrong, their honest in the horse world. A little
research or knowledge of animal behavior helps with this.
There is a chapter in,
Who Are You? titled The Animal That Hides in Your Heart, that explains animal personality
(according to the Chinese)—the positive and negative. (I sometimes get the
feeling the writers of the TV show Grimm read this chapter, then gave it a
tweak. The show uses fairy tale characters rather than animals. How do they act
in the old fairy tale stories? This is then what hides in their heart. Another
chapter that’s great is titled, Do Your Emotions Rule You? Well, do they rule
any of my characters? If they do, then this is how they will react to this or
that happening in my book and it is how they reacted when such and such
happened in their backstory. Other layers to characters and their actions,
emotions.
There are chapters on horoscope, palm reading and questions
such as: do you think with your feelings or are you imaginative, good at
letting go?
On setting, too. I
try to be specific with detail and how it relates to my character, how they relate
to the details of setting. So I have to look at setting, through my eyes,
through my characters’ eyes and emotions. I take tons of pictures. I use a magnified
flashlight and study old pictures of the time period I’ve seeped myself in.
Another book for setting I love to use is Curious Lists, but
I tweak the lists for settings, such as ten places you could hid in, ten places
you could hid money or valuables in, ten places in need of repair in the
setting, ten places just repaired, ten sounds, tens signs of seasons.
Another tool for both character and setting is simple observation
and note taking. I make notes of actions in every kind of setting and
situation. I make more lists of
particular settings: ten things I noticed first, then things it took a while to
notice, ten sounds I heard first, last, ten gestures of people in the scene,
best guess of conversation, emotion, etc.
You are unique. Just
like everybody else. —Anon
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