More Help With Characterization

A few useful and different questions to ask when developing your characters:

·       What did your character’s mother tell her/him never to do? What happened when he/she did it anyway, and he/she will.

·       Tell about a secret your character did not keep and why? What happened? Regrets?

·       What is your character’s biggest regret? What does he/or she not regret one ioda?

·       Describe the first time he/she was ever felt humiliated?

·       What would be the theme of your character’s life?

·       What inanimate object is your character attached to and why?

·       If your character found out he/she only had one month to live what would he/she do with this time? What would he absolute not do?

·       What is a guilty pleasure for your character?

·       Is there a reason your character is glad a prayer wasn’t answered. Or was it and that wasn’t such a good thing?

·       Give an eulogy about your character.

·       What out-of-character thing would your character do. What would he never, absolutely ever, do?

·       What are the rumors going round about your character? People will talk. Are they true? If not, how did they get started?

·       What animal would describe your character? (I mentioned before that Anson Mount from Hell on Wheels used this method to help him with his character. He thought a horse and the way a horse thinks and reacts worked for visualizing his character.) Or tree a la Barbara Walters?

·       Your character is lost or stuck somewhere. What does he do? Wonder if he’s stuck with someone he loves? Someone he hates? Someone he doesn’t know?

·       What would your character do if he needed to apologize? Do it? Avoid it? Never apologize? How would he? What reasons would he or not?

·       What is your character’s phobia or fear. Like Indiana Jones’ fear of snakes, we all have things we do not like, will not do.

Making a Trail and Pictures

As I’ve been working on rewrites for Ella and the Tie-down Man and Heart’s High, developing Heart’s Ease and writing the blogs about character, I’ve been learning and, maybe, relearning.  I’ve come to several conclusions, too.

You can never have enough notes for your novels, especially on rewrites. Now, I know most writing goes from developing the story to first draft to rewrites to editing in a nice chronological and linear fashion. I’m also certain, many writers have done as I have—written books that didn’t work or were out of favor and years later revisited them. I’ve heard of writers taking many, many years to work on a book.

To do that well, you need notes, good solid notes on what you are thinking on a particular character, setting, plot point. I’ve been lost in this world I made, several times wondering what my thoughts were, where I was heading. So, I wished I’d done a better job of making a trail. And I wished I’d done one other simple thing. I wished I had attached a picture to each character sketch or the name of an actor—just something solid to envision. For me, on character, a picture or actor sets more than the look. It cements an attitude.

I search through magazines, pay attention in movies and TV for characters. Pictures are good, also, for costume and set design. It isn’t a waste of time or ‘busy’ work to find the perfect snapshot of clothing, setting, objects that serve a role. Looking through a few magazines, copying a few pictures out of books is great, but for Western Historicals that can sometimes be difficult and slim pickings.

That’s where a camera comes in. And great western scenery, native flora and fauna, animals and people. I have a wonderful camera I keep in my purse. I find the best props and locations when I least expect to and with a camera always with me, I catch it. I just purchased a little bigger camera for research, with a little more zoom, a little better quality and ability for photographing in museums and antique hunting.

Antiques are a passion of mine and one of the reasons is the stories behind the object. As I wander through the antique booths and shops, I can’t tell you how many props I find. The stories come, too and I can dress them with real finds I’ll never be able to afford, but ‘find’ for set design. I always ask permission before I photograph and have never been refused. I’ve grown a wonderful detailed ‘catalog’ of authentic props and ‘dressed’ many a setting with them while I browse.

So, as I read somewhere: To keep from getting lost, stay found.

And take pictures.

Sculpting Characters

As I retype/rewrite the first book in my Heart’s series during the morning hours, the characters for the last book are beginning to form. After a morning of rewriting, I work on character sketches and plot for that fourth book. Something about doing that is giving depth and clarity to the first book.

I’ve been delving into my tear sheets and workshop notes, compiling them into one document of concentrated notes and information about character development, mostly as reminders. Truth is I know most of it by heart and only need a nudge or two to implement it. I have five different character worksheets from the workshops and conferences. Each similar, each with one or two smart items the others didn’t have. I consolidated the whole of them into my own worksheet and deep-sixed the lot of them.

I had to take a deep breath, exhale and close my eyes to do it, but I never really used them anyway. I held on to them though, as if that would be the secret to wonderful character development. But really, what works for me is what’s best, right? I did the same with the character interview. I sorted and shifted through the stack of them I had, wrote my own with some of the questions on the worksheets and some of my own, then tossed the old ones.

It has been liberating and frightening. I’m so worried I’ll forget something and yet, I did this once before on setting a scene. I read and studied everything I had gathered in all the workshops, classes and conference pertaining to setting struggling to write perfect settings for the scenes of my book, only to realize I was perfecting the heart and soul and me out of the scene, so I tossed everything and made my own checklist. Sure, some of the suggestions were there, some of my own ideas were, too, and that made all the difference in the way I felt about my story.

It’s time. Time to trust what I’ve learned and now, I must let it spin out from me. All right, I’m a little insecure—a lot insecure. After all, I have not published in novel form. Maybe, trust is the secret.

On that note: Several years ago, I read an essay printed in the paper. It changed the way I sculpt character more than anything else I’ve ever heard, better than the best writer’s workshop or lecture, better than every book I’ve ever read on character development. The title: Take Time Today to Reflect upon Best Memories by Bob Swift. It was a Christmas essay, just a list of Swift’s best memories. It tugged at my heart, took me back, made me smile and cry. It was perfect. It was amazing at just what it was, but it got me thinking. I knew this man. I had some of the same memories.

 With that one essay, I knew Swift’s history, age, attitude, loves, childhood, and heartbreak. I knew he liked Louis Armstrong’s horn, dogs, mountain mornings, walking in the rain, New York delis, and the color red.

Had he written a sister essay of his dislikes, I would have known him even better. That beautiful, simple essay, written as if I was sitting across from him, (though Swift even added rhyme and rhythm, bless him) in his words was the perfect character sketch. It was so simple in form and intention.

It’s my gold standard, my blueprint for character sketch. Two essays written from a character’s voice about best and worse memories. It works better, for me, than the interview, although the interview as a guide can help you remember all you need to include, if you tend to forgetfulness.

I read an article many years ago, can’t remember from which magazine, but the article talked about getting addicted to books on writing. Reading them rather than writing. Trying everything in every one. It is tempting. I’ve even tried; think it would spell success for me. I always go back to the way I think and work, no matter my determination to be ‘better’. I likely always will. So, along with cleaning out of my files, I’m taking hard looks at many of my writing books. I must admit, I love reading them. The writing and the passion in some of them gets my juices flowing, gives me that kick in the pants everyone needs, but they don’t get the words down, do they?

All I am doing is pointing. You must find it true yourself. —The Buddha

Epiphany

For me, building a story starts with character and I love building new characters. Figuring how they look, feel, react. Seeing their backstory, feel it from their point of view. I, even, love how the idea of the character, the first beginning seed, nags and tickles and seeps into my mind and just won’t let me go. I love the way it makes me feel that I’m in my world and theirs, too, for long periods of my day.

I love that tension, that urgency I feel as the character/story grows, has needs and wants that I have to fulfill. That I have to research, find, makeup. Only it doesn’t really feel like making things up. It feels like uncovering or excavating this hidden story. And there is always this intensity, this craving to find it all, right now.

Since I began rewriting the first book in my Hearts series, I’ve been in that state and it took me by surprise. When I began the series many years ago, I knew there were four brothers and I knew three of their stories, but the fourth eluded me. Most because I had a hard time visualizing the fourth brother, Gallagher. He was there, but his face was blotted out and every time he was in a scene, I struggled with his actions and motives. Who was he? What did he want?

But as I do, I just kept stepping forward; driven by the other stories I thought I knew. There was so much I loved about this series and the three books I finally finished, yet when I sent them out, I didn’t have great luck. At the time, Western Historicals had fallen out of favor, too, but I just kept writing.

It wasn’t until I started rewriting that I finally saw the fourth story, the fourth brother and that the stories, though separate, intertwined, and of course they did. Lives are like that, though each brother’s story was his own, it couldn’t really be told completely until I knew Gallagher’s. It didn’t matter that none of them happen simultaneously, that Gallagher’s story was the last chronologically. What mattered was they were family and what happened to one affected all.

An epiphany.

Plot springs from character…I’ve always sort of believed that these people inside of me—these characters—know who they are and what they’re about and what happens, and they need me to help get it down on paper because they don’t type. —Anne Lamott, novelist and essayist