Learning From Others: Character Development Tools

I’ve always felt comfortable with my fictional characters. Some of them come to me full blown, others take time to visualize. But I’ve always felt they were more than two-dimensional, more than cardboard cut outs of heroes and villains.

However, as I started this journey of crafting A+ fiction, I knew I’d be working on character. While this aspect of fiction is not a weakness for me, it’s not a strength either.

Therefore I’ve been on the lookout for ideas to develop characters. Most of what I’ve seen are charts and forms. I like charts and forms so I’ve used a few of these. However, I find myself bored with filling in the blanks about someone: birthday, home town, wedding anniversary/divorce, favorite color/car/shoes. I guess for me this feels more like a census report than the development of an actual fictional character. (Can there be an “actual” fictional character?!?)

Then one day I was reading about Elizabeth George on her website. She said that her stories develop from character. She makes notes about characters and then when she has enough, she puts the notes together into a story. Her novels are rich in eccentric characters, which makes them enjoyable for me. Some of those folks I still think about and wonder how they’re doing. Now that’s character development!

I liked the idea of sketching about a character and just collecting those notes. I can see those notes piling up in cardboard moving boxes labeled “Irina, the laundress” or “Scaffold Cat”. Then one day I’m walking past one of these boxes and glance in and there’s a character, mostly formed, waiting patiently or impatiently for the action to begin.

If the character is described well enough, then I write quickly on the story about them. If not, I struggle and usually want to put them back in the box, or on the back burner of the stove (depending on the creative metaphor of the moment).

Sometimes, when I’m really stuck, I find other fictional characters who can help me with my main character. For example, in the stories about the Constitutional Convention Kids, I turned to the mother of Israel and Jordan to learn more about them. She’s very proud of her kids and very willing to share with me. I’ve learned a lot about them from their mom.

What I’m discovering is that these character sketches and notes help fill in the story in wonderful unexpected ways. Who would have guessed that Elena was so in love with her husband and so immature about their son? I’d never have discovered that Mama Rosa’s husband has an old, painful wound.

Of course, as I write the main story, I’m now able to review these notes, add the sketches to the larger work, and maintain consistency for the character.

I am able to use this technique for character development because I was looking for tools to improve my fiction. I was willing to practice with different tools, and to use the tools in the best way for myself.

Have you found a creative “tool” that helped with your work? How many other tools did you try along the way?

Contest Submission

Just sent a short story off to a contest.

This is incredibly hard; to send a carefully crafted youngster off into the Big, Mean World. The world will not only judge the creator -- me -- but my darling little tale.

Competition is hard for me. I didn't come wired for this. I don't relish the thought of getting into the ring of prizefighting authors and duking it out for the title of Best, Winner, Champion.

Recalling the advice from a trainer: I tried to concentrate on the story, not the contest. By working on crafting the best tale I'm capable of at this time, I have control. I cannot control the competition.

An olympic swimmer would be concentrating on every tiny movement that makes them a better swimmer. Then they go to competitions to see how they're doing compared to others. Right now I'm concentrating on every tiny facet of crafting a better story. And now I've gone to a competition to see how I'm doing compared to others.

Maybe tonight a glass of wine and hot bath. A person deserves any wee reward for joining the fray, don't you think? What would you recommend?

Despite Despair

In "Notes to the Reader" at the end of his short story anthology, Strange Highways, Dean Koontz wrote:

"Every writer is an optimist at heart. Even if his work trades in cynicism and despair, even if he is genuinely weary of the world, and cold in his soul, a writer is always sure that the end of the rainbow will inevitably be found on the publication date of his next novel. "Life is crap," he will say, and seem to mean it, and a moment later will be caught dreamily ruminating on his pending elevation by critics to the pantheon of American writers and to the top of the New York Times bestseller list."

Well. There's an answer to despair. Dean Koontz, a well respected, professional writer knows about despair and the eternal optimism that brings us storytellers back to the page.

I used to be curious about miners. Many of them in the 1800s were independent, working their own claims, starving to death under horrible conditions just for the tiny potential lure of the Greatest Gold Strike Ever. Why didn't they get regular jobs, I wondered. Why suffer like this?

Foolish me. They were optimists. Even more so than I. With every swing of their pick or swoosh of their pan, they were expecting to find gold. Lots of gold. At the end of long, hard, miserable days they could probably be seen, like Koontz, "dreamily ruminating" on their potential success, and their "elevation to the pantheon" of those of who struck it rich!

I guess I'm learning that despite despair, a lot of us keep going. Enough whining. Back to the mines. Back to the page.

Despair Described

October was a dismal month for me. Bits from my journal:

"I feel a great despair about writing. Other people, many of them Horrible Writers have been published. I'm not even on the horizon. Not a blip of anything.

ALL of us unpublished think we're the Best Ever -- just national treasures waiting to be discovered. So who the hell am I to be different? To be some sort of Harper Lee waiting in the wings?

I feel like Aldonza from The Man of La Mancha: "I'm no one, I'm nothing, at all!"

And later:

"I keep thinking that anything would be easier than this Stupid Author Quest. Becoming a Career Violinist, for example. Or maybe an Olympic Marksman. How about a choreographer?

Argh! Despair is a terrible, terrible feeling.

But I am here. Drawn, I suppose, relentlessly to suffering.

I keep expecting the Magic Door to open. I'll step through it and there will be easy, beautiful writing and fans lined up to buy books and get my signature. That's all. Just that magical world. Easy writing, easy fans.

Instead I'm stuck here in the Kansas of my author soul; a place of endless horizons, painful blue skies, burning sun, and cornfield mazes. Where, oh where, is Oz?"

Anyone else ever experience this despair, this hopelessness, and this ridiculous persistence?