By Donna
Schlachter
“Getting to know you, getting
to know all about you. . . “
When I sit down to create characters for a new project, this tune runs through my head. This is one truth writers ought to embrace: we need to know our characters better than anybody in our book does. Better than our readers will know them by the time they finish reading.
If we don’t know our
characters, we’ll tend to write flat, one-dimensional people, like paper dolls
who are simply wearing an outfit called “their story”, and are as
interchangeable as—well, a paper doll.
Another danger in not knowing
our characters is we’ll write three chapters getting to know them, wasting paper
and the reader’s time as we plow our way through their backstory, their history,
until we finally get to the point where our story really starts, about halfway
through Chapter 4.
There are many methods to get
to know your characters. Some of these require you to sit down and fill out a
questionnaire that would cause most of us to lose our minds or at the very
least, our excitement about our stories. While the details and minutiae of these
questionnaires might work for some, many of us will struggle to answer what our
character’s third grade teacher said that made him decide to become a private
investigator twenty years later.
Bored with filling out forms,
making up answers to questions I hadn’t even thought of, and wanting to get on
with the process of writing, I came up with a faster and more direct way to get
to know my characters—I interview them.
I pretend I’m a famous talk
show host and my character is a guest on my show. As a famous talk show host, I
know everybody in the world will want to hear what I have to say and how I can
make my character squirm on live TV. So I come up with questions that will cause
said squirming because I know how the story goes and what secrets my character
is trying to keep.
Go ahead. Be catty. Be devious.
Dig up the dirt. What would someone who reads one of those supermarket tabloids
want to know about your character? And why would your character not want to tell
the truth, not want to break a confidence, not want you to know everything about
them? Because characters are real people, and real people rarely tell the whole
truth and nothing but the truth.
Even good people hide some
things, hold back some things, try to make themselves look good perhaps at the
expense of another.
Here is a list of questions I
typically ask to get started:
- How did you get the job you have?
- What’s your background that qualified you for that
job?
- Tell me about ___________ (the inciting incident in the
book).
- Tell me about ___________ (could be the love interest,
the villain, the hero/heroine. Whoever is making this character’s life difficult
or messy in some way)
- Tell me about ____________ (whatever you know your
character doesn’t want to talk about. A past hurt, a secret, a rumor, an
innuendo – anything that will make it look like this character isn’t telling
all)
- Bring up a topic that’s in the news now, and tie it into
this character and the plot in some way. For example, if the character is a
forest ranger, and poaching by forest rangers is in the news, ask what he thinks
should be done to poachers and then what should be done to poachers who are also
guardians of the woodland. Watch him squirm.
- Ask what the character sees in his/her
future.
By the time you ask and your
character answers these questions, you should have a good idea of what motivates
your character, what scares your character, what your character is trying to
hide and why, the lie your character believes, what the internal and external
conflicts are, and the growth arc of your character.
Feel free to drop by my blog
and see a couple of character interviews I’ve posted there about the main
characters of my historical suspense, Counterfeit Honor. Here are the
links: https://historythrutheages.wordpress.com/2015/03/30/interview-with-margaret-buchanan/
and https://historythrutheages.wordpress.com/2015/03/30/interview-with-trevor-mcgonigle/
learn how to live in God's presence while you seek His plan for your life. Plan to spend some time getting to know the God Who wants you to stop, breathe, think, and act out His very best for you.
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The bio is:
Donna writes historical
suspense and, using her alter-ego of Leeann Betts, she writes contemporary
suspense. Check her out at www.HisStoryThruTheAges.com or www.LeeannBetts.com. Subscribe to her
blogs at www.HiStoryThruTheAges.Wordpress.com
or www.AllBettsAreOff.Wordpress.com
You can follow her and Leeann on Facebook, Twitter, and
Tumblr.
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