Welcome to
this week's newsletter.
We've just released Robyn's latest
novel. It's getting great reviews already.
It's about a
young girl called Sam who hates to read - so much
she wants to go live in Antarctica!
Worse - her
mother's a writer.
You can
download the first chapter from here.
In
next week's Write On video I'm
answering YOUR questions.
If
you want free publicity for you or your
writing in the show, ask me a question and I'll
give you a plug! Email rob@easywaytowrite.com
THIS
WEEK'S ARTICLE:
Creating Characters for
Fiction
Rob Parnell
Most of us
have a rudimentary list of things we like, love,
hate and adore.
We start
putting together this list from the day we are
born.
However, these
lists don't really define who we are.
You'll have
noticed that some people can go through their
entire lives with lists of things that
press
their buttons while at the same time never really
having a coherent philosophy that underpins their
tastes and opinions.
A writer needs
to go further - and take his or her thoughts
about life and structure them into a grand scheme
- a moral sense if you like. Rather than saying I
hate this, I like that etc,
the writer needs to be able to say why.
I
hate this because it represents
whatever. I like that because
it means
whatever.
When
describing fictional characters from an objective
viewpoint it's important that the value judgments
you hold do not taint the 'truthfulness' of your
portraits.
You cannot do
this effectively if your reader has no faith in
your basic worldview. Because, when you describe
characters you have invented, it is not primarily
for your own benefit - it is for your
reader's.
Therefore, in
order to create believable characters, you must
press all the right buttons in your reader - that
is, appeal to their
moral sense, their sense of what is true in their
worldview.
When critics
say your characters are not believable, they are
not necessarily saying that your inventions are
not credible.
They are
merely saying that, in their
view, your truth is not
apparent to them. And usually this is because
your idea of what is true is not yet fully
formed, objective and reasonable - at least not
to the majority of readers' satisfaction - yet.
This is why
you have to be very specific about what you want
to say before you use a character to enunciate
and expand on that premise.
If your
premise - that is, the things you want to say
through your fiction - is flawed, then no amount
of great characters will help your story become
more believable.
Therefore,
before you invent any characters, you need to
identify what you want to say, and whether that
has any validity, truth or integrity attached.
Your belief
system is what defines the
structure of your stories. It's the framework on
which your plot sits.
Therefore, if
your beliefs are skewed or not in alignment with
the reader's, your stories will lack credibility,
no matter how well drawn your characters may
be.
Because it is
only when your belief system is reasonable,
eminently justifiable, rational and objective,
that your characters can begin to exert any
credible power of their own.
If you
understand the foregoing argument, you'll
understand why all the traditional advice on
character creation: make them
recognizable, sympathetic, quirky, interesting
and different from each other etc
won't help you in the slightest if your stories
are flawed at the outset.
Your job is to
work out exactly why
it is you, in particular, want to tell stories.
Then, you can
move on to how best you can do that...
Keep writing!
Rob Parnell
The Easy Way to Write
The Easy Way to Write
THIS WEEK'S WRITER'S QUOTE:
"Education is a progressive discovery of our own ignorance."
Will Durant |
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