In his video “Make Your Characters Come Alive,” author James Scott Bell discusses the wisdom of mixing “plot” and “character.”
He says:
Plot without character bonding = action without engagement
Character without plot = overstaying a welcome
Bells also advises that plot needs to be about death. Physical death, professional death or psychological death. This applies even to comedy. Death is what raises the stakes. It can be death of a career, a job, a reputation, or the death of a way of being.
True character, he says, is revealed only in crisis—where death is on the line.
For more on Bell’s thoughts about creating characters that come alive watch his 8-minute video here:
In the short video below, “Telling the Story: Making Your Characters Talk—Writing Great Dialogue,” Irish authors Carlo Gébler, Sinead Moriarty and Declan Hughes, share tips for creating great dialogue.
They suggest to try “putting on your character’s clothes” and really feeling what they feel inside. From that inside-out perspective, pay attention to how they speak. What are their rhythms or accents? And, think snappy dialogue. People don’t usually talk in long monologues or “info dump” blocks.
Before writing your character’s dialogue, you have to hear their voice in your head. And, most importantly, listen to people around you. Listen for the nuances in their speech.
The other night at dinner, we were seated next to a 60ish couple. During the 15-minutes before they paid and left, I listened to the man berate and belittle his date (it was obvious from their conversation that they weren’t married or lived together).
“Look at me, when I speak to you,” he said, his voice hard as the wooden chair supporting his lean, compact frame. “I don’t think you’re really listening to me. How could you be?” He wiped his puckered trout mouth with a napkin, as if the words sent in her direction left a putrid taste on his tongue. “Every time, I know what to expect. Every time. Three hours at your house. I know it’s a minimum of three hours. You’re so predictable. How can you be so predictable?”
I don’t remember the rest of his rant because at some point it was just too painful to listen to. She didn’t speak a single word, not even when they got up to leave, as if she knew any words would only feed his condemnation.
Can I imagine one of my characters speaking this way? Absolutely. I can even see amping it up a bit, making it larger than life. That’s the trick to good dialogue, too—making it sound like real dialogue but without the boring parts.
To watch more “Telling the Story” videos click on the above video’s sidebar.
I admire people who can recite poetry from memory. I’ve never been able to do it. An 80+-year-old friend and poet can recite poetry all day and night and week long. Yes, I’m jealous!
But there are other ways to test our poetry dexterity. Try this poetry quiz put together by Jessie Strasbaugh: Poetry Quiz
For more ways to experience poetry, read my earlier post “The yoga of poetry.”
Aloha from the beautiful Garden Island of Kauai. Wherever I travel, I try to check out the local writing or art scene. The other night, I traveled from our hotel in Kapaa to the town of Hanapepe on the southwest side of the island to attend a poetry reading in honor of National Poetry Month.
At the home of Storybook Theater, 10 or so local poets read and treated the audience to song, guitar music and a cacophony of Kauain frogs that at times drowned out the speakers with their deep, bass voices. (When one croaked right behind me, I nearly skyrocketed out of my chair because it sounded like some kind of jungle monster, not a frog). Competing with the frog choir was a baby chicken that sent out little peeps like sonar throughout the night. Talk about local flavor! All we needed were a few feral cats to complete the scene. (Kauai has a huge feral cat population—and we always participate in their nightly feedings when we’re here. Yes, just call me Cat Lady).
But I digress. Back to poetry. The theme of the reading was planting seeds. Seeds are a big thing on the Garden Island where food and plants can be grown year round in the rich soil. Read more
As a writing coach, I’ve seen many ways my students approach writing their manuscripts or screenplays. Whether you’re writing a memoir or novel, photos can be an entry into your story world.
One of my memoir clients pulled out a binder he had created with photos of characters in his story that he’d scanned from old photos and newspaper articles, and magazine photos of places he was writing about. He arranged the photos and other images in the order he visualized the scenes taking place in the manuscript.
To write scenes in my own memoir, I scoured photo albums and searched for historical images of the time period when my grandfather would have immigrated to the United States. The images of street scenes inspired descriptions and a sense of the time. Details from the photographs sparked even more concrete images that helped lend authenticity to the scenes that I needed to imagine.
Young adult author Walter Dean Myers creates a photo collage to build out his characters in the pre-writing phase of his work. He finds photos that represent his vision of the character, and his wife creates a collage of them that he hangs on the wall by his computer. As he writes his pages each day, the characters become more real to him. He feels he gains understanding and this helps him build out their personalities.
In the short video below by screenwriter and director, John Truby, he says one of the biggest mistakes writers make is how they create their characters.
Truby says most writers create characters by making them as detailed as possible. We’ve all heard this advice, right? Make your characters detailed, use all five senses, etc.
But Truby says having detailed characters does NOT make your audience care about your characters.
What makes them care is discovering two things:
1) what is the character’s fundamental weakness — their fundamental flaw?
2) what is the character’s story goal?
Truby says the best stories will show the character going after their goal, which will then make them deal with their greatest internal weakness.
To hear what else Truby has to say about creating great characters, watch his video below and check out some of his other videos:
