writercises | TECH: Characters in Four Parts? (Reply)

Original posting 29 Dec 2011

Over here, David B Coe talks about attributes that make characters effective and memorable. The four parts are a secret, the wall, loss, and desire. I'm not sure if we can come up with an acronym to help us remember those -- SWoLD? No, that's just silly.

http://www.magicalwords.net/david-b-coe/on-writing-character-development-secret-wall-loss-desire/

Anyway, the secret is just that. Something that the character does not want to share. Sometimes it's a secret that is being kept from the character. Anyway, there is some secret information waiting in the wings.

The wall is whatever sets the character apart from other people. Something makes this character different.

The loss is something that the character regrets. Something about their background or their history has left deep scars, emotional pain.

And the desire -- they want to achieve something, usually to fill in the hole in their own life.

And then he looks at some examples. Sure enough, protagonists seem to have a secret, a wall, loss, and desire.

Now the fun question is, can we turn this around and use it to develop characters? If you're writing a short story or novel, and your character doesn't seem to be quite as interesting as you like, can you take a look at them in terms of these four parts? What is their secret? What is the wall that separates them from the rest of us? What is the loss in their background? What is the desire that is pushing them?

What do you think? Does SWoLD really help in creating characters?

Something fun to think about!