The Place For My Writers Notes

Original posting 19 July 2009

Let's see.

We're writing a quest story. And I've rambled a little about the inciting incident, and suggested that perhaps Jim Butcher's story skeleton might be useful to put backbone in your tale. "When something happens, you are protagonist pursues a goal. But will he succeed when the antagonist provides opposition?"

Another part of Butcher's blogging over here http://jimbutcher.livejournal.com/ talks about interesting characters. After all, you got at least a protagonist and an antagonist, if not a few supporting characters. So how do you make characters interesting? Jim Butcher suggests five key points.

The first is exaggeration. It may seem melodramatic and certainly not egalitarian, but interesting characters are a little bit bigger than life. The easiest way to do this is simply exaggeration.

A second, related approach is exotic positions. Nothing to do with the Kama Sutra or Kinsey Reports, and Mrs. Grundy won't even get excited. This is simply unusual work or social positions. And as someone once told me, almost anybody else's work is more exciting than our own. So don't be too fast to decide that stocker in a grocery or wearing the golden arches aren't exotic positions -- just consider providing enough detail to make them interesting.

Butcher's third point is unusual. He focuses on the introduction -- how you bring your character into the story. He suggests that a characteristic entry action -- something that your character does whenever they come on stage -- can help to make them interesting.

The fourth part is verisimilitude. We like characters to seem real. We need to see their emotions, reactions, and decisions, and feel like this is the way people act. Butcher suggests that tags and traits -- two or three per character -- are a useful way to organize this.

Finally, there's that funny thing called empathy. If the reader feels for the character, they are invested in the character, they are going to be interested. There's a little bit of a chicken-and-egg thing here, because it's not always clear which comes first, being interesting or having empathy. But when the characters feel real, and the plot causes them real trouble, readers are likely to root for them. And vice versa -- when you're rooting for a character, they feel real, they're interesting.

Okay? Admittedly, we're dealing with short stories. And you may feel as if you don't have time for a lot of deep character development. At the same time, you want to have enough characterization to make the story exciting. And here's some clues about things you might want to use in building your characters. Exaggeration, exotic positions, the character introduction, verisimilitude, and empathy.

So write!

Writers Digest, September 2004, page 10 has a quick tip by Erika Dreifus. Basically, Erika points out that when we are looking for telling details about a character, it can be useful to remember that everyone has to earn a living. Work situations are familiar and an important part of real life, so use them to help enrich the story with believable details. Some prompts to help you define the character:

1. Write your character's resume
2. Write your character's current job description
3. Write your character's fantasy job description -- what would they like to be doing?
4. Fill out a job application for your character
5. Describe your character through a coworker's eyes
6. describe your character's greatest professional accomplishment
7. Describe your character's greatest professional regret or failure
8. Write a scene in which your character confronts a challenge at work

Now Erika doesn't suggest these, but they are obvious twists. For one thing, give your character a yearly review. What does their boss think about their work? What about a customer or client -- what do they think about your character? How about the company or business - is it doing well, slipping, maybe about to go under?

Put your character to work - and let that work show in the story.