Advanced Fiction Writing Blog

Wow! Yesterday, I opened up the floor for questions on how to create characters, and you all came up with some great ones. I think we’ll be on this thread for awhile.

A reminder: I’ll be out of town over the weekend, and won’t be home till Monday afternoon. I’ll blog Monday night, but Tuesday night is when the next e-zine goes out, so I won’t blog then either. However, you are all free to keep the dialogue going by posting comments here.

Several of you asked about how a woman can write a male POV character. About three years ago, I gave a lecture on this very topic which made me a bit famous because I told the truth about guys. I’m told the talk was quite funny, but I wouldn’t know because I was busy trying not to hyperventilate. The CD used to be available online, but I didn’t find it just now in a quick search.

Barb noted that Shaunti Feldhan’s book FOR WOMEN ONLY explains how men think. I will second this. The book is very clear. My wife had a copy and so I read it to see what Shaunti had to say. I learned that some of the things about guys that I had assumed were “obvious” and “well-known” were apparently not obvious or well-known to women. And that told me something about women. I highly recommend the book.

Holly asked:

How do I work with a character’s voice if he carries a different diction level than I am used to? My novel involves high-born people. I have been trying to absorb myself in high diction in my reading and research, but the colloquial keeps cropping up in the actual writing. In narrative summary, the character’s voice often holds strong and true, but during scenes it fades. Are there any specific techniques for holding a character’s voice like this?

Randy sez: This is why you edit yourself later, AFTER you write the first draft. Just write the scene first and get all the conflict right. Edit it later to get the diction right, when you can focus on just that.

Daan wrote:

Is it wise to base one of the characters in a work of fiction, including her storyline, on a real person and certain disasters that really happened to her? Particularly where this lady is the widow of a famous international bestselling author?

Randy sez: I’m not a lawyer, so my answers are not legally of any value. (There, I’ve just covered my butt.) In the US, the libel laws are fairly loose and public figures probably have little protection from this sort of thing. In the UK, the libel laws are a lot stronger, and you’d likely be in deep doo-doo doing dat. I’d be really cautious about doing it, myself.

If you saw ADAPTATION, starring Nicolas Cage and Meryl Streep, you’ll know that Streep’s character is about a real author, Susan Orlean, who wrote a real book, THE ORCHID THIEF. In the movie, Cage’s character is a screenwriter trying to adapt this book to a screenplay and failing miserably. Streep’s character is portrayed as having a drug-laced affair with the primary character in THE ORCHID THIEF, something that did NOT happen in real life. As I understand it, the movie producers had to get Susan Orlean’s permisson to use her real name. And of course, Cage’s character is Charlie Kaufman, the guy who actually wrote the screenplay. A very twisted movie.

Bottom line: It sounds risky, unless you can get permission.

Destiny wrote:

I sit down and write a character for some time, finish it, but then I find I always create perfect people. People I would love to be. People with amazing powers and things like that (though not always perfect personalities) and then I get all bogged down and add some things bad about the character which don’t suit him/her at all. What do you think I should do?

Randy sez: One word–kryptonite. That’s Superman’s weakness. Everybody has a weakness. It sounds to me like you’re writing “larger-than-life” characters. That’s fine. I do too. Just make sure they have weaknesses, and that the weaknesses are larger than life also. As for finding weaknesses that don’t suit your characters, we can’t have that. Find ones that suit them. If you can’t think of any, go read some biographies of famous people similar to your characters. That should give you some ideas.

OK, enough for today. I’ll be back Monday night to answer more of your excellent questions. Until then, carry on the conversation!

We’ve been talking for a few days now on how to create characters. We’ve talked about the fusion of “physiology” and “sociology” to create “psychology.” Now it’s time to open things up for discussion.

Gina asked:

Randy, how do YOU get to know your characters? My characters reveal themselves over the course of my writing. No long walks or conversations, they just pop up and tell me things whenever the mood strikes.

Randy sez: I often get a strong auditory image of my characters all at once and I’ll know how they talk. For me, a strong and unique voice for each character is important. I really can hear them talking in my head. Not quite audible, but I definitely can hear them as strongly as I can remember the voices of my friends.

For visual images of my characters, I go online and do a search for faces. I’ll find several people who look somewhat like my character and will choose the best features of each. In writing proposals, I sometimes include a graphic showing these faces.

For my character’s personal history, I just sit down and make stuff up that I think will fit. I work through the character charts (one of the steps in my Snowflake Method). I know what sort of person each character needs to be in order to fill in the slot in the story that I created them for. But then I augment what they “need to be” with just random stuff. Often, I’ll take personality attributes from several people I’ve known.

Of course, once I start writing, all of the above is subject to change. Often, it feels a bit like magic. You start writing, and suddenly the character gells. This happened when John Olson and I were writing OXYGEN. We had a character named Nate. Neither of us really knew what Nate would be like, but I wrote a sample scene early on with Nate as the POV character. The Nate who showed up was rude and surly and tough, but had an underlying softness to him. John really liked that Nate, so we agreed to keep him. If we hadn’t liked that Nate, we’d have thrown him away and created a new one.

Barb wrote:

Once I’ve worked out the basic plot for my story, I write a personal letter from the main character to the reader. Of course, the reader will never see this, but I guess it works things out in my head. In the letter, the character begins by telling his past and why he is the way he is today. Then he tells the story from his/her point of view.

I can’t tell you the surprises my characters have come up with on their own. I used to laugh at people who said their characters talked to them, but I’m telling you, it’s true. Since I’m writing as a Christian, I like to think the Holy Spirit has a lot to do with this. So many times, I’m amazed at how plot and characters come together with an incredible story AND message of God’s work in a normal person’s life.

So . . . when the main character is finished, I have the antagonist write a letter in rebuttal. He, too, begins by telling his past and why he is the person he is, but then tells the entire story from his point of view-thoughts, feelings, actions included.

After that, I usually do one more letter by the protagonist’s romantic partner or confidant.

Randy sez: I really like this idea. It’s similar to one I read last week in James N. Frey’s book HOW TO WRITE A DAMN GOOD MYSTERY, which I blogged about just before I went to the ACFW conference. I think this method should really work well, and I intend to try it myself on my next novel, which I am composting in my mind right now.

I think we can plan our characters all we want, but when we sit down to start writing, that character will come alive in ways we never planned. That’s what makes writing fun for me and I know a lot of other writers who feel the same way. It feels like magic!

Any other questions on character creation? Go ahead and leave a comment. I’ll try to answer as many questions as possible on Friday night, since I’m going out of town (again) over the weekend to go to a wedding in California. I’ll be back blogging again late Monday night.

I rarely run a special on my products, but I’m doing it today, September 27, 2007 to celebrate freedom.

My flagship products are my Fiction 101 and Fiction 201 lecture series. I’ve taught these at writing conferences across the country. Last year, I created them as software products that run in any web browser, which lets you SEE my notes and HEAR me lecture.

Fiction 101 and Fiction 201 are available on CD or as large electronic downloads.

Recently, I’ve outsourced the CD distribution to Kunaki.com. That means FREEDOM for me from the drudgery of packing CDs in envelopes and mailing them off. It saves me MONEY, which I can pass on to my customers in lower prices. I have already cut the price of the CDs by about 20%.

To celebrate that FREEDOM, I’m slashing the price of a CD by ANOTHER 50%. Just for today, September 27, 2007.

I rarely run a 24-hour special, but when I do, hundreds of people typically take advantage. If you don’t have Fiction 101 or Fiction 201 and you want it, TODAY is your chance.

To learn more about the 24-hour special on Fiction 101 or Fiction 201, click here.

In the last several days, we’ve talked about two important aspects of your characters, “physiology” and “sociology.” I like to think of these as “nature” and “nurture” — the internal and external forces that make your characters who they are.

The final aspect to think about is “psychology” — the result of putting “physiology” and “sociology” together.

Neither “physiology” nor “sociology” is enough to explain why people are the way they are.

The fact is that identical twins can be radically different people. They have the same physiology, but may have different sociology. They’re going to meet different people, do different things, and react to them in different ways.

Likewise, two kids can grow up in the same house, but be vastly different because they inherited different genes. Every parent who ever had a genius child or a musical prodigy knows about this.

“Psychology” is the fusion of “physiology” and “sociology.” How does a given person choose to use their natural talents and compensate for their natural deficiencies? That’s part of their psychology. How does that same person react to their family, tribe, culture, nation, education? That’s part of their psychology too.

In the Harry Potter series, Harry and his cousin Duddley are raised in the same house, but they have different genes and they’re treated vastly different by Duddley’s parents (Harry’s aunt and uncle). Duddley grows up to be a selfish, arrogant, sadistic brat. Harry grows up to be a forgiving, courageous, resourceful boy.

When creating your characters, it’s not enough to know what color eyes your character has and where his moles are and what his IQ is. It’s not enough to know about his parents, brothers, sisters, teachers, religion, and all that.

You also need to know his responses to all those. Does he care what color his eyes are? Is he embarrassed about that mole the size of a rat on his chin? Is he obnoxious about being smart (or ashamed of being stupid?) Does he get along with his parents (or with one but not the other) and why? What about his siblings? Did he have a favorite teacher, and if so, which one and why? Does he follow in the religion he grew up with, or does he choose something radically different?

The answers to all those questions (and many more) are the basis of your character’s “psychology.” The better you understand your character, the more able you are to answer all such questions.

Please note that you don’t HAVE to figure all this out by writing it down, as if creating characters were some giant paint-by-numbers game. Creating characters is about getting to know these people who inhabit your skull. It’s about learning more about them than you know about yourself or anyone else in the “real world.” It’s about hearing their voices.

If you can do that by writing it down, then fine. If you prefer to take long walks on the beach with your imaginary friends, then that’s fine too. If you start talking to your characters in public, then you have gone around the bend and need to be institutionalized, but you can avoid that by holding a cell phone up to your ear so nobody will know you’re a perfect loon.

Do whatever it takes to learn your characters inside out. That’s what writers do.

I’ve read everyone’s comments on the blog the last couple of days and have found a way to make everyone happy. We’ll continue our discussion of characters until it runs out of steam. Then we’ll transition to talking about high-concept novels. I may even be able to get John Olson to contribute to that discussion, but he’s on a deadline right now, so it’s better to wait till the end of the month on that.

But first, everyone check out the account of my deathmatch with Camy Tang.

In real life, Camy is a friend of mine who writes Asian chick-lit. I ran an interview on this blog with Camy a couple of months ago on branding. Of course I teased her a bit, but everyone knows I think the world of her. She is one smart lady.

OK, on to character development. Last week, I talked about the first step in character development, which is defining the character’s “physiology” which is a fancy word for the character’s inherited traits. (I am here summarizing the high points of the book HOW TO WRITE A DAMN GOOD MYSTERY, by James N. Frey.)

The next step is to define the character’s “sociology” which is a fancy term for the character’s environment. The old debate of “nature versus nurture” is silly. It’s not either/or, it’s both/and. Part of who you are comes from what was done to you or not done to you.

So you need to know what kind of home your character grew up in. What kind of parents? What kind of family structure? How many siblings and what gender and what birth order? What religion, if any? What social structures? What’s the political situation? Economic situation? How big is the house, and did your character have his own bedroom and if so, how many cockroaches were under his bed? Did he have a cat or a dog or a stegosaurus or what?

You need to know this stuff. You won’t use it all, but you still need to know it. You can figure it all out in advance, or you can make it up on the fly. Either way, you need to write it all down somewhere, so you don’t have him the middle son in a Democratic family on page 40, and the oldest son of a herd of Republicans on page 400.

This reminds me that Holly posted a question yesterday:

Here is my dilemma. I have given myself my 20th migraine doing character charts - really, truly, simply I can’t do it. I dread it. It’s the lurking monster in the night for me. But can a writer create believable characters through story alone?

When I try and map out my characters, analyze them, they cease to be real to me. Real people to me are always a mystery, a puzzle to solve and appreciate. But in charting, half the details I try to record on my characters are blatantly wrong, different from the story and then I get confused - who are these people, why do they look different in real light versus story light and which is the right one?

But I know who they are in story and don’t worry about it during writing. Am I doomed to 2-dimensional characters here???

Randy sez: Create your characters any old way that works for you. If you need to create them in advance, then do so. If you need to discover them by writing the story, do that. Whatever works. The only rule in writing well is . . . to write well.

But once you’ve figured out who your characters are, Holly, do write down the important stuff so you’ve got a reference document that tells what color eyes they have, and all that stuff. Without that, your poor editor may go crazy trying to break the deadlock created by an inconsistent manuscript. And editors have enough problems as it is.

Tomorrow, we’ll talk about the essential conflict between “physiology” and “sociology.”

A quick note on where I’ve been: I arrived home from the writing conference very late Sunday night. Monday, I took my daughter up to Seattle to get settled in to her apartment, because college starts Wednesday. I got home after 11 PM and was just too shot to blog.

I’m in the middle of catching up on 5 billion emails that arrived in the last week. (While at the conference, I could only answer the 1 billion emails that were truly urgent.)

I should be back in the blogosaddle later tonight, so we’ll resume our discussion of creating characters then.

As noted over the last few days, I’m still in Dallas at a writing conference. It’s fun, and I’ve met a lot of people, had some good discussions with various editors and agents, etc.

But here’s what I like most about writing conferences: The other writers.

Whenever two writers get together, they inevitably get around to the magic question, “What are you working on right now?”

Every time you answer that question, your answer get’s a little more focused. Here’s why:

You can be vague when you answer, but if you’re talking to another professional, he or she is going to pin you down a bit and ask the hard questions. Or brainstorm an idea for you. Or give you an analytical technique that you can use to ask yourself the hard questions.

That’s been happening for me a LOT this week. Yesterday after blogging, I sat in on a couple of sessions taught by my buddy John Olson. He was teaching about science fiction and fantasy. And one of the things he harps on always when he teaches that is how to make it a high concept book. Or at least a higher-concept book that it was before.

I’ve been working on a high-concept idea lately. This morning when I woke up, it was clear to me how to make that pesky concept even higher. I talked it through with John, who I’m rooming with, and he really liked it. He thinks it’ll fly. I think it’ll fly.

That’s what I like about writing conferences: talking with other writers and waiting for that magic moment when 1 + 1 suddenly becomes 10.

I’ll be flying home tomorrow, so won’t have time to blog. We’ll reconvene this blog on Monday and pick up on the topic of creating characters. See ya then!

Drat, I had wanted to blog last night, but wound up too metal-fatigued to try. I’m at a writing conference in Dallas with almost 500 other writers and am having the usual wonderful time. I went to a chocolate party last night and then had a couple of appointments and wrapped up a little after midnight and decided I’d rather call home than try to blog.

I taught this morning for 2 hours and 15 minutes. My students claim that I said 100000 words in that time, which is possible, because I was going Xtremely fast. I’m teaching internet marketing in a continuing session that started today and ends tomorrow. Wish I had twice as much time to cover all this stuff!

Things are going amazingly well. I never make an agenda for myself at writing conferences. I just talk to people and try to get to know them a bit better. Good things often happen that way. There’s always some sort of surprise in store.

My friend James Scott Bell is the keynote speaker at the conference. Of course, he lost no opportunity to razz me about the infamous Mildred Koppelheimer scam that I ran years ago. (A scam you can easily Google if you need to, so I refuse to put a link here.) All publicity is good publicity, so I’m fine with a little razzing, although if Jim finds a dead raccoon in his room, I’m not going to be terribly surprised.

We are in the middle of a discussion here on the blog about creating characters. I will continue that discussion when I have at least two neurons in my brain that can fire simultaneously. Right now I’m just a little wired, and I need to run off to listen to my friend John Olson teach about science fiction, which will provide me with a very convenient alibi when Jim’s dead raccoon shows up.

Gotta run!

I’m at the ACFW conference in Dallas, and it’s after midnight, local time. I don’t know if I’m still on West Coast time or not, but I’m a little sleepy, so this’ll be a short blog.

Technically, the conference starts tomorrow, but today is Day 1 for me, because we had the annual board meeting this afternoon, and one of my duties is to attend that.

Writers have been arriving all day, and it’s great to see a number of friends again. My brain is really bad at face-recognition, so it’s sometimes hard for me to recognize people I haven’t seen for six months or a year, especially if they’ve changed their hairstyle. Tomorrow will be easier, because everyone will have nametags.

Well, let’s talk about characters for a bit. Some people love creating characters and some people hate it. I love it, which means that I haven’t spent as much time studying HOW the process works, because it comes naturally to me. So I was glad to read a very good explanation of the steps of character creation in James Frey’s book, HOW TO WRITE A DAMN GOOD MYSTERY.

The first step is to define the character’s “physiology” which is a little broader in scope than what I would have guessed. The “physiology” includes the character’s physical appearance, obviously, but it also includes nonphysical inherited attributes, such as intelligence and personality type. It also includes acquired characteristics such as scars, tics, diseases, language skills, talents, posture, degree of fitness.

In my experience, this is the easiest part of creating a character, and it’s the one beginning writers tend to spend most of their time on. It’s all important, of course, but it’s only the beginning.

It’s nice to know, for example, that your heroine has green eyes, but it’s far more important to know how she feels about that.

It’s good to know that your hero is only 5′3″, but it’s better to know whether his height has made him feel insecure or has given him a Napoleon complex.

If you were writing a novel with me as a main character (you’d be crazy to do that), you would want to know that I’m not good at recognizing faces. But you’d NEED to know what coping mechanisms I use to compensate for that.

We’ll talk about the second major aspect of character-creation tomorrow.

I am ensconced in my room at the ACFW conference now. Had a great evening chatting with a couple of friends about marketing. The conference doesn’t actually start until Thursday. Those of us who are early are here because we have duties. I sit on the Advisory Board and we’re having the annual board meeting on Wednesday.

I read a really excellent book on the plane: HOW TO WRITE A DAMN GOOD MYSTERY, by James N. Frey. This is by the writing teacher James N. Frey, not the James Frey who wrote A MILLION LITTLE PIECES.

It was an excellent read. Frey has written several books with similar titles, beginning with HOW TO WRITE A DAMN GOOD NOVEL. I’ve never read any of them until now, but I loved what I read today on characters. I highly recommend his book. So I think our next topic will be developing characters. It’s about time we talked about craft again.

I want to wrap up a few odds and ends from today’s comments that you all posted.

Christophe’s comment about when humor is and is not appropriate in a bio was right on the money. Your bio should be sync with what you write.

I liked Camille’s new revisions on her bio. That is a reason that is believable and interesting. Some editor somewhere is going to like that, I think.

Lara asked me to blog next on characters. You win the prize for clairvoyance, Lara! That’s just what I want to talk about next.

Pam asked what to do if two agents want you.

Randy sez: That’s easy: Hire one and marry the other.

OK, that might not be practical or legal. I would ask myself which agent I like working with better. My agent used to be Chip MacGregor, before he left agenting to be a publisher. Chip always said that you should work with people you LIKE, because you’re going to be working together a lot for a long time. That always made sense. I’ve always liked Chip and enjoyed working with him.

Tami asked if it’s possible to buy the CDs of the conference. Yes, I think so. I’ll get more info on that in the next few days. I’m teaching on a topic that I’ve never taught a full-length course at a conference before–internet marketing for novelists. I expect it’ll be a fun course, and I certainly found it helpful to write up my notes (120 pages of them!)

Andra asked a question about proposals: If you’re writing comparisons of your book with others, is it OK to talk about books written in a similar style, even if it’s not the same genre?

Randy sez: Yes it is.

Several of you made suggestions for other topics to discuss. Hold those thoughts, folks! We’ll come back to them shortly. Tomorrow, I’ll try to start talking about how to create characters. Feel free to leave a comment telling me what sort of problems you face in creating your own characters.