Character Flashcards
What should character description accomplish?
Choose physical details that subtly reinforce whatever impression you want to create. Clothes accomplish this, but so does their attitude towards the clothes.
* The description provides a strong visual
* The description uses details to imply personality traits and/or personal background
* The description intrigues us about what will happen next
How should you characterize a secondary character?
Let us see secondary characters through the eyes of highly biased POV characters. Some concrete details, plus interpretation of those details that reveal truths about both characters.
Which of these details is ‘true’? Maybe, in part, all of them. Collectively, they add up to a multidimensional character. Whenever a new character enters your story, consider whose eyes are describing him. Then choose a mix of details that give readers both some concrete images and a coherent interpretation of those images by this particular observer.
How to characterise twice?
Make everything serve more than one purpose. What is interesting about this detail/characterisation (long hair)? Maybe it shines like glass. Maybe her bangs need a trim, so that she’s constantly blowing them off her face. Maybe blond roots are showing or grey streaks. However do not reach past the obvious with every single detail as that type of exaggeration becomes tiresome and implausible.
How do you include backstory?
- The brief detail
- The inserted paragraph
- The flashback
- The expository lump
How do you portray straightforward emotion?
Backstory > Personality/character traits > Wanting something (motivation) > Emotion
How do you portray deceptive emotion?
Backstory > Personality/character traits > Wanting something (motivation) > Emotion (felt inside) + Emotion (displayed outwardly)
What are common signs of lying?
- Refusing to meet someone’s eye (a right-handed person often looks right)
- A tightness in the voice or slight rise in pitch
- Checking a wristwatch or moving jewelry around
- Inability to remain seated
- Reddening of face
- Anger or defensiveness
These can be mistaken for other emotions, so needs to be combined with dialogue/description.
Why should you give characters two desires?
You can build more plausible, complex characters if they want not just one thing but two that are in conflict.
You can use the dramatization of small incidents of conflicting values to build characterization for your actors. First, decide what two values or desires are in conflict for the character. Choose ones that indicate the personality you want readers to see. Then decide which value will ‘win.’ Finally, consider what your character’s attitude toward his choice will be. Will it be hope of eventually attaining the alternative he didn’t pick this time? Anger at having to choose? Resignation? Self-blame?
How do you portray mixed emotions?
- You can show different emotions towards the same stimulus in different scenes.
- You can show conflicting emotion toward the stimulus in the same scene.
- You can use exposition to explain the contradiction.
Mixed emotions in a single scene – the reader must understand the reason for the contradiction, which can be portray in earlier scenes.
What are the way a character can change?
- Characters who never change, neither in personality nor motivation. They are what they are, and they want what they want – James Bond
- Characters whose basic personality remains the same; they don’t grow or change during the story. But what they want changes as the story progresses (‘progressive motivation’) - Heroes or Villains.
- Characters who change throughout the story, although their motivation does not.
- Characters who change throughout the story and their motivation progresses.
How do you portray motivations?
- The character can think about her goal
- The character can have his goal dictated to him by others
- The character can talk about her goal with others
- Others can talk about the character’s goals so we readers can ‘overhear’ them. This works well for characters who are neither introspective nor talkative
- The character can demonstrate his motivation through two or preferably three attempts to accomplish something. More than one attempt is necessary to establish that this is not just habit, politeness, or rule but instead something the character really wants
How do you juggle motivation and character change?
The key is this: Write in scenes. You don’t have to think about the whole book at once, the entire emotional arc or the progressive motivations of six different characters. All you have to do right now is write this one scene. And the way you do that well is by knowing what the scene is supposed to accomplish before you write, e.g. conveying information, characterizing, portraying motivation.
Ask yourself: How can I dramatize these things, not just talk about them? What can this guy do to show the reader what’s going on inside him?
How do you structure character change?
- The character change must come about in response to story events. Create events that could logically lead the character to change in the way you want. ‘Devise incident,’ Maugham said when asked the secret of writing, meaning you must think up those plot points that will affect your characters enough for them to react with genuine change.
- Your character must have emotional responses to these events and we must see this.
- The character change must be dramatized too. We can’t simply be told. We must be shown change of heart through things she does that she didn’t do before. This is called validation, and it is essential for all changing characters.
- You must include a final validation at the end of the story so we know that your character’s change is not just temporary, but permanent. Usually this ending validation is on a larger scale than what has gone before.
