Which comes first, the character or the plot? For me, that’s an easy question to answer. There are so many characters roaming around inside my head that I would have to admit characters are my first love in fiction writing. And from my characters, my plot evolves. All I need to do is put my characters in difficult situations and watch them work their way out and—voila!—instant plot.

Even so, many writers love their characters a little too much; a writing crime of which I’ve certainly been guilty. It’s painful to watch a character you’ve developed, someone you feel a genuine fondness for, suffer. Yet your characters have to run into some trouble if you’re going to tell a good story. And above all, they must be “human”—they’ve got to have flaws.

Give your characters flaws, especially flaws that keep them from reaching a goal that is pivotal to your plot, and watch the sparks fly. We can think of many examples of such conflicts:

• A teacher whose timid nature prevents her from disciplining her class
• A teenager who stutters and is so self-conscious he drives away potential friends with his caustic attitude
• A grown man who can’t stop lying, and loses many a friend and lover when his lies are uncovered

All these characters will have some redeeming traits. While we don’t necessarily need to love them, we do need to identify with them somehow, and we do need to care about what happens to them, or we won’t continue reading. But it’s the flaws that make the character multi-dimensional.

You’ve probably practiced writing character sketches. They’re those little outlines writers often make as a sort of roadmap to their character. They often look something like this:

Name: Jane Doe
Eyes: Blue
Hair: Auburn, wavy, shoulder-length
Height: 5’ 8”
Build: Slender
Clothes: Casual. Jeans, t-shirts, tank tops…

While it’s nice to have that sort of perspective on your character, it’s far better to know your character beyond her vital statistics. I’m going to encourage you to dig deeper. Really get to know your character before you start writing about her.

I don’t outline or sketch my characters, and you might find it useful to skip that archaic method, too. I write my character sketches as though I’m giving a description of someone I’m getting to know, someone I care about. A character sketch I created for one protagonist, named Maddie, looked something like this:

Her hands are tiny, fragile, with bird-like bones. She is careless about keeping her nails manicured, but they grow long and perfect nonetheless. She likes her hands–even holds then up occasionally to admire them.

She feels a little like “white trash”–under-educated, even though she’s sharply intelligent and hungry for knowledge, as evidenced by the pile of books beside her bed. She wishes for a high IQ, and the means to talk brilliantly on subjects she feels she should know more about, like current events and politics.

Her long black hair hangs in ringlet curls that sproing like bedsprings when she rakes them with her fingers.

Here eyes are the color of good, dark rum.

She wears clothes that reveal her cleavage–which is less intentional than accidental. She’s always a little surprised when men take an interest in her.

She’ll strike up a conversation with a perfect stranger in line at the grocery store, but she’s afraid to socialize at parties, or talk to people she’s expected to talk to, for fear she’ll say something foolish or unintelligent.

She eats voraciously, but stays slender anyhow. Like a hummingbird, she’s always flitting around, unable to sit still. People are stunned by her ravenous consumption of food–without a shred of self-consciousness.

She’s hesitant with men–unsure what to say to them. She’s hopelessly inept at flirting, which makes many men believe she’s a little odd.

When she sits, it’s often with her legs crossed, one leg dangling over the other and in constant, jittery motion. When she does this in heels, she often jangles her shoe right off her foot. She often slouches, both when seated and when she walks. If she would stand tall she would be quite beautiful.

Does Maddie have flaws? You bet. She has a confidence problem. Will Maddie’s lack of self-esteem keep her struggling to reach some important goal? Of course! That’s part of plotting through characterization.

Character sketches should be organic works-in-progress that grow as your character grows.

TRY THIS!

You’ve seen my character sketch; now it’s your turn. Write a character sketch. Pick a person who’s been inside your head. Think of a character that intrigues you, somebody you won’t be able to stop writing about. Your goal is to find yourself hopelessly fascinated with this person, because then, perhaps your readers will be, too.

Remember to make your outline more like a conversational description and less like a WANTED poster hanging on a post office wall–tell us about your character as though you’re giving us a very thorough (not to mention personal) introduction. And don’t leave out the flaws! Your character has to have some sort of glitch. If perfect people don’t exist in real life, they certainly can’t exist in fiction.

How long should your sketch be? Write until you run out of things to say about your character. (And don’t forget to give your character a name!) Don’t worry about length so much as content. Read and reread your sketch. You may find you’ve written in some traits that, upon careful scrutiny, don’t exactly fit with the rest of your sketch. If anything looks out of place after you’ve finished, take it out. Don’t get too caught up in quirky personality traits and keep them in your sketch just because they’re “interesting.” If they don’t fit your character, discard them. Be ruthless. And most of all, have fun!

Art source: Mark-Langley.com

felt, looked, seemed…

They’re the most basic of verbs–the ones used to identify a state of being. We sometimes need them in our writing, and a story without them might well be florid and over-the-top. But an excess of weak verbs sucks the energy from a story. A good writer learns to stalk those weak verbs like prey and cull them from the literary herd.

How can you identify weak verbs without memorizing a list? It’s pretty simple. Weak verbs are those that don’t stand up well in a sentence without support. Take the modifier away from “The boy seemed hostile ” and you have “The boy seemed.” “The boy seemed” is still a sentence, but it describes a kid who simply…exists. “He felt sad” becomes “He felt.” Again, still a sentence, but what does it tell us?

And while we’re talking about telling, there’s a temptation that weak verbs lead us writers into–the temptation to simply tell our readers how our characters feel or act instead of painting a word picture for them:

She felt lonely.
He seemed upset.
The puppy looked terrified.
The child seemed friendly.

In each of those sentences the writer uses a weak verb to tell his readers something. Painting a word picture may take longer, but the results are far more satisfying, allowing the reader to make an emotional connection:

She felt lonely.

becomes…

She curled herself into a comma shape on the couch, her hand resting on the phone receiver, and stared at the TV screen.

You may use more (perhaps many more) than one sentence to show the reader your character’s loneliness. Your goal is not to tell the reader that your character felt alone but to show the reader a lonely character and make them feel her loneliness, too.

I have a little trick for getting around weak and “telling” verbs in my writing: I pretend I’m making a movie. Let’s say that my lonely character’s name is Mary. If I’m making a movie about lonely Mary, I likely won’t have a narrator pop into the scene to say, “Mary felt lonely.” I’m going to have to show Mary in the act of being lonely and let the viewers infer from her actions that she feels utterly alone in the world. Screenwriters don’t have the luxury of telling an audience what a character is feeling–they have to demonstrate it. Good fiction writers don’t have that luxury either. Not if they want their fiction read, at least.

Now, don’t get me wrong–I’m not saying that these verbs don’t have a place in your writing or that you need to eliminate them at all cost. Occasionally you’ll find you need them. But good writers are aware of weak verbs and how they affect a fictional story (or even non-fiction, for that matter). When you’re working on a rewrite and you stumble across one of the many weak verbs you’ll likely find, just take the time to ask yourself, “Should I change this wimpy verb?” If the verb needs to go, then take that sucker down and rewrite something more powerful. And don’t feel bad about it; that little verb was not strong to begin with, and never would have been. Culling the weak is nature’s way, and it’s the writer’s way, too.

Originally published in Fiction Fix Newsletter, November, 2001

• What does my character desire most, and what is he willing to do to get it?
• What am I trying to say with this story?

The M&Ms: Motivation and Meaning

Answering the first question–what does my character desire?–provides the fuel for your story. Motivation is the catalyst that sets events in motion. Your character wants something, and your story will be about how he overcomes a series of trials in order to achieve (or fail to achieve–stories don’t have to have positive outcomes, only satisfying ones) his goals. Without a motivated character, your story is just an anecdote.

Meaning–the question of what you’re trying to say with your story–is the difference between a memorable story and a forgettable one. Meaning provides texture, depth and richness. Stories that detail events, without fulfilling the need for deeper meaning, seem hollow. Let’s say you wrote a story about a Jewish man’s struggles during World War II. You might say your story is about a man who survived the holocaust, and that may well be true, but if your story has meaning, it would also be about the power of perseverance, or the triumph of good over evil.

Without motivation and meaning you risk writing anecdotes–narratives about events and circumstances instead of people and their desires. While anecdotes may be fun to retell at parties, they don’t make for resonant, memorable fiction. Do you want to keep crafting “unpublished items?”

I didn’t think so.

© 2001, Karen Hertzberg

The following was originally published in Fiction Fix Newsletter in January, 2002.

AT THE MOVIES

Today’s movie audiences don’t buy into hokey dialog. The characters on the screen must speak in a way that rings true, or moviegoers will turn away. So, it only stands to reason that a great source for learning dialog would be the cinema.My brother and I are constantly quoting movie lines. Drives the rest of our family nuts. We remember dialog because we pay attention. Start listening at movies and during TV time. If you’re a visual person, instead of watching, close your eyes to help yourself listen. Remember the tone and style of the characters’ conversations. Emulate that real-sounding style when you write.

READ YOUR DIALOG OUT LOUD

Pretend you’re an actor rehearsing a script. When you’re revising lines of dialog, read them aloud. Try to sound just as your character would–using vocal tones and inflections to convey meaning. Do you sound ridiculous? If you do, you need to rewrite your dialog to make it more conversational and realistic.

READ BOOKS WITH GREAT DIALOG

From the age of about 14 or so, I’ve been a Stephen King fan. And whether you love or loathe him, King writes incredible dialog. As a teenage writer, I wanted to write like Stephen King. I’m sure the Master of the Macabre is partly responsible for my ability to create vivid conversations between my characters. If you read writers who have a knack for dialog (and you’ll know who they are when you read their books), you’ll most likely pick up some ability by osmosis.

OBEY THE DIALOG RULES

I know, I know–you’re saying, “What dialog rules? I never got any dialog rules!” They’re not exactly handed out on the first day of Creative Writing 101, but they do exist as a sort of unwritten law. Here they are:

• Never use attributes other than “said” or “asked.” (Like all rules, this one may be broken from time to time–just be careful to break it only when the alternative truly adds something to your story.) Often, if it’s clear who’s talking, you don’t need an attribute at all.
• Don’t try to write in dialect unless you’re a real pro (in which case you probably wouldn’t be reading this article). It’s awkward, and you have to use some creative spelling and punctuation. Telling us Velvet Johnson spoke like a southern belle is preferable to making us read (and decipher) lines of dialog like: “Whah, I ain’t nevah seen nothin’ like that in mah life!”
• Do throw in regional expressions and slang to make dialog seem real. Just don’t pepper your manuscript so full of them that it’s no longer palatable.
• Experiment with giving your character a vocal tick–some oft-repeated word or phrase that becomes his trademark. Remember Joe Pesci’s character, Leo Getz, in the Lethal Weapon movies? Aside from a constant stream of fast-talking chatter, Leo’s vocal trademark was: “Okayokayokay….”
• Don’t have your characters make small talk. In real life, we may chat about the weather and the stock market. In fiction, unless those things happen to be important to the story–say, for instance, you’re writing a book like The Perfect Storm, or a screenplay like Wall Street–leave them out and cut to the chase. Small talk is dull in real life. It’s even more boring in fiction.
• Break up dialog with action. People don’t simply stand face to face and talk. We make facial expressions and gestures. We move around and do things as we’re talking. The physical action in your story shouldn’t grind to a halt when your characters speak any more than it would in real life. Here’s the rub, though–when you’re including action in your dialog sequences, make certain what you’ve included helps your story. It should show character, set the scene, or move the plot forward in some small (or not so small) way.

Making your characters chatter shouldn’t be a scary thing–it’s fun! And we all enjoy reading good dialog, because suddenly people are talking and things are getting interesting. If you have trouble with dialog, practice it. Try writing a story with nothing but dialog, and try making it so that a reader would be able to learn something about the characters through the dialog and distinguish them, one from the other, by their speech. You might even practice conversations in your head. It’s not weird or schizophrenic; I do it all the time.

Well, then again, maybe it is weird…but we’re writers.