All good, round, deep characters have a flaw. Sometimes it's a tragic flaw; sometimes, it's a fatal flaw. Other times, it's the shattered facet that keeps a character human.
So what's a flaw?
Often, it's a lack of something.
If a character feels a lack of something, it motivates him. Often, nearly always, this character has a goal that symbolizes, to him/her, the satisfaction of this inner, private need.
It could be love (too many to mention), success, money (all the Nero Wolfes), affection for his family (It's a Wonderful Life,) , a family, safety from a criminal (Silence of the Lambs), a certain level of society (The Great Gatsby,) etc.
In short, it is anything that threatens your character's sense that s/he controls his/her own destiny.
When a person is aware of such a lack, they are ill at ease. They try to compensate. More on compensation tomorrow.
Wednesday, July 27, 2011
Friday, July 22, 2011
Your Main Character and Books
What kind of fiction does your main character read?
Do they not read fiction because "it isn't real"?
Do they read only horror novels with lots of slippery blood and torture of young women? Even if your MC is a young woman?
Do they read only bestsellers that the NYT picks out for them?
Do they not read fiction but have an extensive library in the living room so it looks like they do?
Only DWMs? Only living LBGT writers of color?
Only highbrow lit that Oprah thinks is too tough for her viewers?
Only sword and sorcery fantasy? Even if they're a brain surgeon? Or a Wiccan palm reader, to get ideas?
Only 99c ebooks, to spite the major publishers? Or because they're chinsy? Or because they like new writers? Or because they won't read a publisher that published Snookie?
Only $15.99 ebooks because those self-published writers can't be any good since they haven't jumped through the appropriate hoops and paid their dues?
Do they not read fiction because "it isn't real"?
Do they read only horror novels with lots of slippery blood and torture of young women? Even if your MC is a young woman?
Do they read only bestsellers that the NYT picks out for them?
Do they not read fiction but have an extensive library in the living room so it looks like they do?
Only DWMs? Only living LBGT writers of color?
Only highbrow lit that Oprah thinks is too tough for her viewers?
Only sword and sorcery fantasy? Even if they're a brain surgeon? Or a Wiccan palm reader, to get ideas?
Only 99c ebooks, to spite the major publishers? Or because they're chinsy? Or because they like new writers? Or because they won't read a publisher that published Snookie?
Only $15.99 ebooks because those self-published writers can't be any good since they haven't jumped through the appropriate hoops and paid their dues?
Wednesday, July 20, 2011
Ways to Tag a Character: Attitude
There are four major ways to tag a character:
2) Speech
3) Mannerisms
4) Attitude -- also called traits: the habitually apologetic, the fearful, the easy-breezy laugh, the careful vanity, an obsequiousness ingrained from surviving rounds of layoffs, an ex-general accustomed to snapping orders and immediate obedience, preoccupation with a single subject (golf, babies, one's own health, a religion or political stance, a perfect lawn, fishing, retribution for a minute perceived wrong or for the murder of one's child, etc.) quick to take fey offence at any perceived insult to his status in the peerage, an innate bravery when the most powerful wizard in the world keeps trying to kill you.
Thanks for reading!
Here’s two interesting 99c short stories for you to read: (More fiction coming soon.)
Nag Is Hindi for Cobra (All Formats) Tuesday, July 19, 2011
Ways to Tag a Character:
There are four major ways to tag a character:
1) Appearance
2) Speech
3) Mannerisms -- clutching a sheaf of sliding papers, spinning a e-reader like a basketball, a toddler who scowls, a servile but furious house-elf, a girl who flutters, an eye-dodger, an earlobe-tugger, a tic, a twitch, a hand-washer, a doodler, a nose-picker, an ex-smoker who can't let go of a phantom cigarette, a seat-squirmer.
1) Appearance
2) Speech
3) Mannerisms -- clutching a sheaf of sliding papers, spinning a e-reader like a basketball, a toddler who scowls, a servile but furious house-elf, a girl who flutters, an eye-dodger, an earlobe-tugger, a tic, a twitch, a hand-washer, a doodler, a nose-picker, an ex-smoker who can't let go of a phantom cigarette, a seat-squirmer.
Thanks for reading!
Here’s two interesting 99c short stories for you to read: (More fiction coming soon.)
Nag Is Hindi for Cobra (All Formats)
Monday, July 18, 2011
Ways to Tag a Character: Speech
There are four ways to characterize.
1) Appearance.
2) Speech -- New Yawker or Southern drawl; an affected 19th-century manner, the vocabulary of a wharf whore or a Georgia preacher's wife; an autodidact or a lazy bum; a manager of a factory farm with a master's in ag science and a minor in botany/genetics or a dirt farmer; do-diddy rappin' or the King's English; and stutter, stammer, or clenched throat. One's profession, hobbies, religion, family, background, and education change speech.
1) Appearance.
2) Speech -- New Yawker or Southern drawl; an affected 19th-century manner, the vocabulary of a wharf whore or a Georgia preacher's wife; an autodidact or a lazy bum; a manager of a factory farm with a master's in ag science and a minor in botany/genetics or a dirt farmer; do-diddy rappin' or the King's English; and stutter, stammer, or clenched throat. One's profession, hobbies, religion, family, background, and education change speech.
Thanks for reading!
Here’s two interesting 99c short stories for you to read: (More fiction coming soon.)
Nag Is Hindi for Cobra (All Formats)
Friday, July 15, 2011
Ways to Tag a Character: Appearance
There are four major ways to tag a character:
1) Appearance -- cobalt blue eyes, burnt sugar skin, emaciated physique with umbrella-ribs torso, grimy fingernails, mango orange hair, mourning black hoop-skirted dress, sunburn on one side of the face, only wears designer business suits, dark roots under platinum Marilyn Monroe blonde hair, mom ponytail, a fat toddler grown six feet tall, a lightening bolt-shaped scar on his forehead, an Adonis but for his crooked teeth, a wretch but for her kind and clean smile, chest hair like a tiny bear skin rug glued to his skin, bald and lumpy like a golf ball, one eye higher than the other, a brass prosthetic nose, huge herpes lesion on his upper lip, etc.
More to come.
1) Appearance -- cobalt blue eyes, burnt sugar skin, emaciated physique with umbrella-ribs torso, grimy fingernails, mango orange hair, mourning black hoop-skirted dress, sunburn on one side of the face, only wears designer business suits, dark roots under platinum Marilyn Monroe blonde hair, mom ponytail, a fat toddler grown six feet tall, a lightening bolt-shaped scar on his forehead, an Adonis but for his crooked teeth, a wretch but for her kind and clean smile, chest hair like a tiny bear skin rug glued to his skin, bald and lumpy like a golf ball, one eye higher than the other, a brass prosthetic nose, huge herpes lesion on his upper lip, etc.
More to come.
Thanks for reading!
Here’s two interesting 99c short stories for you to read: (More fiction coming soon.)
Nag Is Hindi for Cobra (All Formats)
Thursday, July 14, 2011
What's your character's reaction to the sun?
Not only vampires have problems with too much sunlight.
If your character is running around Paris, outside, for four hours or more, unless they are very melanin-blessed, they're going to get sunburned.
Ditto if they're outside, running away from the bad guys, on a sunny day (or even a cloudy one) for more than a few hours. What does that do to them? Are they sore? Do they blister and peel the next day? Are they worried about getting more little cancers that the dermatologist is going to have to burn off? Does the sun start to hurt?
Describe all that. Accumulated damage to your character, physical and psychological, is an important part of your plot and story.
If your character is running around Paris, outside, for four hours or more, unless they are very melanin-blessed, they're going to get sunburned.
Ditto if they're outside, running away from the bad guys, on a sunny day (or even a cloudy one) for more than a few hours. What does that do to them? Are they sore? Do they blister and peel the next day? Are they worried about getting more little cancers that the dermatologist is going to have to burn off? Does the sun start to hurt?
Describe all that. Accumulated damage to your character, physical and psychological, is an important part of your plot and story.
Wednesday, July 13, 2011
How to Introduce a Character in Your Story or Novel
To introduce a character, whether the main character at the beginning or a new character somewhere in the middle, you need three things:
1) The character must be a character.
They can't be flat or shapeless. They can't be neutral or wussy. They have to be for or against something. That's important. You have to give your reader something to react to. You can have them hate or love the character, but the reader has to have a reaction.
2) The first time he appears, the character should perform an act that characterizes him.
This goes back to Sunday school: don't listen to what people say, watch what they do. Your reader will watch what the character does, and it should be something important. Is he a thief? Have him steal something. Is he honest? Have him give back a nickel to make correct change. Generous and sweet? Have him over-tip the waitress after charming her.
And make that waitress important later.
If he's not generous and sweet, have him charm the waitress and then stiff her.
That doesn't mean to make the charecters flat. You can add contrast later, and should. Just show what they essentially are, in their core, first. More about adding contrast in these posts:
http://tkkenyon.blogspot.com/2011/06/contrast-makes-your-writing-more.html
http://tkkenyon.blogspot.com/2011/07/3d-characters-easy-formula.html
3) The characterizing act must be both pertinent and characteristic.
That means you should show the most important characteristic of your character, not a side characteristic. If he's supposed to be courageous, don't show first how kind he is, etc.
1) The character must be a character.
They can't be flat or shapeless. They can't be neutral or wussy. They have to be for or against something. That's important. You have to give your reader something to react to. You can have them hate or love the character, but the reader has to have a reaction.
2) The first time he appears, the character should perform an act that characterizes him.
This goes back to Sunday school: don't listen to what people say, watch what they do. Your reader will watch what the character does, and it should be something important. Is he a thief? Have him steal something. Is he honest? Have him give back a nickel to make correct change. Generous and sweet? Have him over-tip the waitress after charming her.
And make that waitress important later.
If he's not generous and sweet, have him charm the waitress and then stiff her.
That doesn't mean to make the charecters flat. You can add contrast later, and should. Just show what they essentially are, in their core, first. More about adding contrast in these posts:
http://tkkenyon.blogspot.com/2011/06/contrast-makes-your-writing-more.html
http://tkkenyon.blogspot.com/2011/07/3d-characters-easy-formula.html
3) The characterizing act must be both pertinent and characteristic.
That means you should show the most important characteristic of your character, not a side characteristic. If he's supposed to be courageous, don't show first how kind he is, etc.
Thanks for reading!
Here’s two interesting 99c short stories for you to read: (More fiction coming soon.)
Nag Is Hindi for Cobra (All Formats)
Tuesday, July 12, 2011
Even 3D Characters Have One Dominant Trait
We've discussed several times in this blog how to make your characters seem three dimensional.
Easy Formula for 3-D Characters
Character Complexity
Naming Your Characters
However, if you have too many contrasts and nuances, you can end up with character mush.
For that reason, it's a good idea to identify a dominant trait in each of your major characters that will predominate during the story.
A story is an enactment of what is, most probably, the worst and or most exciting thing to ever happen to your main character. When this one major stimulus occurs, one part of your character's personality will determine their reaction.
Your main character should be heroic in some way. For him/her, choose a heroic trait, like bravery, or kindness, honesty, or compassion, or maternal/paternal/fraternal/sororital bonds. The Seven Cardinal Virtues are an easy list. I like the ones first espoused by Aristotle and Plato: temperance, wisdom, justice, and courage, supplemented by the three virtues from the New Testament: faith, hope, and charity/love.
Your other characters, co-protagonists, antagonists, etc., can have heroic, anti-heroic, or neutral traits, such as the seven deadly sins (PEWSLAG: Pride, Envy, Wrath, Sloth, Lust, Avarice, and Gluttony,) or any of the heroic ones above, or such neutral ones as stupidity, ambition, recklessness, introversion or extroversion, etc.
More about characters and how to introduce them, next.
Easy Formula for 3-D Characters
Character Complexity
Naming Your Characters
However, if you have too many contrasts and nuances, you can end up with character mush.
For that reason, it's a good idea to identify a dominant trait in each of your major characters that will predominate during the story.
A story is an enactment of what is, most probably, the worst and or most exciting thing to ever happen to your main character. When this one major stimulus occurs, one part of your character's personality will determine their reaction.
Your main character should be heroic in some way. For him/her, choose a heroic trait, like bravery, or kindness, honesty, or compassion, or maternal/paternal/fraternal/sororital bonds. The Seven Cardinal Virtues are an easy list. I like the ones first espoused by Aristotle and Plato: temperance, wisdom, justice, and courage, supplemented by the three virtues from the New Testament: faith, hope, and charity/love.
Your other characters, co-protagonists, antagonists, etc., can have heroic, anti-heroic, or neutral traits, such as the seven deadly sins (PEWSLAG: Pride, Envy, Wrath, Sloth, Lust, Avarice, and Gluttony,) or any of the heroic ones above, or such neutral ones as stupidity, ambition, recklessness, introversion or extroversion, etc.
More about characters and how to introduce them, next.
Thanks for reading!
Here’s two interesting 99c short stories for you to read: (More fiction coming soon.)
Nag Is Hindi for Cobra (All Formats)
Monday, July 11, 2011
How Not To Write: Be Vague
Specificity about objects, emotions, and characters creates startling, fresh fiction. The details should be pertinent to the character and mood of the work.
Vagueness and cliches suck all the lifeblood out of your fiction, like a condor-sized Alaskan mosquito. (See how it wasn't a vampire, there?)
"Tyler gets me a job as a waiter, after that Tyler's pushing a gun in my mouth and saying, the first step to eternal life is you have to die. ... The barrel of the gun pressed the back of my throat, Tyler says, 'We really won't die.' With my tongue I can fell the silencer holes we drilled into the barrel of the gun." (Fight Club, Chuck Palahniuk)
Wow. That's a specific detail.
"Lyme Disease?" "Spread by tick bite. They're seething in the grass. You get Bell's palsy, meningitis, the lining of your brain swells like dough." ("Modern Love," T.C. Boyle)
"ABANDON ALL HOPE YE WHO ENTER HERE is scrawled in blood red lettering on the side of the Chemical Bank near the corner of Eleventh and First and is in print large enough to be seen from the backseat of the cab as it lurches forward in the traffic leaving Wall Street and just as Timothy Price notices the words a bus pulls up, the advertisement for Les Miserables on its side blocking his view, but Price who is with Pierce & Pierce and twenty-six doesn't seem to care because he tell the driver he will give him five dollars to turn up the radio, 'Be My Baby' on WYNN, and the driver, black, not American, does so. ... Price calms down, continues to stare out the cab's dirty window, probably at the word FEAR sprayed in red graffiti on the side of McDonald's on Fourth and Seventh." (American Psycho, Bret Easton Ellis)
Vagueness and cliches suck all the lifeblood out of your fiction, like a condor-sized Alaskan mosquito. (See how it wasn't a vampire, there?)
"Tyler gets me a job as a waiter, after that Tyler's pushing a gun in my mouth and saying, the first step to eternal life is you have to die. ... The barrel of the gun pressed the back of my throat, Tyler says, 'We really won't die.' With my tongue I can fell the silencer holes we drilled into the barrel of the gun." (Fight Club, Chuck Palahniuk)
Wow. That's a specific detail.
"Lyme Disease?" "Spread by tick bite. They're seething in the grass. You get Bell's palsy, meningitis, the lining of your brain swells like dough." ("Modern Love," T.C. Boyle)
"ABANDON ALL HOPE YE WHO ENTER HERE is scrawled in blood red lettering on the side of the Chemical Bank near the corner of Eleventh and First and is in print large enough to be seen from the backseat of the cab as it lurches forward in the traffic leaving Wall Street and just as Timothy Price notices the words a bus pulls up, the advertisement for Les Miserables on its side blocking his view, but Price who is with Pierce & Pierce and twenty-six doesn't seem to care because he tell the driver he will give him five dollars to turn up the radio, 'Be My Baby' on WYNN, and the driver, black, not American, does so. ... Price calms down, continues to stare out the cab's dirty window, probably at the word FEAR sprayed in red graffiti on the side of McDonald's on Fourth and Seventh." (American Psycho, Bret Easton Ellis)
Friday, July 8, 2011
Complex Emotions in Fiction
Complex emotions are easy.
Characters should not have just one emotion at a time. Mix them up and describe the shades between them.
Happiness can be tinged with nostalgia, remorse, satiety, loneliness, euphoria, triumph, vindictiveness, condescension, schadenfreude, earnestness, desire, sexual desire, or hysteria, etc.
Anger can be mixed with hate, schadenfreude, envy, stupidity, berserker rage, annoyance, self-aggrandizement, irritation, ignorance, suppression, or vindictiveness, etc.
Describing the whole, round emotion makes your characters seem 3-D.
Characters should not have just one emotion at a time. Mix them up and describe the shades between them.
Happiness can be tinged with nostalgia, remorse, satiety, loneliness, euphoria, triumph, vindictiveness, condescension, schadenfreude, earnestness, desire, sexual desire, or hysteria, etc.
Anger can be mixed with hate, schadenfreude, envy, stupidity, berserker rage, annoyance, self-aggrandizement, irritation, ignorance, suppression, or vindictiveness, etc.
Describing the whole, round emotion makes your characters seem 3-D.
Thanks for reading!
Here’s two interesting 99c short stories for you to read: (More fiction coming soon.)
Nag Is Hindi for Cobra (All Formats)
Thursday, July 7, 2011
3D Characters: The Easy Formula
No kidding: making characters seem 3 dimensional is easy. There's a stupid formula that works every time.
The character desires a certain outcome. When the opposite outcome happens, they are surprised that they feel the opposite of how they expected they would feel.
Seriously, that's all there is.
I read a really, really bad novel (that was glowingly reviewed) that actually had one character, a rather minor character, write a letter to the main character and tell him that when the unexpected thing happened, he "felt the opposite of what he expected." Literally in those words.
Stupid, clunky writing. All sorts of crap is being published by the Big 6 these days.
Show it. Have the character feel it. Bring the character on screen and let them scream their head off.
Don't have a character write a flippin' letter to another one and say it. Arrrgh.
The character desires a certain outcome. When the opposite outcome happens, they are surprised that they feel the opposite of how they expected they would feel.
Seriously, that's all there is.
I read a really, really bad novel (that was glowingly reviewed) that actually had one character, a rather minor character, write a letter to the main character and tell him that when the unexpected thing happened, he "felt the opposite of what he expected." Literally in those words.
Stupid, clunky writing. All sorts of crap is being published by the Big 6 these days.
Show it. Have the character feel it. Bring the character on screen and let them scream their head off.
Don't have a character write a flippin' letter to another one and say it. Arrrgh.
Thanks for reading!
Here’s two interesting 99c short stories for you to read: (More fiction coming soon.)
Nag Is Hindi for Cobra (All Formats)
Wednesday, July 6, 2011
Your Main Character and Food: What can or will they eat?
What are your character's food preferences, predilections, and prejudices?
I was in Paris this weekend. The French will eat anything they can kill.
I'm a (mostly) vegetarian and a celiac.
Sometimes, I compromised my morals to not get sick, but I didn't go as far as fois gras or veal.
During your WIP, what does your character eat, and would they eat that normally?
I was in Paris this weekend. The French will eat anything they can kill.
I'm a (mostly) vegetarian and a celiac.
Sometimes, I compromised my morals to not get sick, but I didn't go as far as fois gras or veal.
During your WIP, what does your character eat, and would they eat that normally?
Friday, July 1, 2011
The Five Stages of a Writer's Career (according to publishers)
Who the hell is TK Kenyon?
Get me TK Kenyon.
Get me a TK Kenyon-type author.
Get me a young TK Kenyon.
Who the hell is TK Kenyon?
Get me TK Kenyon.
Get me a TK Kenyon-type author.
Get me a young TK Kenyon.
Who the hell is TK Kenyon?
Thanks for reading!
Here’s two interesting 99c short stories for you to read: (More fiction coming soon.)
Nag Is Hindi for Cobra (All Formats)
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