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.


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)

No comments: