Monthly Archives: August 2012

Characters are real people, too

Posted in Writings about Writing by

So what makes a good character?

There have been dozens (or hundreds, probably) of blogs, books, and other articles written about how to write a good character. This is my small contribution to that subject of how to write well-rounded, believable characters full of depth and passion that readers will fall in love with.

I’ll keep this list short, since most of the other blogs/books/etc could probably do a much better job. But here I’ll cover three things that I believe, if utilized properly, can enhance and really help bring to life any sort of character.

So let’s say you’ve got your character’s name, some background information, and their role in the story all worked out. You have their personality, their appearance, and even some likes and dislikes in mind. These are all important, of course, but a character—just like a real person—is much more than that.

1. Everyone’s got a little quirk, vice, or weakness.

This doesn’t have to a major, plot-altering deal. It can be something like the rough and tough motorcycle guy who loves Julie Andrews’ songs, or the exercise-and-organic-food enthusiast who smokes a pack of cigarettes a day. An unexpected habit, a funny catch-phrase, a nervous tick—these are the little things that everyone has, and can add another layer of depth to your characters.

In my current WIP (work in progress), my main character Lyylia is Finnish, and she speaks several languages in addition to her native tongue. However, Swedish is not one of those languages, and in the book, she’s just moved to an area of Finland where Swedish is as widely spoken as Finnish.

This is not a major plot point, actually, and most of the book does not take place in Finland at all. However, it’s a small insecurity for Lyylia, because she is the sort of person who is accustomed to being in control of herself and her situation. Not knowing one of her nation’s official languages is a weakness that she doesn’t like, especially when a friend of hers (who does speak Swedish) gives her friendly teasing about it.

2. Nobody’s perfect

This is different from the first point, because this is more about a major flaw or mistake rather than a quirky weakness. This is often a major plot point, as the character works to overcome their problem, or their mistake influences the direction of the story. And just like good characters aren’t all good, bad characters aren’t all bad. Even the worst bad guy can have a redeeming trait.

For this example I’ll use Lucy Pevensie, from The Chronicles of Narnia. Lucy could perhaps be called the most “perfect” of all of the Pevensie siblings, and she’s the most loyal to Aslan. In Prince Caspian, she sees Aslan when the others don’t and knows she should follow him, but she weakens and listens to the voices of the others telling her she’s imagining things. Later in the book Aslan rebukes her for not being bold and following him anyway; if she had followed him, it would have saved her and the group a lot of time, aggravation, and potential danger.

Lucy’s mistake in listening to the voices of the group instead of the inner voice she knew she should be obeying didn’t alter the entire plot of the book, but for this otherwise near-perfect character, it was a big deal and a big mistake.

3. Your character isn’t you

As the writer, naturally a part of you is in every one of your characters. But not all of your characters should actually be you. (This applies to fiction only, of course; if you’re writing a memoir or something that’s heavily based on real people and real events, then stick to what you’re doing).

Remember the personality, background, and motivation of your character—all of these things contribute to how they would respond to any given situation. And this may be completely not how you yourself would respond.

I’ll use another character of mine, from a temporarily-shelved WIP. This character is rough, rude, and hyper—she likes to pick fights, swears like a sailor, and hasn’t read a book since high school. In short, she is the total opposite of me. So as she interacts with the other characters and situations, I have to remember that she would not do the things that I would do.

Honestly, if I knew this woman in real life, I’d probably strongly dislike her, but in the story, she’s one of my favorite characters—perhaps because she’s so different from me, and writing her character really stretches me.

These three points apply to protagonists, antagonists, and even supporting characters. While it’s important to keep your major characters major and the minor characters minor, even characters with a small role in the story can be three-dimensional. As I stated at the beginning, this is by no means an exhaustive list, and many other authors have done a much better job of writing about how to write characters.

I hope you’ve enjoyed this anyway, though! Any other writers out there who would like to add favorite character-writing tip? Please comment!

Darkness and Light

Posted in Music, Movies, and other Muses by

This blog entry doesn’t have a point—at least as far as useful insights or advice might go. This time I think I’ll just share my musings about two of my favorite songs (I have a lot of favorites, actually, but I’ll talk about just two here). I blogged a few weeks ago about music, how I use it in conjunction with my writing and so on—you can read it here, and I’ll try not to repeat myself for this post.

I titled this post “Darkness and Light” because of two songs that I’ve been listening to a lot lately, and that I find very inspirational for the novel that I’m working on. It also could serve as an analogy for the worlds in my fantasy novel. One country, called Pohjola, is a land of light—peace, happiness, and abundant light in the sky. The other land is called Ice-Dark, and it is appropriately dark—that’s where the bad guy lives, and there’s no sun or moon.

The “dark” song that I’m putting in this blog isn’t actually dark as in evil. It’s really about the positive side of darkness, both physical and poetic or philosophical darkness. One of my favorite lines, that I find especially inspiring for myself as a writer, is: “Imagining places that I’ve never seen, the morning of life and the end of all dreams…”

The song “Mercy of Darkness” is by Eivør Pálsdóttir, a brilliant singer and songwriter from the Faroe Islands. She has a version of this song in her native language as well, but I’ve put the English version here, gambling that more of my blog readers speak English than Faroese.

The “light” song is about actual light, as well it being a love song of sorts (at least that’s my interpretation). The title “Iđitguovssu” translates as “Dawn Light.” The singer, Máddji, is a Sami from Norway. As I mentioned in my previous post about music, part of my book takes place in Lapland or Samiland, and some of my characters are Sami.

I also happen to just really like Sami music, whether it be the traditional yoiks or the more modern music infused with flavors from other cultures.  This particular song just relaxes me, and if I’ve had a hectic day it helps to put me into a frame of mind for writing.

Does anybody else have a favorite “writing” song that provides you with comfort, inspiration, or just plain joy? Please share!

Olympics, London, and Other Stories

Posted in Music, Movies, and other Muses, Travel Writings, Writings about Writing by

I’m not really into sports at all, but I love watching the Olympics. I especially love the stories of the Olympics—athletes overcoming odd to get to the games, last-minute surprises and underdog victories, picking up and moving on when defeat hits.

Watching these past games in London brought to my memory the trip I took last year to visit London. The trip had nothing to do with the Olympics (I was just visiting a friend) and I was in a different part of the city, so the only evidence of the upcoming games that I saw was an Olympic count-down clock in Trafalgar Square.

But just like the Olympics, my personal experiences in London were full of stories. I might blog about it in more detail in the future—I could do an entire blog post alone on just the ancient Egypt exhibit at the British Museum, but for now I’ll just post one picture:

Part of an ancient Egyptian wall relief. Still pretty colors, after thousands of years!

There were plenty of little memorable moments that I could easily turn into a blog post, or even use as a prompt for a fictionalized story—like our mad dash through King’s Cross Station asking anybody we could where Platform 9 ¾ was, or my attempt at eating so-called B-B-Q chicken at an Italian restaurant that was run by Pakistanis.

I also made a quick detour by Norway on my way home from London. More stories could come from that short trip—like me accidently dropping a bottle of Pepsi at the grocery store and frantically wondering how to apologize in Norwegian when the thing exploded all over the aisle, or getting up at 3am to go catch the plane home and seeing that the sun had already risen.

So below I’m including a few more pictures of some of these random little moments. Each picture could be a story in itself, or I might use some of my adventures as prompts or fodder for future fiction stories. And if any of these pictures prompt an idea for a story in your mind, please go ahead and follow that prompting and write! Inspiration can be found anywhere!

London:

Anybody want a sewing machine? There’s got to be a story behind this one.

Old winding steps. Every foot that ever walked on these steps had a story to tell.

Bergen, Norway:

Another intriguing potential story–what’s up with all the doors opening into the air? Gotta watch that first step…

There be trolls in the forests of Norway!

I’d love to hear your thoughts! Has anyone else felt prompted or inspired by one little glimpse of something, or one picture or one incident? What stories do these pictures make you want to tell?

It’s all in your point of view…

Posted in Writings about Writing by

I believe that point of view (POV) can make or break a story. Well, maybe not break it, necessarily, but a different point of view can radically change a story.

A couple of other writers have blogged recently about POV, so I must do them credit by providing links to their posts. One of my favorite bloggers Ava Jae posted an insightful blog about POV, and editor Beth Hill wrote an exhaustive and very educational three-part post about point of view and character perspective.

To begin with, POV is one of three things: first person, second person, or third person. Each one has their pros and cons.

First person: I tells the story. The reader can immediately get into the main character’s head—the reader sees, hears, and feels everything that the character does.

For an example, I’ll use Daphne Du Maurier’s classic Rebecca. The story begins with an intense first line that puts the reader right away into the mind of the unnamed narrator:

          Last night I dreamt I went to Manderley again.

A disadvantage (or perhaps advantage, depending on how you use it) is that first person POV can be limiting. If important events occur that the narrator does not witness, the information must be revealed in some other way or at some other point in the story.

As I said, this could be either good or not so good. In the case of Rebecca, for those of you who’ve read it, just think how different the story would have been if Max de Winter had been the one telling the story. Without giving away everything to people who haven’t read it, let’s just say that there would have been a whole lot less suspense and intrigue if the reader knew everything that Max de Winter knew.

I wrote a sci-fi story a few years ago (it’s been temporarily shelved, but I haven’t given up on it) that was written in the first person from the perspective of an alien. The plot involved the alien on her way to visit Earth for the first time, and her first encounter with a human.

I enjoyed being able to create and tell about the alien culture basically from the inside out. The interesting challenge to this, however, was describing humans and their culture from the point of view of someone who didn’t know what hair or tear ducts were, had never seen a yellow sun in the sky, and didn’t even have the words to describe the food that humans ate.

Second person: You tells the story. This POV is almost never used, and is rather awkward. Really the only example (good or bad) that I can think of that’s written in second person are the Choose Your Own Adventure books. Anybody remember reading those as a kid? Those were cool because you were actually in the story. But as for reading, say, an actual novel, you as the narrator makes for a difficult read.

Third person: He or she (or it or they) tells the story. This POV form has the most options, which, like most anything, could be either good or bad.

The story can be told from the perspective of just one character, making it similar to first person in that the reader has a limited view of the story but very intimate knowledge of the character, their thoughts and feelings, everything that they do and why.

Multiple characters can tell the story, giving the reader not only knowledge of simultaneous events, but sometimes different perspectives on the same event or character. This format works best, in my opinion, for long complicated stories like epic fantasy (and other genres too, of course) that involve a large cast of characters and multiple plot threads.

The book I’m working on falls into this category. While I have two characters who would be the absolute main main characters, I have a cast of five characters who share the job of telling the story.

I keep the scenes separate as far as character perspective goes, however. I don’t know if this is what might be called a “rule” of narration and POV, but keeping the narrating characters separate within a scene is usually advisable. The best multiple-perspective third person POV stories I’ve read have separate scenes, or even separate chapters, for each character’s viewpoint. Switching mid-scene (or worse, mid-paragraph) from one character’s head to another can often be jarring or confusing for the reader.

For an example of third person, I’ll use an excerpt of a scene from my current book. This scenes that involves two of my main characters (Mađen and Teija), but it’s told from the perspective of Mađen.

          The sun was rising as they neared Sodankylä. Mađen paused at the top of a hill for a moment to admire the view. The snow was just mere flurries now and the clouds were thin, and a red-gold glow was blazing on the horizon. Wild sweeping hills stretched in every direction, dotted with little pockets of trees and rapidly freezing lakes. Towers of rock, softened only slightly by the fresh dusting of snow, rose up from the tundra. Everything glowed a muted orange in the veiled sunrise.

          “It’s beautiful,” Teija said.

          “Sápmi. It’s always been the most beautiful thing to me.”

          “Sápmi?”

         “The land of the Sami children. You call it Lapland, or sometimes Samiland. But our ancestors called it home.”

         Home—a land of ice and reindeer, rich traditions and dying languages. And because of his stupidity, he’d almost let that life slide through his fingers and be lost to him—again. He belonged in the north with his reindeer and his family. Ávgos and their animals would be brought back safely, if it was the last thing he did. He gunned the engine and sped down the hill.

          He stopped briefly in Sodankylä for food and fuel. Teija was uncomplaining, though she did purchase a thicker scarf before they left the village. Mađen saw no evidence of pursuit of any sort, either in Sodankylä village or out on the tundra. During another pause in the late afternoon to stretch and relieve themselves, Mađen noticed Teija examining her phone.

          “You’re not calling anyone, are you?” he asked.

          She looked up at him. “How could I? There’s zero signal out here. My mom called me earlier and my friend texted me, but I can’t reply to either one.”

         “Are you planning to tell them where you are?”

         “Johanna knows where I am—basically. Well, she knows I’ve gone to Lapland. Why? You seem really concerned about me communicating with anyone.”

         Mađen pursed his lips and tried to think of a good way to answer that. “I just don’t want anyone to think I’ve kidnapped you.”

Along similar lines in the third person POV is the omniscient narrator, which is basically just the author telling the story. Scenes and characters are all treated equally, and if the thoughts of any characters are discussed, the reader is informed of them by the author rather than having the characters themselves share.

A good example of this is in Beatrix Potter’s stories; the author is the narrator, and in The Tailor of Gloucester, for example, this omniscient narrator tells us what is going on with the characters of the tailor, Simpkin the cat, and the mice. These stories are of course children’s books, and this omniscient narrator form is more common in children’s stories (it was also the most common POV form used about 100 years ago, when Beatrix Potter began writing).

It’s rare, though not impossible, of course, for a story to mix POV forms. One book that accomplishes this mixing quite well is The Dreaming: Walks through Mist by Kim Murphy. There are three main characters who tell the story—two of them tell it in third person, and one in first person. Each POV and perspective is given its own chapter, with a heading featuring the name of the character. This is a great way to prepare the reader for not only the change in perspective, as the third person narration switches between Shae and Lee, but also for the dramatic shift when the first person I narrator Phoebe tells her part of the story.

Regardless of the point of view, or the viewpoint character(s) used, the reader can only know what the author chooses to tell. That’s why I mentioned at the beginning that POV and character perspective can radically alter a story.

For writers out there, do you have a favorite POV that you write in, or do you let the story and characters determine the narrative perspective? For readers, who do you like to have telling the story: first or third person, omniscient narrator or just one or two characters? Please share your thoughts!