Character Development is Good for You.

An example of my character template. The picture came via Flickr.com
and, if you click on it, it will lead to the photographer's gallery.

Is it possible to write a story without at least one character? I seriously doubt it, even if the ‘character’ is only something inanimate. But is it desirable? Definitely not. Characters are the writer’s means of delivering story. Plot is a framework, a guide, sometimes a straightjacket, that determines a story’s direction and ultimate end. But it’s the character (or characters) who, taking the reader’s hand, guides her through the twists and turns. And the more believable that character can be made, the more thoroughly will the reader engage with the story.

A lot has been written about character development, so I can add to the cannon only by describing my own method. Before I can start any story, I have to know my main characters. In my current fantasy trilogy, which is well under way (Volumes 1 & 2 are written and edited), I’ve so far developed a cast of 83 named characters. Each of these people has a history, biography, physical description and a picture on which I can hang my memory. I know; a lot of people will think there are too many characters here, but this is a tale in the tradition of the epic fantasy, though it’s more adult than many. It’s common in the genre to have a large cast list: think of Lord of the Rings. How I keep track of all these individuals is for another day, another post. For now, I’ll concentrate on how I ‘invent’ my characters.

As an ex-professional photographer, my driving creative muse is visual. So, having determined gender and age, and having a vague idea of what I want the character to look like, I search my catalogue of images of people. Over the years I’ve been writing, I’ve made it a habit to collect pictures of real people I come across on my flights through the matter on the internet. I copy these pictures and assign them a basic designation according to race, gender, age (approximate), and hair colour. I have so far collected a library of around 1,200 from which I can take my pick. (Some of you will be concerned about copyright infringement, but, as these pictures are never published by me, that’s not really an issue).

Having chosen my picture, I attach it to a template on Word in the form of a table, listing physical features, beliefs, relationships, political persuasion, family history and asking the character two questions: 1. What does this person want? 2. What is this person prepared to do to get it? I now have a pretty good knowledge of my character.

At this stage, I use my table of names to select an appropriate name. (I’ve a document listing over 10,000 names, sorted alphabetically and by gender, with annotations showing the nations that use the name. For access to that list, please visit the tab above, labelled ‘Tools & Links’ where you’ll find a .pdf version that you can copy/print for your own use.) For my fantasy, since I’ve invented a whole world along with everything that goes with it, I’ve made up my character names and tested each against Google to ensure I’m neither using one that already exists, nor naming somebody by using a word that means something inappropriate in another language.

I now have my character with name, age, physical attributes and belief system. I also know what motivates that character and what that character is prepared to do in order to achieve any ambition. That gives me a pretty rounded person to put on the page before I even start writing the story. This may seem a lot of work, but in my experience, the bulk of writing is preparation. Once I have my characters and locations and any historically factual information that may be relevant, I can start the story. I find that the preparation allows me to write very quickly. I always place hyperlinks in the story to each of my character’s bio pages so that I can quickly check to make sure I haven’t either changed some physical aspect or turned a peace-loving pagan into a warrior extremist.

So, there you have it: my method of creating and developing characters. Once they are on the page, I allow them to guide the story for which I only ever have a very loose framework, or none at all. Often, they take me along roads I didn’t know existed. I love that. I learn a great deal along the way, as well. Character is vital to the story; we neglect it at our peril.

This post first appeared as a guest post on Brian Hayden’s Blog where you will find lots of other interesting stuff.

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Not Enough for June?

Some will recall the 1960s film, “Hot Enough For June’, from which I derived my title this month.

There’s no connection at all with the comedy spy movie; I just like the modified title, as it appears apposite.

So, what has this last month seen in the study of writer Stuart Aken? Well, not enough writing, that’s for sure. But there has been a great deal of editing, and that can only be to the good. My adult epic fantasy trilogy has been hanging around for long enough. I’ve written and edited the first two books and have now started writing book three. Long ago, I decided that I’d look at publishing book one as soon as I started writing book three. So, I’ve prepared it ready for a publisher and am now in the process of seeking some company that will be prepared to risk some investment in my fantasy. The book is 216,000 words (for comparison, the first book of the Lord of the Rings trilogy is about 198,000 words) and will need to incorporate 3 or 4 maps. Clearly, this is hardly the sort of package most publishers will welcome. They tend to look for books that will be easy and cheap to produce. I need a brave publisher. If one doesn’t materialise, I shall have to self-publish, of course. I think an ebook initially, to see how it goes, and then the paper version. Still that’s for the future. For the moment, I’m looking at submission and the work involved. As you’ll see from the chart, I’ve spent a good part of the month in editing; most of that was on book one, which has 53 chapters. I’m still involved in the final edit of book 2; really no more than a re-read to increase my familiarity with the 83 named characters and multitude of places in my invented world.

What else have I done? Well, I’ve read a couple of books and written reviews. Reviewed some software, written a few blog posts, including a guest post on character development; here’s the link for that, should you be interested: http://brianhayden.net/guest-post-by-stuart-aken-character-development-is-good-for-you/

I’ve also written a short story and entered another for a contest. Nowhere near my target of one new story and one contest submission per week, but at least better than nothing. I did more research for the contest page on here, only to discover that I can no longer use Google Docs to provide that updated version. A lot of fruitless experimentation later, I discovered there is now no way I can continue to provide this service for my readers. I will, however, continue to find and pass on links to the websites I come across where writing contests are listed. Hopefully, some time in the unspecified future, I’ll be able to come back to this and pass on the information as previously.

Oh, and the touch-typing seems to have died a death along the way. It’s simply too time-consuming to try to write anything with my current level of ability in that skill, and I’ve discovered that extreme age has rendered my hands less flexible, so I’m not able to sustain the digital gymnastics for long enough to produce anything of a worthwhile length. It was worth the attempt, but I think the time has come to give in gracefully and continue with the reliable and relatively speedy two fingers and thumb approach that has stood me in good stead for the past 46 years.

For the coming months, I’ll now be more and more deeply involved in the creation of the third book of the trilogy. That is bound to take up vast quantities of time and effort, so I may not manage as much other activity. Only time will tell; but the writing must come first, so forgive me if I appear to be ignoring you: I’m not; simply spending my time in the best way I can to get some more fiction out there for you.

In the meantime, as always, I welcome and encourage your thoughts here in the form of comments. Let us all know what you’re doing and what your priorities are for July.

The chart, explained:

'Writing' - initial creation of stories, blog posts, reviews and longer works.

'Editing' - polishing of all written work to make it suitable for readers.

'Research' - discovery of info for story content, market research, contests and blog posts.

'Reading' - books and writing magazines.

'Networking' - emails, Twitter, Pinterest, Facebook, LinkedIn and Google+activity.

'Admin' - story submission, blog posting, marketing, organisation, learning to touch-type, and general admin tasks.

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Are All Writers Liars?

Image via Wikipedia

All writers are liars, you know. They all construct their own fictional version of the world in which they exist. But honesty's actually essential for an author. Readers are clever folk and very quickly spot inconsistencies, inaccuracies and attempts to fool them into believing something that just isn't true, so trying is a bit daft.

But, how do authors grab the attention of readers and convince them that the world they're about to drag them into is something they can accept? How do they take them on a journey into whatever fantasy they've devised? For, except in the case of straightforward journalism (assuming such a thing exists), all writing contains an element of fantasy. Whether or not the reader perceives it that way often depends more on the reader's experiences of life than the writer's presentation of events. Some people are more gullible than others, that's all.

There are clear works of fantasy, The Lord of the Rings, 1984, Maia, where the story unfolds in a land or society that's clearly invented. And these are lumped together by publishers under the genre of Fantasy as a way of enticing readers who enjoy such imaginative works. But other works, both fictional and factual, contain elements of fantasy in that they're always the creation of the mind of another human being. None of us experiences the world in exactly the same way, after all. We overlay our view of events and people with our personal sets of values and judgements, which are based on the combination of those things we've experienced and those we've been taught to believe.

Even a simple situation seen through the eyes of different people will contain elements in common but will also be a different experience for each viewer. The man brought up a Roman Catholic will have an entirely different world view from the woman raised in a strict Muslim tradition. This is perhaps an obvious example, but even siblings of the same age and gender will view life differently, filtered through their individual experiences and their responses to those things they've been involved in. Every interaction, every influence, every event impacts on each of us in slightly different ways to make us into the people we are. Yet each of us, presented with a simple event, will be sure that what we see is what the others will also see, or, worse, that we're the only ones to perceive the reality; when, in fact, of course, none of us sees the reality, even the person creating it.

An example? How do you portray what's actually experienced by another human being in such a way as to provide something that's likely to be seen by most people in a similar way? Here's an apple. A simple enough statement. But what do you see in your mind's eye? Do you see a French Golden Delicious, an orchard apple plucked fresh from the branch, a bruised and worm-eaten windfall, a golden representation as presented by Paris, a whole red fruit, or a crisp green apple with a bite already taken from it? If you're imbued with Abrahamic fundamentalism, you may be incapable of separating the image of the apple from the representation of the Garden of Eden and the fall of man, blaming Eve for her consumption of the apple. Even though you know, because it's been said many times, that no apple is ever mentioned in your sacred texts and that the story is, in any case, simply a myth created to explain the inexplicable, you'll be plagued by that image and it will skew your world view. Another obvious and well-known example of how we're formed by our own worlds. But, hopefully, you get the point. None of us exists without outside influence on our view of the world, but for each of us that perspective is unique.

So, to return to the original question: how do authors grab the attention of readers, convince them that the world they're about to enter is something they can accept, and then take them on a journey into whatever fantasy they have devised?

First; they accept that there are limits to their ability. There will be whole cultures that will stumble at the first mention of electricity, having never experienced this energy. There will be groups that will have difficulty accepting equality of the sexes, others that will baulk at the mention of bare skin, some for whom the idea that money is the only worthwhile pursuit, others who will insist that ghosts exist, and yet others who are incapable of accepting that a man may love a man, a woman a woman in a sexual way.

Because of these varied and sometimes opposing viewpoints, authors are often driven into writing for certain portions only of the population, levered into expressing their ideas only to a limited few.

The writer of horror, accepting the conventions of that genre, takes the reader into places that seem superficially ordinary, even mundane, and then introduces elements designed to raise anxiety, fear, distress, disgust, loathing and many other emotions that can be described as negative. Often, it's the contrast between the everyday and the unusual that feeds these emotions, the partially anticipated crisis arising from a foundation of apparent normality. Because the reader is familiar with the method, a slow beginning is often accepted on the promise of the horror to come.

The crime writer either pins attention with the nature of the crime in the opening scenes, relying on curiosity and fellow-feeling to make the reader need to discover what's happened and why, or sets a puzzle the reader wishes to solve, persuading them into believing they can reach the right answer before the detective and therefore pandering to their ego. Again, convention allows the author to use a form of creative shorthand, since the reader knows what to expect, certain aspects of the story can be held as being self-explanatory and therefore not worthy of description.

In romance, that wide and much-sub-divided genre, the emphasis is on the emotional bond between the loving protagonists. The reader expects to find a happy, or at least, a satisfying ending, where the conclusion to the contest is driven by the perception that justice will inevitably be visited on those who love and are loved.

The one area where the genre is less likely to determine the readership is what is loosely called 'literary fiction'. It's a field of creation in which language is often the primary concern, sometimes to the detriment of story and character. Because of this cerebral emphasis, the emotional content is frequently less easily assimilated by the reader, though, of course, there are exceptions. Indeed, when the best of the other genres meets the best of the literary, it generally results in something that either is or will become a classic. The melding of story, character, language and emotion creating something which is greater than its component parts.

And, finally, the writer for whom the challenge of portraying real emotion to a diverse readership is seen as too difficult can always turn to the thriller. Yes, I know, there are thrillers which are full of emotional content, of course there are. I've written one myself. But, as a genre, it's generally accepted by its readership that the story is what matters. It's this basic simplicity that brings readers to authors such as Dan Brown and that most inexplicably successful of writers, Jeffrey Archer.

So, to conclude; if you're hoping to capture the hearts of most of your readers, you're going to have to decide which genre to use to convey your ideas. If you're exceptionally brilliant, you can risk the literary route, accepting that your readership may be smaller. If, on the other hand, you want numbers and uncritical acclaim, you can write something mostly devoid of emotional content and label it a thriller. Up to you.

A silly question for you to ponder: Why is 'bra' singular, but 'panties' plural?