Creating Compelling Characters

I'm participating in the Great Blogging Experiment writing about creating compelling characters.

When it comes to making a character compelling I think the most important part is to have the character's stakes in their conflict be clear to the reader. A major character can be likable or not, but either way there needs to be a clear understanding of what the character has vested into the story's conflict and what they stand to loose. This applies to the protagonist and the antagonist. 

The character's stakes don't have to be life and death. What they can risk loosing through various choices is related to their main conflict. This does relate back to character driving plot. What a character doesn't have and is trying to attain becomes the conflict for the story. From this conflict comes the plot. Without compelling characters plot can fall flat. 

Another part of a character's stakes are the choices they make through the story. When writing these choices it helps to understand what the benefits and costs of each option are for the character. What will happen to the protagonist if she decides not to challenge what a former friend is saying about her? What about if she says something to this person? Or about this person?

In real life we all face choices and risk loosing or gaining things. As a reader seeing this in characters makes them more interesting and almost real in a way. Plus to feeling that risk that a character faces helps keep an interest in the story. We read on to find out what choices the character makes to work out their conflict and how it is all resolved. Does the character loose what's important to them? Do they solve what they need to?

Character Visualization: Their space

I use Excel for various writing organizational tasks and I also like to play around with the different options/tools. While playing with the insert-shapes I  discovered a frame shape. After putting frames around random pictures I thought this might be a good exercise to visualize what a character's space could look like. It's another dimension for getting to know characters better.

In addition to figuring out what your character might have in their space it is also fun to figure out where various things came from. It's almost like brainstorming in a way to tease out more details about a character and their relationships.

For example, with this bird picture maybe it belongs to a young woman and she has hung on her living room wall. Well most of the time. Maybe she really dislikes birds but the framed picture was a gift from her boyfriend the budding nature photographer so she doesn't want to hurt his feelings. She keeps it in a drawer most of the time then makes sure it's displayed when he's coming over. And maybe he notices the little amount of dust on it compared to her other nick-knacks. He could wonder if she's hiding it, or he could think that she's taking extra special care of it because it's from him.

The bird picture is one I took this spring, the texture on the frame is a default pattern in Excel, and the purple around the picture is supposed to be wall color. The frame shape isn't curved by default, I transformed it to a free-form shape then edited the points. I'm thinking of putting together a little walk through post on some of the Excel options I used here.

Story Taking Shape

This post idea has been knocking around for awhile and is one of those gardening pondering topics. Starting in the spring I've been pulling out a multitude of seedlings. We have a maple tree in our front yard along with two Roses of Sharon "shrubs". I use the term shrub loosely here the one "Sharon" is taller than our house.

With both the maple and Sharon seedlings I noticed that the first set of leaves are unique from the rest of the plant's leaves. At first I wasn't sure what the plants were until I saw more leaves grow. The picture in this post has Roses of Sharon seedlings, which I took back in May. Two of the plants in the picture only have their sprout leaves, which are wide and rounded. The plant in the front has it's first true leaf, which has a narrower shape and the little ridges. This true leaf is a small version of the leaves on the adult plant.

Yes, a little gardening mention to transition into the writing related thought I had while gardening. Seedlings are like stories. In that the first set of leaves are the start of a story idea and that the true leaf is the story all polished and found.

For me my first draft is the sprout leaves. I do some light outlines, but my novel drafts are still rather rough and exploratory. I'm currently working on notes in preparation for revision in which I want to get my novel closer to it's true form. I know where I want to take it, what its true leaf looks like. My process currently is working out the details and deciding various character and world traits that will make my story arrive there.

For other people who have more details figured out ahead of time, they could be closer to their true leaf in the first draft then I am. Or maybe the first draft is really exploratory.

Where would you say your sprout leaves are for your process? What helps you flesh out your idea enough so that the writing stands up to your true leaf idea? Or have I been spending to much time pulling weeds?

Time and days off

Why do days off meander away from relaxing to a multitude of things to do? Here I have this nice block of time but I keep switching from task to task to random amusement trying to fit things in. Though I haven't started the Wii up yet today, yesterday I spent some time on Mario Cart. I wanted to update my blog, the dishes can wait for later.

I want to be more regular with my blog. I do enjoy blogging and it's a nice way to keep up with other bloggers. Plus writing regularly is a good thing. I've been pondering the direction of my blog recently and I came to a realization this weekend. I like the general content I've been posting, and I'm still looking forward to the character conflict series I mentioned awhile back. I even have a post started saved as a draft. The tricky part is I have some really great thoughts while away from the computer for post wording that seam to evaporate once I'm at the keyboard. I'm tempted to buy a voice recorder to save said thoughts. That would be handy for things like cleaning and gardening.

I also decided that it would be fun to blog about books on occasion. I have a "to-read" list on Goodreads and it would be nice to share my reviews in my blog to. And it would be extra nice to read/review books by people I've met through blogging and online communities.

Then there are my cats. I'm thinking they might be mentioned on occasion in my blog, and mostly from the perspective of including pets into a work of fiction. I love animals, especially cats. If I'm not careful I could easily right too much about them.

Well, that's my post. I'm still participating in the Blog BBQ so I will be hanging around blogs today.

Blog BBQ party

Coming Down the Mountain: From Reclusive Writer to Published Author: Are You Ready to Find a Bunch of Awesome New Followers...: "It's time for the Blog Party BBQ to begin! I've jazzed up my blog with some new color, how about you? Are you ready for a bunch of new visi..."

This is my first time using the "Blog This" button from another blog, so hopefully the formatting looks alright.

I'm participating in Karen's Blog BBQ event and I wanted to mention it in my blog. I also figured it would be a good chance to have a more recent post here. If you don't already read her blog go over and check it out.

I've already received some comments from other BBQ people (yay) on an older post which unfortunately that post is old enough for comments to go to the moderation queue. Blogger e-mails me so I saw them shortly thereafter.

For anyone wandering over here from the party feel free to say hi on this post or my previous one. Either post works. I'd meant to have a more recent post, but with taking my one cat to the vet twice this week it's been a little hectic.

I am planning on visiting other BBQ blogs this weekend. I don't have any constraints on my time all weekend. Well, aside from making sure kitty gets lots of attention.

Conflict Breakthrough

As I've mentioned before I am currently in the process of working with my fantasy novel so I can start revising soon. Before I even look at my draft I want to flesh out both the world and the characters more, which can be a daunting process. But as I was reading one of Holly Lisle's more recent e-mails her answering a question on conflict really got me thinking.  I know how conflict works in novel writing, but my thoughts after reading the e-mail gave me my own epiphany. It was almost like a cartoon light bulb moment. I saw my main character's various conflicts and how they moved the plot forward.

This got me thinking further about character choices as relating to conflict. Whatever conflict big or small a character is currently facing they can choose how to try and solve that conflict. I thought it might be fun to draw up a conflict and choices flow chart. It would be good to flesh out what the various choices could cause for the character, which of course would introduce more conflicts which would then have their own options for a character to choose. The important part in all this is understanding why my character will choose what she does and what are the stakes.

Character drives plot. One can have an interesting idea for a novel or short story, but for the writing process the plot forms around the actions the characters take while trying to overcome the conflict. With my fantasy novel I have been struggling with the level of conflict for my character which in turn has been making planning/writing this novel difficult. Now thanks to the thought process after reading Holly's message I can better see the main conflict for my character along with how it will tie in with other conflicts.

Even though this post is about conflict my breakthrough will help with the worldbuilding as well. With analyzing the various conflicts it will give me a good way to break down different facets of the world and I will be able to figure out what exactly I need to flesh out more for the world.

I am still planning on starting my character challenge series soon, sometime this week. I figure this post is related to that in a ground work sort of way. Looking at various personality traits for a character can help understand why they react a certain way to a specific conflict.

(I hope this isn't to disjointed. This post has been ruminating in my mind since my breakthrough last weekend when I took 3 pages on handwritten notes on the subject. I wanted to get this posted before today gets away from me. I want to go through some boxes around the house in preparation for some work that's going to be done. I'm aiming to avoid the last minute shuffle of stuff that inevitably leads to misplacing items).

Combining Creativity

Anyone who reads my twitter feed probably knows I also make jewerly in addition to working on my novels. While each of those creative endeavors is it's own thing there are times when they interact with each other. The fantasy novel I'm preparing to revise was started in part thanks to me pondering character ideas while working on a chainmaille bracelet. The magic part came later, though my character pondering provided my first glimpse into this fantasy world.

My main character works with metals, she does chainmaille along with other types of armor. It is her occupation in the start of the novel, which she leaves to discover what else is out there. In addition to this novel I have in mind one or two more to follow my character as she gets involved in more of the conflicts of the land. Where I am right now with the novel is fleshing out the world more, getting to know the different groups of people. Their customs, their histories, what the various groups think of the other groups, and so on.

Getting back to the jewerly aspect of this combined creativity, I was sorting through bits and pieces of things I'd made and found a spiral of wire from awhile back. As I was playing with the spiral I held it up to the back of my hand and thought it would be a neat focal for a bracelet. I looked at it longer and envisioned other spirals from the bracelet and had another thought. This type of bracelet would be something worn by the higher society ladies in the novel series. With clothing and adornments for the different people I'm keeping in mind their occupations. People doing more physical labor aren't going to be all decked out with various pieces of jewerly and their clothing would allow enough movement to do their jobs. They would have simple trinkets while my upper class could have more bangles, and more intricate layers of clothing.

The bracelet I made: (thumbnail linked to Flickr)

Blog series idea: Character Challenges

I've had a lot going on recently, and it's been causing me issues with blogging and online time in general. I figured I would try out something fun for awhile to get back into blogging. I may or may not stick to my previous Sunday schedule. My thought is it may be better to post when I have something to write about instead of trying to fight with the words on a specific day of the week. At least while I'm getting back into the swing of things.

So, one of the things I'd been thinking about offline is human behavior patterns and how they can be applied to fictional characters. After earning my BS in psychology I do tend to mull over behaviors more then other people do. Then I had an idea moment, that it would be fun to have blog posts about a particular behavior along with how it might play out with a fictional character. I'm also hoping that it might help other people reading my blog to ponder over different things, or at the very least be fun to think about how their characters might act in the various situations.

With writing I've never been one to get much out of those character trait lists. I know other people do, they just don't work well with my style of creating characters. I like being able to let my thoughts flow and interact with other character related ideas. It's hard for me to go down a list and figure out each one at a time. If anything I like Holly Lisle's flow chart she has in her create a character book.

That all being said would anyone be interested in playing along with me? Anyone is welcome to add their thoughts about the behavior/situation in the comments and/or how their characters might act. Either way it's something that will be fun for me to write about.

So I Joined Goodreads

Thanks to a blog post by Karen I've decided to sign up over at Goodreads. I've only poked around the site a little so far, but I like what I've seen. It's handy how they have different shelves to add books on, especially the "to read" one. I've been on Librarything for awhile now, which is useful to catalog owned books, so it feels weird adding things on Goodreads that I don't own. I only have so much real shelf space for books at home, and some of my books both loaners and owned are sitting around the house in various locations. (And yes, I do have plans to buy another book case or two sometime soon).

Anyways, I figure I'll spend some time this weekend adding books to various shelves on Goodreads. I'll probably start with the to read shelf so I make sure to have a handy list of books I want to buy or borrow. Though the ones my mom loaned me will probably be read first so I can return them to her. Then at some point I can use my Librarything list to add books to the 'read' shelf on Goodreads.

Further down the line I'm planning on integrating some of the Goodreads widgets onto my website. I have a page for reading, and haven't been sure how to organize it. With the widgets it will be easy enough to quickly display what I'm currently reading along with some of my favorite books. It will be interesting to build virtual book shelves as I enjoy reading many types of books.

So, anyone else on Goodreads? (Or Librarything?)

Location Location Location

So yes, a post with location in mind, as applied to writing. I'm going to attempt to not have this post sound to disjointed. Bits of what I want to say have been floating about today and yesterday. And it doesn't help that the longer my blog sits without an update, the harder it is to relax and write a new post.

Anyways, yesterday I spent my day out and about town. My mother and Aunt came up to attend the Lilac Festival. While the lilacs were mostly past peak after our early warm weather the crafts were wonderful as always. There are a variety of artisans for the arts and crafts show, with jewerly being heavily represented. With the bright sun we had yesterday, it was the perfect day for the jewelers to show off their wares. Everything sparkled in the brilliant sunlight. With the nice weather the festival was packed, and we had to make our way single file through the throngs of people. But I still enjoyed some shopping and walking along the flowers. Even with the lilac blooms past peak, their fragrance still hung in the air.

With the festival being as crowded as it was the three of us decided to eat elsewhere. Which is how I'm leading up to the writing related point that's been dancing in my mind these two days. There is a wonderful coffee shop turned cafe in the village of Fairport, nestled on the Erie canal. As we were strolling along from the parking lot to the cafe the bells of the bridge started clanging, signaling the lifting about to start.

Now I used to live within walking distance of this bridge, I've seen it lift and lower countless times, both as a pedestrian and while in the car. But yesterday there was a woman with her son there as well, both curious about the bridge. While we all waited for the bridge lift-lower cycle, the woman and her son were speaking to the bridge operator. It was neat to hear the operator talk about the history of the bridge. Some of the facts I knew, while others I didn't. I'd already know that the bridge 'corners' are all different elevations, but I hadn't realized that the bridge lacks right angles and that the counterweights weigh differently from each other. As I stood there and listened to the exchange, and watched the boy's curiosity, I could look at this location like it was new to me.

This got me thinking about how in any setting, be it modern or speculative, the difference between locals and someone newer to the area. In more subtle ways then having someone be totally lost. It also got me pondering about how different characters will react to the same setting, even a group of 'locals'. One person might be more interested in all the gears working to raise the bridge, while the next might be put off for the wait. (For the record there are steps so pedestrians can cross while the bridge is up, the only wait is when it is moving). Or maybe someone might feel a historical connection to something in the setting.

Here is a web page with a nice amount of pictures of the bridge. This is a lift bridge, not a draw bridge. The whole bridge lifts up, staying horizontal. It's not like in Blues Brothers where halves of the bridge raise independently.