Creating Characters Readers Will Love

I am so pleased to have been invited to join the bloggers who write for Novel Spaces. I’ll try to keep you entertained or informed, perhaps a little of both. Look for me on the 30th of each month.

To write a good story, we must develop characters readers care about. Without strong likeable characters, the best of stories fail.

Dwight Swain, author of Techniques of the Selling Writer, states that even the longest book can capture only a tiny segment of a human being. We humans are much too complicated for the writer to create in their entirety. So we must simplify, and develop our characters to the degree each needs to be developed in order to fulfill their function in the story. Give an impression and approximation of life rather than attempting to duplicate life itself.

As the author, you need to know something about your character beyond the story you are about to write. But don’t spend so much time analyzing them that you get bored and want to kill them off.

Here are a few basic questions you should ask that will help you begin:

• What do they want out of life, and what do they need?
• What do they want to accomplish in their life?
• What are their beliefs? A kind God? Life sucks or is unfair? Money is more important than love? Vice Versa. If we are very good we go to Heaven.

Some more questions that will help us know them better are:

• Have they ever betrayed or failed anyone?
• Has anyone betrayed or failed them? If so, how did it affect their outlook on life?

To uncover your character, have a conversation with him or her. Sit on your porch or patio and talk to her. Let her answer in first person. Don’t forget to take notes. This will help you write your story with more conviction. Once you know her life story, then it’s time to discover what’s going to fuel your book.

I like to have my hero write letters to me about what’s going on in his or her life. Three or four of these missiles and I know a lot more about them. These letters can establish a firm back story on which to create strong characters..

Often we begin with a happy character and it’s up to you to not let up on her until she’s sad, then finally angry or frightened enough to fight back. Learn what she’s afraid of and hit her with it. What does she regret? Rub her face in it. Don’t let up. Eventually she will show her strengths and stand up to life. It’s just as effective to begin with a sad or angry character and drag her through all it takes to finally become happy.

Charts of character attributes simply don’t work for me. But if they do for you, use them. Usually, I’ve written at least three chapters before I begin to understand my characters. By then I know what they think and why, how they feel and react to adversity, why they aren’t content, who and what they hate. I will continue to discover things about my characters far into the book. Are they honorable? Do they keep promises? What are their weaknesses and strengths? First draft stuff.

Characters soon become real people. They take over the story line. You may have to rein them in once in a while, and that’s what happens in real life, isn’t it? We go off on tangents but life says whoa, you can’t do that. You, as the writer, must make them behave or in the least make them pay the consequences when they don’t. If you’re too kind to them your book will be dull and boring.

Some writers prefer to have the character keep a journal during the writing of the book. It isn’t included in the book, but will give the writer more insight into this character who has taken on a life of her own.

A character who is too dumb to live does not charm anyone, so while a flaw or shortcoming is necessary, don’t overdo it. On the other hand, she can be larger than life. Maybe she can’t leap tall buildings, but when cornered she can get herself out of a fix, be it by using her mind or her physical strength.

Be realistic, though. Create someone who can learn to handle what’s going to happen. It may take a while, but she will eventually succeed.

One of my favorite characters for flaws, strength and fortitude is Nevada Barr’s Anna Pigeon. She takes a licking and keeps on ticking. She’s tough and believable and smart. And Barr never lets up on her throughout the entire book. Once in a while Anna does something so dumb I want to holler at her, but that makes her human. And boy does she have regrets. No one is perfect.

If you want to play a few games before you begin to write, think of your best friend. Why do you like her? Make a list of all her good traits and her flaws and try to see why you like her in spite of her flaws.

Now think of someone you dislike. Why? Again, make a list and try to understand why you don’t like her.

Here’s a difficult one. Why do you think people might like you? Make a list of your good traits. Then write down your worst flaws

When I created Katherine Kelly in Beyond the Moon, I knew precisely how strong she would eventually have to be to deal with Glen Tanner, a man damaged by war and torture while he was in a POW camp in Vietnam. But she doesn’t start out that way. Her strength grows slowly as she realizes that she can help him through their mutual artistic talents. Even then, she must have a desire to help him, have faith in her ability to do so, so that when he reaches out to her, she responds. She may have been the most difficult character I ever created, because the entire book was written from her viewpoint and the subject matter is so difficult to portray.

When we sit down to write a book, there are many things to consider. But first and foremost are the characters who will people your story. Remember, you are a creative writer, so turn that creativity loose and write. Let those thoughts and people who live in your head come out to play and think twice before you rein them in.

Next Month, let’s look into villains and how to twist and turn their personalities to make readers love to hate them.

Guest author TIm Desmond: First Novels

Tim Desmond

Retired high school science teacher Tim Desmond is an artist and author. His first novel, For Thou Art With Me, published 2006, is a World War II love and war story. The second published novel is The Doc, a suspense thriller. He was raised in Madera and on a rural California grain ranch and his scholarship to attend California College of Arts and Crafts, in Oakland, was the first art scholarship in the history of Madera. His latest works revolve around conspiracies, education and science. Desmond lives with his wife Bobbi in Fresno, California.




I must say that when I decided to try to write anything, it was always hard. No one told me about “genre rules” and while fiction was my interest, I had no real life drama experiences to really draw from. This gets into the past arguments about writing from the autobiographical experiences versus writing “outside of one’s self” and those pros and cons. There were always story ideas. These were things that happened to people around the town that were interesting, tragic, twisted, or hilarious. People have life’s problems to deal with. Fictionalizing these ideas never produced more than a short story length piece.

At some point, I rationalized that if there were ten to fifteen short stories completed, it might comprise a book. That turned into a first novel attempt. I had recalled the novel called The War Lover in which the author used alternating points of view with his chapters. One chapter was from the protagonist’s story, the next by his girl’s point of view. The next chapter, back to the protagonist's view. That novel, turned into a movie starring Steve McQueen with the same title, seemed like a successful format. Crazy, huh. So, that led to my first novel attempt. I began this novel with the main protagonist’s story in alternating chapters. The other chapters were the bad guys and what was developing with them.

It’s embarrassing now, thinking of the things I wrote in that never published novel called World War IV. It was a “post-apocalyptic” story and part of the last half was like the movie Red Dawn starring Powers Booth. In fact I had sent it to a Los Angeles agency that accepted novel submissions for story treatments. Of course they sent a glowing pitch of their own, and wanted hundreds of dollars to include it in their publishing that gets pitched to producers. I did not follow through with that, but later, I wondered if I wasn’t ripped off.

After that, I changed jobs, became buried in work problems, wrote two articles for a science teacher journal. For five years, amid domestic fun and some travel, I tabled most attempts at writing anything. Then I started two things. One was writing a series of short stories, and submitting to regional journals along the west coast. I began work on a nebulous outline for a novel about World War II. That novel idea languished as more work problems arose for another five years.

Then two things happened. The first I was sitting in a boring staff meeting. A huge document was being created for the institution’s certified accreditation. The staff had contributed to that and sections of it were being distributed for us to edit. I sat there musing, that it would be nicer to be editing my own manuscript instead of that, that thing before us. My exact thought was, “How hard could it be, to knock out something that long, and edit it?”

The second event was when my brother-in-law came for a visit. The wives wanted us to buy several jars of a special barbecue sauce that was made by a local guy. It was only sold at a few of the local bars in our rural area. The four of us went on a pub crawl, in search of the sauce.

 “Mike’s” was a place owned by a friend of my brother-in-law’s. It was described as a biker bar, and had a killing in the front of it once, during a “rumble” between two bike clubs. As we sat in there and sipped our drinks, the paraphernalia hanging and stashed all over, had dust from the gold rush era weighing on the cobwebs. I covered my glass of whiskey as my wife eyed a pair of some woman’s dusty panties hanging on a wire over her head.

Through the open door, there was the chugging sound of pipes of a Harley arriving. It accelerated once and then was shut down. Mike was cordial with us as another fellow came in, shook hands with Mike and ordered a beer. Mike had not seen him in a while and asked the fellow what he’d been doing. As he explained to Mike, he had moved to a town forty-five miles to the south, and was busy doing the first rewrite of his novel.

I listened to the conversation and do not remember much about it. But my exact thought was, “If the biker can get it written, I should be able to write a novel and be rewriting it too.”

We rolled out of there in a heap and had four, one quart jars of barbecue sauce.

~~Timothy J. Desmond

Tim's blog: http://timdesmondblog.wordpress.com
Tim's book page: http://timothydesmond.wordpress.com
Tim's Amazon author page: http://www.amazon.com/-/e/B00694KQQO
Tim's Art: http://artbydesmond.wordpress.com

Let Our Voices Be Heard!

Let me just jump in here and tell you all that I gave a shout-out to the awesomeness of Novel Spaces over at Back Porch Writer on Tuesday. She apparently heard about me from someone on this forum (thank you!). If you'd like to hear the interview, I've supplied the link. Also, the hostess, Kori Miller, says she is always looking for people to contribute to her blog as well as podcasts. I'd love to hear some of your voices to put to the photos.
http://www.blogtalkradio.com/backporchwriter/2014/07/22/astrology-mystery-author-sunny-frazier-joins-the-back-porch-writer

Bucket list, schmucket list

Che Gilson inadvertently started a writing bucket list theme with her post this month and it got me thinking. I don't have a regular bucket list. I have a fairly good idea of what I'd like to do before I kick the, um, pail--travel more, have a garden of my own again, teach part time, move out of my mother's house--the usual pedestrian stuff. I'd probably fare better with a buck-it list along the lines of Sunny Frazier's because I've survived more than my share of hair-raising situations, but unlike Sunny, I'm not ready to share these imbroglios with the world just yet.

That brings me to the writing bucket list, regarding which I'm even more list-less.

• I'm writing in all the genres I want to, and publishing in most. 
• I've had one novel and one short story traditionally published, and I've indie published twelve titles in four genres. 
• I've won one writing prize, been shortlisted for another, and would like to win an influential literary prize some day, but it's not a consuming passion and I'd be just as happy if I didn't. 
• I've gone from someone who wrote as if my life depended on it to a blocked author who did not write much, and back again to a disciplined and dedicated scribbler. 
• I have in my possession complete drafts, partially written ones and scores of ideas/outlines for others, so I'm in no danger of running out of ideas for stories.

Alarmed by my list-lessness, I decided to come up with a writing bucket list by hook or crook. Everyone else has one, it seems! So I strained my poor brian and finally came up with three items. Here they are, in no particular order, and no, I wasn't drunk when I wrote them.

1. Earn enough at this writing job to support myself comfortably.
2. Earn enough at this writing job to support myself comfortably.
3. Earn enough at this writing job to support myself comfortably.

There we have it. My entire writing bucket list. Simple, innit?

Blog in the Round - 4 Questions and Pass It On

I’m honored that award winning author Karla K.L. Brady (Karla's blog link), who wrote one of my favorite books, The Bum Magnet, has asked me to participate in the Blog in the Round - 4 questions and pass it on. She was asked by bestselling author Trice Hickman (Trice's blog link), one of the most warm spirits in the business. In the Blog in the Round, one author invites two authors, and so on, with each answering the following four questions about their writing life. It’s a great way for readers, and other authors, to get to know us better, and it demonstrates the amazing author camaraderie and support that we have for each other. I have chosen to invite my friend, busy author, playwright and filmmaker Nina Foxx (Nina's blog link), and mainstream, literary and speculative fiction author, Liane Spicer (Liane's blog link), one of the founders of this Novel Spaces blog. You can check out their interview answers when they post on July 28, 2014.

So here goes:

What am I working on/ writing?

Right now I'm wrapping up production on my first non-fiction title called The Mind of a Woman: 365 Relationship Scenario Discussion Questions, which is set to release in September of this year. I enjoy discussing relationships, and this is a collection of questions I've posted on social media over the years. Also, I'm 90% through my full-length novel about tough breakups titled Never Breathe Again. So many women have a hard time with breakups. Through fiction, I want to show what can happen when a husband arrives home after church with his wife and announces that after seven years of marriage, he is leaving her for a longtime friend. Plus, by November I'll complete two IR (interracial) novellas that I started earlier this year; The Swirl, and Tall White & Handsome. I'm very excited about these new genres, and I look forward to more non-fiction and IR titles. I'm also taking on ghostwriting projects.

How is my writing/work different from others in its genre?

Each book out there has something to offer. What makes novels different is the way the author has crafted each story, how well they've developed their story and characters, and how they choose to translate the vision of what they see, hear and feel onto paper. My titles are based on topics like infidelity, cancer, best friend betrayal, abusive wives, fatherly abandonment, that one kiss a wife has with someone and how her husband handles it. I work hard to make sure that my stories have emotion and surprises, and I do a lot of research. I enjoy throwing in friction and seeing how the characters deal, or don't deal with it. It helps to keep my characters interesting, and it keeps me interested in writing about them.

Why do I write what I do?

My junior high English teacher encouraged me to be a writer (a zillion years ago). My greatest skill in every job I've had was my ability to write, whether it was news stories, my bosses' speeches, or corporate policy and procedure. I love words. Writing is my passion. I believe that if I ever stopped writing books, I'd write greeting cards or the nutritional facts on the back of a cereal box. I do what I do because I love it.

How does my writing process work?

At this point in my career, it is critical that I start with 1) character resumes, and 2) an outline. I try to write one chapter of mainly dialogue each time I sit down. After thirty chapters, I have my first rough draft. Then I go back, starting with chapter one, and add in the dialogue tags, narration, movement, visuals, setting, etc. That adds a lot of word count. Once I'm done with that, I rewrite the chapters again which is now the third draft. I'll print it out and while reading it aloud, write my changes directly onto the pages. Afterwards, I'll enter those, then read and edit again. Whew! While I'm writing that story, I live with those characters in my head day and night until: THE END.  

Thanks again, Karla, for including me. I can’t wait to read each author’s blog as they travel in the round, a unique and inspiring circle of writer love!

Writing Media Tie-In & new releases

I'm very excited this week because a project I worked on for months just debuted and shot to the top of Drive Thru RPG's sales charts.

I'm a media tie-in writer, which is to say I work in fictional universes that are not my own. The best analogy I've found to date for the difference between writing original fiction and writing tie-in is one is a soloist and the other is part of a band; the tie-in writer uses her talent and craftsmanship in concert with others. Fellow Novelnaut Dayton Ward is also a media tie-in writer, and in fact we met when we were both writing for Star Trek. No, to answer a common question, we did not write episodes. We wrote short stories and e-books and (in Dayton's case) several novels set in the various storylines of the Star Trek universe. Media tie-in writing usually ties in with TV shows or movies. Resident Evil novels; Monk novels; Buffy novels; Murder She Wrote novels (with "by Jessica Fletcher" and Angela Lansbury on the cover); Star Wars, Farscape, Stargate novels; with the possible exception of Hollywood Squares I think every movie or TV show has at least one media tie-in novel out there somewhere.

A bit over a decade ago I met Loren Coleman at a media tie-in writing workshop and he asked me if I was interested in writing fluff for a new role-playing game. Turned out there are two aspects of every RPG: crunch and fluff. The crunch is the game's mechanics – decision trees and probabilities; a lot of math and balanced options to keep the game fair and challenging. The fluff is the game's universe – the geography, wildlife, culture, and politics of the world that give the game context and the players' objectives meaning. I've been writing and editing fluff for various game companies ever since.

Eight months ago Randall Bills of Catalyst Game Labs brought me aboard a joint project with Valiant Entertainment. Valiant publishes a diverse collection of well written and intelligent comics – usually dark but with humor as well. Catalyst and Valiant were developing a role-playing game based on a unified Valiant universe, and Randall wanted me to write the fluff for the game version of Valiant's Archer & Armstrong.
Armstrong is Aram Anni-Padda, a ten thousand year old Sumerian who gained immortality through a cataclysm that killed millions of people. He's a poet (the semi-autobiographical Epic of Gilgamesh being his best known work) who keeps his grief

at bay by celebrating life at every opportunity.
Obadiah Archer is a young Fundamentalist zealot raised in seclusion and trained to be a warrior for God by a pseudo-Christian sect called the Dominion. He has the uncanny, "God given," ability to instantly master anything he sees – from martial arts to languages. The Dominion sends him out to hunt down and kill the Evil One. The hunting goes well, but the Evil One proves remarkably difficult to kill. When the Dominion thinks Archer has failed, they abandon him – which is when he discovers all they'd ever been after was the key to "Evil One" Armstrong's immortality.
The young zealot and the world-weary immortal join forces to battle real evil – debating theology, history, and science, while dodging bullets, scaling cliffs, and running from dinosaurs. Fun stuff.

This next bit, and really the point of this month's column, illustrates one aspect of tie-in writing – particularly game writing. It's the aspect many writers find most disconcerting.

One particularly dangerous organization with which Archer & Armstrong contend on a recurring basis is the Sisters of Perpetual Darkness, a cult of assassin nuns, followers of Lilith, who were recently taken over by Obadiah's childhood sweetheart, Mary-Maria. (I tell you, it's a fun universe.) In the comic their habits seem to protect the Sisters from a remarkable number of things, but there's no explanation of how or why. A "given" that's fine for a story, but which won't work in a game.
Outcomes in games are determined by odds and probability, and to calculate those players need specific values – numbers, called "stats" (statistics) that can be plugged into the equations. Thus, to reflect how effective they were

in the comics, the Sisters' habits were given the same level of protection as body armor. That was the "crunch" – the datum necessary for the game to be played.
As the writer of fluff I was allotted sixty words to explain what makes the Sisters of Perpetual Darkness so darn bulletproof. I wrote:
Each Sister's coif is a hard-impact helmet with an embedded communication suite; her wimple and scapular are reinforced with Kevlar to shield the neck and torso. Multiple layers of lightweight carbon nanotube fabric make up her veil and habit, protecting against most projectiles and edge weapons while providing both freedom of movement and ability to conceal multiple objects.

That went over well both Randall and the folk at Valiant. But you'll have to take my word for it since the paragraph is not in the book. Very late in the process – in one version of the story I heard, when the book was already in layout – it was decided that event briefs were a better value for role players than explanations of the numbers. Event briefs are not, as one might suspect, adult diapers. They are starting points, outlines, or frameworks (the level of complexity varies) that role players can use to create their own adventures. Pretty much the point of role-playing games. This was, I think, a good decision - even though I'd already moved on to editing a Shadowrun project and wasn't able to write the event briefs for Archer & Armstrong. The realities of printing costs meant additional pages weren't an option; to add event briefs, fluff had to go.
As for that nifty fifty-eight-word explanation I wrote, the Sisters of Perpetual Darkness NPC card now reads: Gear: Carbon fiber habit.

Changes and cuts like this happen all the time - on some projects dozens of time - often without warning and usually without any explanation to the writer. The purpose of a role-player's handbook is to enhance the player's experience by giving her a broader knowledge of and a deeper connection to the game's universe; the objective is to increase the player's enjoyment. When something comes along that does this better than your words, your words go. And they're almost always the ones you loved the most.
Every writer gets upset when her words are cut. Some writers take these cuts personally. They may complain to the editor, or about the editor to the game's line developer, they may even vent in fan forums or social media.
One thing these writers don't do is any more work for that publisher.

Media tie-in writers get as upset as anyone when their her words are cut. What sets a media tie-in writer apart is the ability – and willingness – to get over it. Quickly.
It takes a thick skin and a realistic, objective attitude towards what you've written to be a media tie-in writer. You deal with deadlines, creative decisions beyond your control, and routine acts of rejection. But for all its frustrations and disappointments it beats the heck out of working for a living.

Bringing New Toys to Someone Else’s Sandbox.

For those of you who may still be wondering: Yes, the rumors are true. I do indeed write Star Trek novels.

Why? Well, sure, they pay me, but I also do it because it’s just so gosh-darned fun. I’ve been a nerd for Star Trek for as long as I can remember, having grown up in the 1970s and 80s watching reruns of the original series every weekday afternoon. Catching the gazillionth rerun of Captain Kirk fighting Klingons or whatever was the sole exception to my mother’s “homework and chores before TV” rule. To this day, I’m sure she thinks that hour could’ve been better utilized cutting the grass or cleaning our backyard pool.

And here we are, forty-odd years later, and I still use Star Trek to get out of cutting the grass, but at least now I’m making money from it.

Many of the Star Trek tales I’ve written over the years have featured characters that would be familiar to casual viewers of the various television series. While those of us who write these stories are given a great deal of latitude, there still are “rules we have to follow” with respect to these well-established characters that are so well-known to their legions of fans. In recent years, those rules have relaxed in numerous ways, and we’re now able to develop the characters and take them in directions that never would’ve been allowed while the television series and films were in production.

Another thing we’ve been allowed to do is to develop whole sets of all-new characters, who didn’t originate in one of the shows, and place them in the Star Trek setting, taking advantage of the familiar universe and its trappings to tell new stories which are set completely apart from the television episodes and movies. Pocket Books, the company that publishes Star Trek novels, had achieved success with a handful of series in this vein. Star Trek Vanguard, set during the time of the original 1960s series, was perhaps my favorite thing to write because it gave me the best of both worlds when it comes to writing books based on television or film properties: being able to use a familiar setting or “universe” as the point of departure for new characters and situations which aren’t tied to the “canon” of the parent media property. As the title of this post suggests, writing stories such as these are very much like being allowed to bring your own toys to play in someone else’s sandbox.

Debuting later this month is the first book in an all-new novel series, Star Trek: Seekers, which I helped develop. My longtime writing partner, Kevin Dilmore, our friend and colleague David Mack, and I spun out this idea from the Vanguard series for which the three of us had written. We collaborated on the series proposal and pitched it to our editors and the people who own Star Trek, and then we developed a two-part story to launch our new series, working as a team on the stories for the first two books. David wrote the first book, Second Nature, which is set to be released in about a week, and Kevin and I took the baton from him for our book, Point of Divergence, which will be published next month.

The original Star Trek will celebrate its 50th anniversary in 2016, and there are those who might argue that there’s really very little left to be done with something which has been around that long. To them, I say, “Bah!” Writing stories like this is tremendous fun. Anticipation from among loyal readers seems to be pretty high, and we’re excited to see how fans will react. The new series was even given a bit of love by no less than USA Today. As someone who grew up watching the show, getting to stitch a new section into this immense and ever-growing tapestry is an unparalleled opportunity. It truly is a wonderful sandbox in which to play.