Proper practice???

[Jabberwockey]

Ok, heres the situation.  I have no schooling toward literature other than the basic high school and college english courses.  Several years ago I had a dream that stuck with me long enough that I finally decided it needed to be turned into a novel.  First problem Ive already mentioned in that I have NO idea what Im doing.  I am currently using the Snowflake program which has helped me greatly with the overall concept.  Problem is that Im not exactly sure how to develop my characters.  Ive posted several short stories on Fanfiction.net and have considered using its sister site but its kind of hard to get an actual review of your work.  Dont get me wrong, the kind words and excitement to see my stories continued is exhilerating but its not terribly helpful.  Then there is the issue of it being fan fictioni and many of the characters are established already.  Any suggestions would be greatly appreciatted.  For that matter, my ID is the same on that site as this one so if anyone would care to review what I have written either there or e-mail me suggestions it would be helpful.

[cenwolfgirl]

i have less thenm that only the english equiverlent of high school litratur lessons
what do you remember from class is a good starting point
i am still in school but what i do is find a starting point
maybe right a short plain
diside who or what the main charictors are going to be and give them persinalities
just let the ideas flow and if you are away from your computer when you get a good one right it on a pad of papper

CWG
good luck if you need any more help with spesifics just ask 

[Lanodantheon]

My first piece of advice to you would be to keep at it. Your road through writing might be long and arduous. You might yourself discouraged by doubt or any number of other things. The best thing to do is to keep at it and keep going. Keep writing, keep learning, keep talking to people about writing and use every resource available to you. The Writing resources thread has a lot of resources to look at.


My second piece of advice might sound discouraging.... eventually you will have to stop writing fan fiction and concentrate on finding your own voice. Fan fiction is great for the writer who wants to learn mechanics. No creativity is necessary because the world's been build, the characters already developed and the rest is just fun.


However, fan fiction alone will get you nowhere as a writer at the end of the day. Especially since when writing fan fiction, by trying to emulate the style of the base property in question you are not sounding like yourself if that makes any sense. Example: If I'm writing Star Trek fic, I want it to feel and sound like Trek. However, that narrative voice is Trek's voice and not my own.


There is a caveat though that you can exploit: Public Domain. If you've written mostly Fan Fiction and are used to writing only that, write a fic that only uses elements in the Public Domain. If you want proof this will work, just remember that Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead. [/size]


Getting to your main question: "How do I develop my characters?" .


The short answer is...just build them up. Like people. It's that simple.


Characters are defined by
1) Their backstory: What happened to them before the story begins
2) Their current state of being: Personality, societal standing, physical appearance, etc.
3) Their role in the story: What they do in the story. What characters they foil off of, what their goal is in the story, what their fatal flaw is.
4) Their arc in the story: How they change over the course of the story. Do they overcome a fatal flaw to succeed at the end? Do they keep making the wrong choices?


How do figure these things out? You ask questions about the characters and come up with answers until you are satisfied.


What do they look like? What's their personality? What's their life story? What's their goal? Are they the hero? Why are they the hero? Where did they come from?


Online you can find character worksheets that can give your characters these necessary directions.


Going back to Fan fiction for a second. Before you start with your original characters, as an exercise ask these many questions about a character you know and like. When you do that you will start to see the building blocks of characters.


If you find yourself wanting to write about established characters, ask yourself why you like these characters. What makes them cool? What do they do that makes you want to write about them? Once you find these things, you'll be at a good place to make your own characters that can do the same things AND maybe more. Maybe your characters will be able to do things that established character wouldn't or couldn't do in a million years and a Michael Bay reboot.


I hope this rambling of mine helps you or at least encourages someone else here to explain things better than me.


Good luck and watch out for those Vorpal Swords!

[cenwolfgirl]

Vorpal Swords? (sorry of topick a bit)
i actualy never wrote fan fic i started with my own univers and have now mad diffrent universes
i like the bit of advice about why you like charictors it is realy good and usful
i gess you should just wright what feels natural if you want to start with fan fic thats good but half the fun is inventing charictors if you ask me

[Snowleopard]

Vorpal swords are from Lewis Carrol's - The Jabberwocky I believe.

I'm with you CWG - half the fun is inventing characters and giving them
backstories to explain their behavior and natures and looks.

[Lanodantheon]

Vorpal swords are from Lewis Carrol's - The Jabberwocky I believe.

Yup, part of Through The Looking Glass.


"He took his vorpal sword in hand:"[/size]And later, "[/size]One, two! One, two! And through and throughThe vorpal blade went snicker-snack!He left it dead, and with its headHe went galumphing back."[/size]


I also like World-Building....mostly because it's easy during the slow times at work. Also, Tolkien once wrote that as a Catholic, "World Building is the closest I will ever come to playing God" or something like that.


World-building is also a good starting point for characters by asking, "Who lives here?" "What unique people are produced by this Magical Dystopia?" "What kinds of people will I find here and nowhere else in the Literary Multiverses?" .

[Jabberwockey]

Thank you all so much.  As far as the fan fiction goes, I usually take a different turn than most.  My current project is a Supernatural fan fic which goes on the assumption that Agent Henricksen survives Lilith's attack on the police station.  My appologies to those who dont watch Supernatural and have no idea what I'm talking about here.  Henricksen is actually the only original character that remains.  The rest are of my creation.

The Snowflake program Im using actually has a really good tool for building your characters.  It requests all different types of info from the basics of height and weight  to what their sense of humor is like and even asks what they carry in their pockets.  My appologies for not being specific enough.  I have a VERY BAD habit of trying to over explain a characters motivation so end up explaining way too much.  So when I said character development, I misspoke although there were some very good ideas for that.  Especially since its so much harder to write characters that you may not care much about. 

Ok, sorry all.  Been doing yardwork all day and very ready for bed so having trouble focusing, especially since my wife is playing acoustic guitar music on Pandora!!
In a nutshell, how do you develop a character that you dont necessarily like without making them a soulless douchebag and without oversharing?

I really like your idea Lan of world building.  My problem on that is the world will build with the story.  The initial story takes place pretty much locally for the protagonist, within say 200 miles or so of his village.  The next book will take him almost global and the final book will go interstellar.

Again, sorry if Im rambling but yardwork and lack of sleep are taking their toll!.  Good thing you dont have to see how many times I have had to backspace to fix typos!!!!!

[cenwolfgirl]

lol sleep well
i have to do that fixing typos thing a lot and i still miss some 

[Lanodantheon]

Ah...you're using the Bottom-Up approach to design. I personally prefer the Top-Down approach because I like seeing the big picture of a place before I put characters in the middle of nowhere.


Overexplaining a character's motivation can be a problem. A way to easily solve it is to first go through the sections that you think you are overexplaining things...then rewrite them using the least number of words possible. Pretend you have to pay the printer per word so you have to keep your costs low. Maybe that'll work.


How do you develop a character you do not like?


Ask yourself why you don't like the character. An action they take? A political position they hold? Did they kick the dog too many times? 


From here you can either change the character so that you do like them or throw the character out and replace the character with one you do like.



But what about characters that are soulless feminine hygiene products? If that's their job description in the story...that's what they are supposed to do.


Either way, it's your story. You are The Creator Deity of your fictional world. You control their Fate, their state of Karma and whatever else. Look forward to knowing that those soulless feminine hygiene products will be punished by the divine for being the way they are...


But say you have a character that can't be thrown out, needs to be there. It will make the story better, but isn't your cup of tea. How do you develop that character?


Step into their shoes. Divorce yourself from their role int he story and see the world how they see it. Then fill in the worksheets.


What if they are a villain?


Brandon Sanderson summed it up best in the Podcast Writing Excuses, "Every Villain is the Hero of their own story." They just don't succeed at the end of it usually.


But that's for villains.


The last thing you can do is related to that: Find a part of the character, just a part that you do like. Concentrate on that. "This mailman character is trite and boring!...but he also has a mortgage to pay despite being chased by an angry Wizard over postage. "


Example of what I'm talking about:


Like so many of us, I'm developing an Urban Fantasy Series with an ensemble cast. I know I don't need Vampires, Were-forms and Faeries in my world, but it's supposed to have the DNA of the other kinds of shows on the market in it so Vampires, Were-forms and Faeries have to be there and they need to be represented int he ensemble by token members.


Also important to note that I hate Vampires and Werecanines. They aren't my thing and I don't find either cool or romantic...


At first I thought of representatives of these creatures and what they would be used for and I didn't like any of them. But, all of them are part of the ensemble and need to be present. 


How could I give them as character as the main characters I really like?


For the Token Vampire I thought of a personality that made sense with the mythology that I had and made a Vampire that makes me laugh and want to do bad things to. I also strangely developed a backstory that makes me want to hug him...


For the Token Were-Form, I thought of a character I would like on its own and then added Were-form to it. That way, the story gets what it needs and I get character that doesn't suck.


For my Token Faerie, I just accepted that I would not really like the High Sidhe I know I needed...and decided no one else would like him either.




That's all I got.

[OZ]

Something that bothers me in many books is characters that don't make sense. They seem to be evil simply for the sake of being evil. ( Of course I have met some people in real life that seem just as two dimensional. Usually they seem to get promoted to supervise other people.) I have found if I create a back story for my villains that explains why they act the way they do, it makes them much more complex. I don't include the back story in my book unless it's essential but the fact that I know why the villain acts the way they do allows me to write them as a much more complete character rather than a paper doll.

[Jabberwockey]

Lan, OZ, thank you both for great advice.  Lan, not exactly sure what you mean by bottom up and top down.  If I understand you, in a nutshell bottom up is taking the main character and building the world/story around them and top down is taking the world and building the details in it until you get down to the main character?

[Lanodantheon]

Lan, OZ, thank you both for great advice.  Lan, not exactly sure what you mean by bottom up and top down.  If I understand you, in a nutshell bottom up is taking the main character and building the world/story around them and top down is taking the world and building the details in it until you get down to the main character?

Bottom Up and Top Down are approaches to Design in Engineering. Synonyms would be Inside-Out & Outside-In.  I think... don't quote me on that.


But yes, that is basically it.


When applied to world building:


In the Bottom-Up or Inside-Out approach, you start with your main character, the setting the story first takes place in and then move outward as the story requires it.


AN example would be if you were writing The Hobbit, you'd start with the character of Bilbo, then move onto his neighborhood and the Shire as a whole. As the story advances and moves out of that initial location you'd build the rest of the world as you interact with it.


The advantage of that approach is that you are not worrying about anything outside the scope of the story you are telling. You can just get up and go.


The disadvantage is that whenever you build the next piece of your world; the next kingdom, the next monster, it has to be consistent with everything that has come before. You run the risk of having a world that exists in a lot of vacuums. "This big kingdom is right next to the Shire....why couldn't we see it back then?"




The Top-Down or Outside-In approach is the opposite. You start with the grand view of things, then add detail as needed to specific parts. You start with maybe the Continent if not the planet, then the countries, etc. You don't need to build everything in this grand view, just bullet-points.


The Advantage of this approach is that you get a Macrocosm. You get to see the big pieces in relation to the each other.


The Disadvantage of this approach is that you risk getting "World Builder's Disease" a malady of many a writer who spends months if not years building a fantasy world and when they sit down to write it, they spend 400 pages telling you about the world they spent so much time on...to "immerse you" in the world before getting to the actual story. 




I personally use both, starting at both ends and meeting in the middle. The only disadvantage I've had with that approach so far is...needing to compromise. But Life is compromise.

[cenwolfgirl]

Bottom Up and Top Down are approaches to Design in Engineering. Synonyms would be Inside-Out & Outside-In.  I think... don't quote me on that.


But yes, that is basically it.


When applied to world building:


In the Bottom-Up or Inside-Out approach, you start with your main character, the setting the story first takes place in and then move outward as the story requires it.


AN example would be if you were writing The Hobbit, you'd start with the character of Bilbo, then move onto his neighborhood and the Shire as a whole. As the story advances and moves out of that initial location you'd build the rest of the world as you interact with it.


The advantage of that approach is that you are not worrying about anything outside the scope of the story you are telling. You can just get up and go.


The disadvantage is that whenever you build the next piece of your world; the next kingdom, the next monster, it has to be consistent with everything that has come before. You run the risk of having a world that exists in a lot of vacuums. "This big kingdom is right next to the Shire....why couldn't we see it back then?"




The Top-Down or Outside-In approach is the opposite. You start with the grand view of things, then add detail as needed to specific parts. You start with maybe the Continent if not the planet, then the countries, etc. You don't need to build everything in this grand view, just bullet-points.


The Advantage of this approach is that you get a Macrocosm. You get to see the big pieces in relation to the each other.


The Disadvantage of this approach is that you risk getting "World Builder's Disease" a malady of many a writer who spends months if not years building a fantasy world and when they sit down to write it, they spend 400 pages telling you about the world they spent so much time on...to "immerse you" in the world before getting to the actual story. 




I personally use both, starting at both ends and meeting in the middle. The only disadvantage I've had with that approach so far is...needing to compromise. But Life is compromise.

as i was reading this i thought i was the first type as i didnt realy think about the world
well i had a ruff idea but no fine deatal
i think i am like you work from both ends at the same time and meat in the middle as worlds are also fun to do
i think i like doing the plot best
diciding what you are going to do with these grat charictors in this world of yours that the big one thats the one you should realy spend the most time on 

[meg_evonne]

Give them motivation that arrives from backstory.
Give them a secret.
Give them connections with as many of the other characters as possible.

Read Jim's blog on writing off the home page.
Visit writingexcuses.com.
Take a course on creating characters on line or in person.

Top down or Down up--the end result is the same. Think of a coloring book--they are boring as hell for an adult. Now, take that and put it into an artist's hands and it turns 3D and beautiful or terrifying or compelling. You want to make sure the end result has maximum impact on your reader. You can't end up with your first thoughts and motivations for these characters; they have to be ten steps beyond your first ideas. Strive for depth, but always logical, realistic and often simple characteristics. If your character isn't speaking to your heart, then it will not speak to the reader. If she can't make you cry, the reader won't either.

[cenwolfgirl]

love it
i said that was how i started not what i have now (i was 14 when i started with not that much exspirence the story has more wait now due to exspirence, and other influences, Jim's blog being one of them)