How Writers Do It: A Writing Process Series – Part Three
The idea: A 4-week blog series in which eight (8) writers give their views on eight (8) different writing process guides. For more details, visit here.
This week’s topic: Deepening Your Characters: What is at the heart of a complex character?
The contest: Join in the fun by blogging about the week’s topic on your own site. Be sure to post the link in this thread for a chance to win a free book! More details here. Last week’s winner is Karla Ellenbach! Email me at corrinelj@gmail.com to get your free book!
The writers and their guides: Click on any of the writer’s names below to view their blog.
Cory Jackson: Robert Olen Butler’s From Where You Dream
Kate Hart: Stephen King’s On Writing
Jamie Blair: Thomas Monteleone’s The Complete Idiot’s Guide To Writing A Novel
Laura McMeeking: Natalie Naimark-Goldberg’s Writing Down the Bones: Freeing the Writer Within
Debra Driza: James Scott Bell’s Plot and Structure
Leila Austin: Anne Lamott’s Bird by Bird
Sarah Harian: Gotham Writers’ Workshop’s Writing Fiction
Jennifer Wood: Sol Stein’s Stein on Writing
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Deepening Your Characters: What is at the heart of a complex character?
A couple of weeks ago, I described Robert Olen Butler’s take on fiction in his writing process novel, From Where You Dream.
Fiction, inescapably, is the art form of human yearning.
He tells us that there are “two epiphanies in any good work of fiction.” The second, as described by James Joyce, is the “moment in a work of art when something shines forth in its essence.” In other words the climax of the story.
The first epiphany comes very near the beginning, where the sensual details accumulate around a moment in which the deepest yearning of the main character shines forth.
Butler believes a good work of fiction is born out of this first epiphany. It comes from dreaming up a character with a profound yearning. Characters without this yearning can leave a reader cold. This was a huge A-ha! moment for me. A while back I wrote this post about how a lot of fiction out there now is leaving me unmoved and dissatisfied, while YA fiction is grabbing at me. I think this is exactly for the reason Butler describes.
Yearning is something we can understand – an inescapable condition of being human. Whether it is a yearning for a family or a yearning to understand your place in the world, we can relate as readers to a character’s desires. My own characters usually come to me with their yearning in place.
In addition to yearning, I believe you deepen a character with a web of sensual details that describe the character’s world and their outlook on the world. Sometimes it’s easy to veer to too much telling. Much more difficult is to allow the way the character interacts with the world to tell the story of their particular yearning. Another way to deepen your characters is to allow them a complex range of emotions.
How do you deepen your characters?
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9 Responses to "How Writers Do It: A Writing Process Series – Part Three"
on March 18, 2010 | to this post
wow i really love that you guys are taking the time to write these posts.
so helpful.
thanks for sharing!!
on March 18, 2010 | to this post
Yes, I agree–definitely the MC needs to *want* something very, very deeply. Otherwise, the story is just flat.
on March 18, 2010 | to this post
You know, I didn’t touch on this at all, nor did I think about it really, but it’s so true! I think the reason I wanted to write in the first place was I had all these pent of feelings that I had never confronted. I’ve always felt things deeply and have had a yearning for many different things as time has passed. And, I’d never really thought of what makes me connect with a character while reading, but THIS IS IT! It’s completely it. I’m so glad you posted this, Cory.
on March 18, 2010 | to this post
I think you’re dead on, re. yearning and YA. People are tapping into that universal teenage experience of longing for something and not understanding why you can’t have it. We do the same thing as adults, we just aren’t allowed to do it as openly. LOL
on March 18, 2010 | to this post
I agree totally with the yearning and ya. So many times these characters do have a profound yearning for something. Who didn’t in their teenage years? Nice post
on March 19, 2010 | to this post
I love this idea. The things a person yearns for are so often the things that truly make them. Especially in YA.
on March 20, 2010 | to this post
This comes back to Kurt Vonnegut”s rule 3:
3. Every character should want something, even if it is only a glass of water.
on March 20, 2010 | to this post
There are more series on writing:
http://beranger.tumblr.com/post/319727196/ecrivez-i-wanna-read-of-you