Tag: character development

Character desires—Jan #MFRWauthor

Historical charactersAs a reader what attracts you most to a character?

I think all of us want to read books with a captivating story and memorable characters, books we can’t put down until the last page.

I’m not attracted to the he-man with hot eyes, growling voice and the body of Adonis, or the luscious blonde with an impossible hourglass figure because they aren’t real.

It doesn’t matter if our choice is historical, modern or futuristic, I believe our characters should have faults and flaws, just like us. We can relate to how she’s feeling when those scales notch up another 5 pounds, smirk a bit when he finds a few more grey hairs, mutter ‘don’t be so damned stupid’ when they stuff up and feel happy for them when they come through.

Downton Abbey, the incredibly popular British drama television series, is a perfect example of wonderful true-life characters. Whether they were the aristocracy, the poor relations or below stairs servants, they were not plastic stereotypes, they were believable. Just the same as not wanting a good book to end, we hated saying goodbye to them.

I loved the Poldark series, based on the novels of the same name by Tin mine in CornwallWinston Graham. Those characters, with their strengths and weaknesses, held millions of people captivated until the final scene.

I’m sure what attracts us to these characters is seeing a bit of ourselves in them.

What do you think?

Read the next blog in the blog hop by going here.

Jan

Perilous Love
The Proposition
The Woman Behind the Mirror
Lies of Gold—Silver Historical for 2019: Coffee Pot Book Club

Character Profiles #MFRWauthor

I confess that I used to be a complete pantser. I had an image of characters in my head and that was all I needed. But sometimes I found that I as I wrote, I added bits and pieces, traits and hobbies to the characters and then it was hard to keep things straight. I often forgot what color hair my heroine had or whether the hero’s eyes were green or blue. Once I renamed the hero halfway through the book and only caught it in editing (thank heaven). I knew I needed help.

Creating a character is a little like chemistry: a little of this and a little of that, and you have a character that’s memorable (and keeps the same name all the way through the book!). I found a how-to guide that had character sheets in it, and I adopted it to fit what I wanted to know about my characters. Suddenly, I had a form to fill in for height, hair and eye color, hobbies, education, family members, etc. I added elements for conflict and goals, too. I assigned each major character three adjectives and then wrote three things the character might do that represented those adjectives. I found the character sheets helped keep me in line and on target.

Lately, I took two courses with Laurie Schnebly Campbell through Writer University and learned a lot! Laurie’s help was aimed toward plotting through character motivation.

I ended up with much of the same goals/motivation information I had using the guide sheets, but it’s much easier to come up with. I think I will still use the guide sheets to track physical characteristics but use Laurie’s process to find motivation and apply it to plot. By the way, if you’ve never taken a course with Laurie, I found her to be a real pleasure—fun and helpful.

So, am I no longer a pantser? Well, I haven’t gotten to the point of detailed outlining, but I have found a couple of methods that help me hold my stories together better. I hope…

Read the next blog in the blog hop by going here.

Dee
Naval Maneuvers When a woman requires an earth-shattering crush of pleasure to carry her away, she can’t do better than to call on the US Navy. Sorry, Marines!