Unique Help With Characterization

Tell Me a Story

Not only do characters have to overcome major and minor obstacles throughout a story, they have to grow in some way. Shortcomings are what make our central characters seem human; however, readers want those shortcomings made virtuous by the end of the book.

Each central character has to surmount some part of their personality in order for them to develop during the course of the story. In order to achieve this, writers need to understand what a character’s significant flaws might be. Sometimes it’s difficult to think of, and to balance these shortcomings.

It is convenient that enneagram philosophers have classified nine personality types, each with a distinctive strength, and flaw.  These strengths and flaws can build trouble for personality types and those around, especially if a strength or flaw is taken to extremes.

As writers, we can exploit those nine types to generate conflict between our central characters and use them as internal struggles they have to conquer.

• Type One is principled, purposeful, self-controlled, and perfectionistic.
• Type Two is demonstrative, generous, people-pleasing, and possessive.
• Type Three is adaptive, excelling, driven, and image-conscious.
• Type Four is expressive, dramatic, self-absorbed, and temperamental.
• Type Five is perceptive, innovative, secretive, and isolated.
• Type Six is engaging, responsible, anxious, and suspicious.
• Type Seven is spontaneous, versatile, distractible, and scattered.
• Type Eight is self-confident, decisive, wilful, and confrontational.
• Type Nine is receptive, reassuring, agreeable, and complacent.

So there you are. Someone else has done it for you. Keep this list in front of you as you build your character’s profile, and use it to advantage. It will serve you well.

Dialogue, characters, and stock words

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Links on Tell Me a Story

• How To Describe - Mastering Descriptive Writing
• To Write A Story - 20 Ways To Write A Story Better
• Story Characters - 7 Cool Ways To Jump-Start Your Writing

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Stock words in Dialogue

Sometimes it’s a good idea to give your central characters a phrase or a few stock words of dialogue, which are theirs and theirs alone. It can help identify and it sets characters apart. It happens in real life so why not in your story. We all know people who have this habit – in fact, we probably all do it to a greater or less extent - take a listen to your own dialogue sometime.

Let your character(s) repeat the words on odd occasions so the reader gradually identifies them, BUT don’t do it too often, or you could make them sound slightly crazy. If your heroine is bouncy and thinks life is “terrific”, you shouldn’t make it her stock answer to every situation, better to use the term intermittently, so readers increasingly recognize the tendency.

Identifying the speaker by dialogue

Carefully consider the words and phrases before you ‘tag’ a protagonist with them. Make sure it’s in keeping with character and social class. Remember, don’t over-do it, but do bear in mind this really is an uncomplicated way to identify the character.

**** Dialogue ****Dialogue **** Dialogue ****

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More on characters

Tell Me a Story - advice

"AJ can you help, please. I'm trying to come to terms with characterization. Is there any advice you can offer?"

Hi Sarah, thanks for the email. Here's a summary of things you should keep in mind. Hope it helps.

Characterization
Characters are extremely important to your story and you must get them right.

1. A good approach is to cut out magazine pictures of people who suit your characters. I pin mine above my desk so I never forget who they are and what they look like. Don't tell people who they might look like - use your own descriptive powers.
2. Spend time developing a complete dossier of all physical traits, mental traits, education, backgrounds, friends and family, for each of your main characters before you start to write. Know what music they like, what food, what drink, what taste in clothes, what makes them laugh, smile, and cry.
3. You must know everything about your characters to understand how they're going to react in a given situation.
4. To capture reader’s attention, it is essential your people seem like real people.
5. In a novel, ‘real’ is not tantamount to run of the mill. We're all run of the mill. Run of the mill is boring. However, bear in mind the most mundane person can turn out to be exceptional under pressure.
6. Your readers should always empathize with your main characters.
7. You should always empathize with your main characters.
8. Proceedings influence people. Your people must develop with the story, they should be different at the end than the beginning, they must have ‘grown’ in some way.
9. Don’t allow any protagonist to behave out of character just to fit in with the plot. Nothing should be contrived.
10. You must illustrate all attributes of your main people, including, aptitude, looks, strengths, intellect, and emotional qualities - by showing not telling.
11. Quirky characteristics can help distinguish a character, but keep it low key or it will seem out of place.
12. Create unforgettable characters, so when your reader reaches the end of your novel they’ll be anxious about what happens to them.

Do all this, and your story will be well on its way to being a success.

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  Looking for a good read? Try:-

  
  

  Short Moments - collection of 10 short stories

  or
  

  Past Sins - Contemporary fiction

Characters, writers and success.

Tell Me a Story - advice

Characters are most successful when we, as writers, equate with them.

Book Characters

When we identify with characters in books, when we take pleasure in their friendship, the characters become real to us.

Psychologist claim characters are a prognosis of some component of a writer's persona. Maybe so, maybe not; whatever, this doesn’t have to signify that your written character is a portrayal of you – although this can happen, what it means is that you write as if they are actual people.

Performers.

When creating our stories, we are perhaps inclined to be performers as well as writers. When we create a character, we psychologically recreate the role, and in order to write successfully, we see ourselves being that character; we verbalize the figure, we act out the role in our mind. If we can't do it, we don't write with authority.

Even though we probably refute that our protagonist mirrors us, they are perhaps the persona we would be if we dressed in their cloak - even the dark characters. Buried deep in most of us is a dark side, when we write, we allow that side to bubble to the surface.

By whatever means, in order to be successful as writers we need to breathe soul into our fantasies - and only by doing so, will our imaginings become someone else's reality.

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