I’m rethinking how I spend my time. By this, I mean that the first hour of every workday is now dedicated to building my business. And as a book editor and a lover of books, what better way to do that than to…well, read a book?
I’m starting off with Nancy Kress’ Characters, Emotion, and Viewpoint, which is part of the Write Great Fiction series. And okay, guys, although a lot of this book’s information is remedial to me, there’s still great value in these books, which I’d like to share. Here are the best tips from the book, boiled down to their basics.
1. Create interesting characters.
Ask yourself: Are you genuinely interested in the character you’ve created? Do you find yourself imagining her past, and thinking about how she might speak? If not, you might not be able to write your character very well.
Above all, your characters must have a source of motivation to guide them through the book. What goal are they trying to achieve? Sharing backstory, internal thought, or conversations with other characters will help show (not tell!) your main characters’ motivations. Integrating human emotion is a critical step to getting your readers to connect with your story. These are the characters that your readers will remember.
If you have trouble dreaming up character traits, draw from real life. Observe yourself: What makes you feel certain emotions? Observe the world: Write what you know. Do research: Go out into the world, interview those around you, read and stay curious.
2. Appearances matter.
What do your characters look like? When imagining their face and what they might wear, keep in mind that appearances are everything. People with small, squinty eyes are automatically associated with being devious or sly, so your character who was born with these features might find this judgment to be a point of frustration, especially if he’s truly a good guy.
Share your characters’ ages, demographics, appearance, and other details. The world is full of people whose outward appearance is the first thing that we see. Include characters from different demographics. Sharing the goals, plights, fears, dreams, etc. of a range of characters allows readers to see that everyone is going through fundamentally the same struggles, which builds compassion.
3. Characters need depth.
Characters and their level of development is one of the key parts that will make or break a book. In reading about your characters and their adventures, readers will naturally begin to develop relationships with them—and as we all know, that’s what makes for a good book, right?!
The best books are the ones that do this well, so I cannot underscore enough the importance in making sure that you get all those major plot components right. Characters must be real on the page. To be well developed, each character must have a past, a need, a fear, a dream…and this must be showed through action, dialogue, or memories.
Keep this “depth” part in mind when designing your secondary characters and the book’s antagonist. An interesting antagonist blocks your protegonist from reaching their goal, and should be your protagonist’s equal. That’s what made the conflict between Harry Potter and Voldemort so compelling—they were so closely matched that it wasn’t clear who was going to win.
Your protagonist can have a fatal flaw that leads to his or her downfall. As the author, you can exploit your protagonist’s pitfall, use it against them, and force them to change (to create a character arc).
4. Don’t overdo it.
When doing your character development, be sure not to spend too much time going on and on and on about characters’ pasts. Incorporate more character development at any opportunity you can, in order to truly allow your readers a glimpse into your characters’ lives and what they’re dealing with. Your protagonist should have the most character development to make him or her much more likeable and more relatable to your readers.
Consider adding a character arc to your main character to show growth and change. She should have minor realizations throughout the entire book that prepare and lead her to the character change at the end.
5. Secondary characters should feel real, too.
Secondary characters shouldn’t feel as if they were thrown in the story and don’t do much to enhance and enrich the protagonist’s story. Even the bad guys should have character development, and have some good things about their characters. Not everyone is wholly bad or wholly good, just like in real life.
Secondary characters are just as important to the story as your protagonist, as these characters will help propel your protagonist through the story. Secondary characters may behave poorly, causing your protagonist to get upset (or other emotion) and react in a way that changes the plot. Like your story’s main characters and protagonist, your secondary characters should have unique details that tell readers more about their personality and psychology.
Characters can have different ways of speaking (like using a catch phrase), have different temperaments (one character might be optimistic, whereas others might be glass-half-empty types); they can be overly emotional or distant and aloof. Think of all the different people you know in your life, the different personality traits and quirks that make them individual, and give some of those to your characters.
Evaluating the author’s voice is one aspect of my manuscript critique service. These are the questions I ask myself as I’m reading my clients’ work:
- Is the protagonist clearly presented and the major character in the plot?
- Is the protagonist sympathetic from the start?
- Are the characters rich and developed or flat and stereotypic?
- Do the characters behave and speak consistent with their backgrounds and upbringing?
- Does each character have depth—a past, a need, a fear, a dream—and are these brought out clearly in the story?
- Do the secondary characters enhance and enrich the protagonist’s story?
- Is there too much or not enough description of the characters? Is the description shown from the eyes of other characters and not just “told” by the author to the reader?
- Are there too many characters or too much time spent on secondary characters that detracts from the main plot of the story and the focus on the protagonist?
- Does the protagonist have a clear character arc that shows growth/change/decision/resolution to the end of the book?
Book editor Kristen Hamilton is the owner and sole employee of Kristen Corrects, Inc., where she provides manuscript editing services for traditionally and self-publishing authors. Several authors whose books she has edited have won awards and have topped Amazon’s best sellers lists.
Reading is Kristen’s passion, so when the workday is over, she can usually be found curled up with a good book alongside her four cats. She loves watching cat videos and scary movies, eating pizza, teaching herself French, and traveling, and she is likely planning her next vacation. She lives outside of Boise, ID.