How to Effectively Build Characters

Your characters are the most important part of your story - yes, even more important than the plot!

You can still create a well-written, meaningful piece of fiction without a large and complex narrative, but you can't have a good story without well-built and realistic characters to drive it. The people in your story must be multi dimensional, have their own unique histories and interests, make mistakes and most importantly, appear to be just like somebody you could meet in real life. Here are some tips on how to make your characters as believable as possible.

Watch and understand people

Observe, always observe

In order to build well-rounded characters, you must have a good understanding of human nature and what drives people to do the things they do. Go to the park and and 'people-watch.' Study how they interact. Pick up on their little quirks, listen to the funny things they say. Pick fragments of them, and of people you know; you can mix them up and put them all together to create a character.

It is not always necessary for your characters to be likeable

Obviously this goes without saying if your character is a serial killer or similar, but even if not, remember your main character doesn't always have to be likeable, nor do they always have to do the right thing. We meet people we dislike all the time in everyday life. We are all human and make mistakes, and it is good to reflect this in your writing. Stories with an unlikeable protagonist(s) can sometimes provide a more interesting narrative, and give the reader a thought-provoking experience.

Know your characters

Write extensively, for your own use, about your characters history, their best and worst traits, even little things that might seem silly - their favourite foods, for example! Create this, memorise it, get to know your characters and let this knowledge drive you as you lead them through the story. You don't have to share the small details, or even their history if you don't want to - how much you tell your reader about them is up to you, and sometimes it can be more effective to keep details about the character secret. Know your characters inside out and let that knowledge drive them.



Keep that eye open!

DO YOUR RESEARCH

This is so important. It's not just the plot that needs research behind it to look authentic; your characters need it too. If one of your characters has an illness you know nothing about, read up on it! Find stories of personal experience to help you add that personal touch. Get that authenticity.

Understand how your characters relate to one another

In real life, even the best of friends do not get along all the time. Not everybody likes everything about everyone and people have different opinions. Let this feed into your interactions between characters, their conversations, and the ways in which they relate to one another; it will make for more effective, realistic seeming characters.

About the writer

This great advice was written by one of our authors, Stephanie-Louise Farrell, who, like me, is a keen advocate of observing people and using that experience in her writing. She's put together an excellent collection of her short stories called 'Haunted - Four Tales Of Obsession And Horror' which, as you can see from her reviews, have been very well received. The anthology's definitely a walk on the dark side and is extremely well written - I can definitely recommend it. She's currently working on her next book and I hope that us here at ASB will be handling its publication.

The long and the short of it

After an extended dalliance away from the genre, short stories are becoming increasingly popular again. With hectic personal schedules and the hurly-burly of the 21st century world, modern readers like the idea of picking up their book, tablet, Kindle, e-reader to enjoy a complete story without the hassle of having to remember numerous characters, complex plots or who is doing what to whom and why.

I'd like us now to look at the basic limiting factors of a short story in more detail and see where they lead us:

●         A short story by its very definition is short (!)

●         There must be a complete story within its pages even if it's part of a series centered around the same characters or setting

●         The author must describe the location and the key protagonists in sufficient detail as to bring them to life

Keep it short!

Some writers seem to think that a short story is merely a highly-condensed conventional novel or an extremely short novella when it's neither. Because of the limitations imposed by the three above criteria, a short story takes a single thread and explores it to completion in the space of a few pages. There can be no complexity of plot, diverse parallel storylines, or switching from one exotic venue to another as per James Bond, Ludlum etc. If you are going to write a short story, you need to think tight, compact and bijou.

The knack to writing a short story which your customers will want to read is to concentrate on:

●         Creating a few simple but interesting characters

●         Choosing a setting which is quickly visualised by the reader and which will not overpower the characters or the storyline

●         Finding a story which leads the reader through

●         Sending the reader away with something memorable which makes them want to read more of your stories

With a short story, there is a real need to 'hit the ground running'. You do not have the luxury of long preamble-style descriptions of the characters executed through rambling explanatory dialogue so you have to create a clear image of the protagonists very quickly and without overdoing it on the adjectival front. Likewise with the places; you will rarely have the word count for more than a cursory description giving a generic location such as 'on the bus', 'at the beach', 'visiting the zoo' and so on.

We'll look at how to draw up plots, construct openings and decide upon endings for short stories in subsequent postings.

Clive West is a successful short story writer, novelist and publisher. He has produced a bestselling anthology of short stories which all have a twist-in-the-tail and which is for sale on Amazon. He is a strong believer in the non-reliance upon low-grade authorial devices such as creating a mystery out of nothing and deus ex machina denouements. Apart from writing, Clive runs Any Subject Books Ltd along with his wife and co-writer, Damaris West. New writers are always welcome at the agency.

Danny's Tavern--A Collection of Neighborhood Stories 1935-1975

 

 

Our guest today is Dr. Thomas Melvin, P.E. I'm looking forward to reading his book, Danny's Tavern! I think you'll enjoy his explanation of how this collection of short stories came into being.---Mary Ann

 

A few years ago I wrote a novel-The Great American Story-so I thought, “Two Winds To Vandalia”. It was about two Cain & Abel brothers and an accident at a nuclear power plant. But 20 or so rejection slips later convinced me otherwise.

 

My friend Bill Flynn was a bartender at Danny’s Tavern. He was always writing too but his finished work never saw the light of day. He wrote the real life stories that the patrons at this neighborhood tavern shared with him.

 

Upon his passing, all of those writings were discovered in boxes in the basement and might have been thrown out. But Bill left behind a hand written note that they were to be given to me.

 

The stories shared in Danny’s Tavern could have happened anywhere, any year and in any economy. Neighborhood taverns are places people go to share stories and sometimes the type of secret you could only confess to a relative stranger.

 

They are centers of neighborhood culture and conversation and no matter where you live or are traveling to you just feel more connected to the rest of the world, when you’re there.

 

They are safe havens you can go to for answers when you’ve been laid off for the very first time and you feel like you’re the only one that’s ever happened to. They are where you go to brag endlessly to relative strangers about how you finally met the woman of your dreams who thinks you’re the man of hers.

 

Perhaps most importantly, in an economy where all the rules of how to be successful seem to have changed, your own “Danny’s Tavern” is where you know you can you go to share your greatest hopes and dreams, and find a community that will hold you accountable for achieving them.

 

Just as the All Things Writing blog image says “Writing is the recording of life as it passes you by” and Bill Flynn’s writings captured the lives of 26 characters through the ups and downs of life, unfiltered, authentic and timeless.

 

About the Author:

 

Dr Thomas Melvin P.E. graduated from the Doctoral Program at Nova Southeastern University and received a Distinguished Research Award for his dissertation, in 1996. For over twenty years he worked as an Engineering Consultant for the Medcon Engineering Corporation. He has lectured throughout the U.S. on Construction and Facilities Management.

His career began at the age of ten having worked at everything from scraping barnacles off of tugboats, to shoveling coal on a steamship, jumping out of planes as a US Paratrooper, to teaching engineering, to project management consulting at Harvard University. He is also the author of Practical Psychology in Construction
Management published by Van Nostrand Reinhold and Danny’s Tavern – A Collection of Neighborhood Stories 1935-1975

His facebook page is: http://on.fb.me/GNLW5d

Readers can buy the book here: http://amzn.to/XcyCAn

Back to basics

One of the reasons why I give up with some books or films is that it's become clear that the plot has been completely defenestrated in favor of some gadgetry or other device. Now, I'm not necessarily talking about sci-fi films and laser guns or teleporters here; the same applies just as well to a romance where the star-struck lovers are forced apart and the author's got bogged down with details about the location.

This is a follow-up to a blog piece that I wrote a few weeks back called 'Less is More' so I don't want to cover the same ground with this one.

What I'm saying here is that it's good discipline every now and again to go back to the basics of writing and scribble a short story where it's just two or three characters and one location. Limit yourself to 1,000 to 2,000 words and keep away from technology of just about any sort.

I remember reading much the same thing in a photography book years ago. Everyone was buying the (then) new telephoto zooms, macros and wide-angle lenses which had become relatively affordable. Not only that, it was hard to find a single shot in a glossy magazine that hadn't been through at least one filter of some sort. The article that caught my eye told of how its writer (a famous photographer) had, contrary to his normal habit of carting around a full kitbag of lenses, gone out on a shoot armed with just a standard lens and no gimmickry. The pictures that he'd taken were stunning.

Why? The answer's because he had to concentrate extra hard on composition; on the subject, its relationship with its surroundings, and the message he wanted to convey.

Writing a story is no different to taking photos. You're trying to recreate a vision, an interaction between your characters in a setting of your choice. If you get carried away with all the bells and whistles, it's so easy to lose sight of where your writing’s going. By sticking to just a simple story and no possibility for getting tied up with any of the thousand-and-one possible distractions, your writing will improve immensely.

What sort of short story you choose is entirely up to you. Personally, I'm a sucker for twist-in-the-tail stories (and, yes, I know some people write 'tale' but my twists are in the 'tail' hence my preferred spelling of the word,) however any simple story that has a clear beginning and ending will do. Not only should you restrict yourself as to characterization and word count, you should also try to write the story at a single sitting. By concentrating on the bare essentials, you will find that it clears your head and allows you to see past the clutter that most stories or films suffer from.

In film terms, it would mean doing it all on a tight budget, in other words no big name actors, no fancy sets and no CGI. What's left? Just the story and that's what you should be focusing on.

Why not invent a new word for the process? How about 'Unhollywoodization'?

Clive West is the author of a collection of short stories featuring a selection of rogues, as well as a full-length novel called 'The Road' about corporate greed and its real effect on the little people like us.

Clive is also co-owner of Any Subject Books and you can see more about them on their website or on Facebook.

A Smashing Success

After being gone for a month, I'm dropping in with a quick note. I know, I know. And it's BSP, too. But maybe some readers can benefit from my experience.

I've just put out my own short story collection on Smashwords and they immediately started selling. If you follow the direction exactly, you end up with lots of different convenient formats. I even did a table of contents, which works in most of the versions. I'll warn that the rtf versions don't hold the formatting and I left those out when I redid my book the next day.

I'd advise publishing it, downloading all the formats you can, proofing, then re-doing. I found that I had left one story out of my table of contents, and my cover said there were 8 when there were really 9! It's simple to reload everything. When the book is as perfect as you can make it, then is the time to start publicizing.

You can peek at the first two and a half stories in my collection at
A Patchwork of Stories on Smashwords. The book will make it to Amazon in a couple of weeks.

If anyone is thinking of self-publishing for any reason, I'd highly recommend this site!

Markets for short stories

This may be cheating, but I found this absolute wonderful post by Alan Rinzler, thanks to a tweet from Wordhustler. Basically, it espouses on the many opportunities out there for short story writers. Check it out:

http://www.alanrinzler.com/blog/2009/10/12/why-book-publishers-love-short-stories/