Developing Characters - Why it's Important

When you're around, surfing the web, trying to find articles or step by step how to instructions on how to write a book, something that you're bound to come across sooner or later is the importance of developing characters. Some people skip this step and jump right into the writing of their book, which in my opinion is a sort of crazy idea. They say that the actual writing of the book develops the characters enough for their taste. But let's put this into perspective. Writing a book without having fully developed characters doesn't do anything but hurt your storyline. Readers can tell. Basically, you're just jumping headfirst into describing a character when you don't even know what they're like yourself. And readers can feel that because it shows in the quality of the writing. You personally don't know how your character would react in a certain situation, thus making it harder to write the scenes that you need for your book.

So now that you know the sheer importance of developing characters, let's dive a little into how you actually do it. A lot of people think that the developing of characters is simply a character sketch, which is pretty much a fill out sheet that lists the bare minimums of a character: eye color, hair color, name, age, build, and sometimes their hair style (if you draw). But that's not at all what developing a character is all about. To go into a little more depth of what this does actually mean, let's start out by looking at the definition of develop. In the dictionary, develop means "to cause to grow or expand", "to elaborate or expand in detail", and "to bring into being or activity." Looking just at these definitions, it sort of starts to make sense and bring it into a bit more detail. Basically, it is the method that you use to start to get to know your characters more - start to feel their more intimate feelings (or at least what they would be if they were real), know how they would react to certain things, etc, etc, etc.

It's not necessarily hard to develop characters, but you do need to have an active imagination and the willingness to be random and simply let the ideas flow. Speaking of that, I think I should call a can of worms on freewriting and probably an entire other on brainstorming. Starting out on the developing of your characters is always the hardest part. A lot of times you may have a rough thought of their personality, (they have a short temper, are always happy, are always willing to crack a joke, is constantly thinking on the positive (or negative) side, is a constant downer, etc.) but you just don't know how to continue. A lot of people (I've already discussed them briefly) think that this simple idea is enough. If it works for them, then great, and, if you are one of these people, please don't be offended. It just doesn't work for me. Even though I just said that a simple idea is not enough, you do need one to start the developing process. Once you have decided their basic personality, then just begin to freewrite. Randomly write down any words, phrases, or sentences that come to mind. Continue this for about a half hour or until you've filled up several pages.

A lot of times those bits of sentences won't be that helpful, but you will find beautiful gems in there instead of just dirt if you just do a little bit of searching (especially if you've done a couple of pages for a single character). You'll have a huge description of their personality and what they might do in a situation. Don't ever doubt the words that are coming to mind. Don't ignore them. Sometimes you might come across a scene idea. Write it down. Your brain will automatically connect certain things together, so, if you come up with a scene idea, most likely your brain is telling you that it would fit perfectly into your story. This is the kind of thing that I'm directing you not to ignore. They are important. Also, the more you write, the more ideas will come to you. It's fact. Repeat this whole process for each character. I know that it sounds strenuous and repetitive right now, but, when it actually comes time to write your story, you'll thank me. So, until next time, Write On!!

Time to Spare

It seems that lately, ever since the Christmas season is over, I've had tons of time to spare. I think that it's something about how busy we are that time of the year, and I'm not quite used to all of the blank spots on the calender yet. I've actually done a lot more editing on Blue Flames since my last post, but I just couldn't find the time to be interested enough to sit down and type out this post. So far I've gotten 58 pages edited into the second draft - I've been keeping a tracksheet in my writer's notebook with the date, the number of pages, and which edit it is.

I've been thinking a lot lately about how many drafts it will actually take to finish the book, but, I'm thinking, that after this one, I'll still have two more left. I could be wrong, and only need one more edit, but I guess we'll see about that. After the second draft is complete, I'm going to give it to a couple of people to read - I still haven't let anybody else see it yet because it's really pretty bad.

I don't know if I've said it on here before or not, but this novel was written mostly in November 2010, for NaNoWriMo. That is the challenge to write 50k words in the month of November. It's not really as bad as it seems though. I did a lot of word padding during November; little tricks here and there that I added in just to boost my word count. Even though I was sure that it would need edited out later. **Hangs head**

A lot of people actually do that in November; mostly because they wouldn't be able to complete it with all of their holiday preparations, cooking, baking, and anything else that needs done in November (like general living). I didn't do it as bad as some other people did, only a couple of random spots in the book, with one little trick (no contractions; do not instead of don't, should not instead of shouldn't, etc, etc, etc.)

There are a lot worse tricks in the book than that one, and, personally, it doesn't bother me that much that I did that. Mostly what I was having trouble with was the descriptions. I described everything to the best of my ability, which gave me quite a bit of padding. What they don't actually tell you though, about descriptive writing, is that it's not always a good thing.

People always say to describe everything to the fullest extent possible. I've found myself, however, in the editing process, going back and editing out a whole lot of the describing words that I used in the first place. When you actually read, out loud, a sentence that has been written in this way, it just starts to sound funny. Instead of a smooth flowing sentence in which all of the words seem to work together, you end up with a choppy sentence that is almost annoying to read.

Editing out all of those excess words helps that tremendously. Now, one more thing before I leave. When it does actually come time to edit your novel, don't be afraid to cut stuff. In the beginning I was totally obsessing over what needed to go, and what needed to replace it, if anything. Now that I've gotten about a quarter of the way through my book, I realize that it doesn't matter as much as you think it does in the very beginning. I just work on creating flowing sentences that flow together, and paragraphs that pull you into the next section or chapter. Now for my closing words. Go write something!!