Developing Your Characters

Yes I’m going to try to make excuses for not having updated, so you can just skip down past this if you want.

It has just been a really busy month. It has been insane. March this year has honestly been one of, if not the, busiest months of my life.  I’ve just taken on a ridiculous amount of stuff. Ask Margaret. She thinks I’m crazy.

But I’m also an author. And those two are hardly mutually exclusive.

I know the last post was about characters, specifically How to Make a Non-Cliché Antagonist, but I was working on this recently so I thought I might as well write about it for you guys.

I think we can all recognize the fact that characters are really important to a story. Depending on the story/book itself, they can be more important than others, but since they are what is moving the story forward through the plot and setting, characters are rather important.

There are a lot of different ways that you can develop characters once you have them. We’ve talked before in other posts about picking character traits and balancing good and bad traits and such, but we’ve never really talked about how to develop them.

There are a lot of different ways to do it. Sometimes it depends on the characters themselves. I think I’ve mentioned it before, but Margaret’s characters, as she calls it, are jealous girlfriends. They don’t leave her mind alone. Some are harder to think about, or don't quite capture your mind like that. But she hasn’t had much trouble with one of the methods, which is just constant obsessing.

Constant Obsessing

Now, take my word for it, Margaret's characters as they started are pretty drastically different from where they are now. By a long shot. Unrecognizable. It has also been… goodness it’s been close to four years or something. They were created when we were 12-13ish and now we’re 16-17ish. Crazy.

The point is they’ve had a lot of work done. Constant obsessing. That’s one of the first methods you can use. Just thinking about them nonstop in pretty much everything you do. Whenever you do something, especially if your characters are in the real world, and wonder about how your character would do or if they would do it. Margaret used to ask herself about who would keep their desk more organized of her two main characters or what kind of coffee they would drink. She could probably tell you which finger they use to pick their nose (though the image of either of her main characters picking their nose seems really wrong.)

Character Profiles

Another way you could develop them is filling out profiles for your characters. That’s what I was doing which prompted me to write about this. It forces you to think about things you normally wouldn’t, especially if it has minimum requirements. It’ll force you to think about your characters’ heights and weights if you’ve only ever thought of them as “blond, blue eyed, short”. Good profiles will also force you to think about his/her pros, cons, strengths, weaknesses, likes, dislikes, goals, worldviews, funfacts ect.

They can be extremely useful. This is probably not a method that you want to use entirely and call your development done, but it’s is something that can be very helpful if you don’t know where to start. You can find no end of them online.

Personality Tests

Personality tests are also a great way to try to develop your characters, especially if you have a few traits picked out you really like that you want to keep, but not a lot more to fill in the blanks. There are a ton of personality tests out there, you can pick any one of them. The first one that comes to mind for me is the Myers-Briggs Personality test, but that’s probably because Margaret practically swears by them. She’ll be writing a post on them one of these days.

If you haven’t picked any traits out, they can still be pretty useful if you want to go searching for personality profiles and picking one for your character. You’ll want to change them up and take a few traits from other personality types because no one really fits perfectly in one category, but you can certainly use them as a help to developing you characters.

Writing About Them

Perhaps this seems obvious, but maybe not. Sometimes simply the best way to develop your character is to write them. It doesn’t have to be in the actual novel that you’re writing though. You can write other stuff with them in it. Perhaps past situations with them, moments that influenced them or changed them into who they are in the books, maybe your characters interacting after the book (unless everyone dies…). Just get used to writing them. It’s amazing the things you come up with and think about while you’re actually sitting down writing them. And writing scenes like that can be a major asset while you’re writing the actual book.

Now, the trick that everyone I know who uses this method has yet to master is... actually working on their novel.

Okay so that’s not fair. Margaret did finish her novel. She’s just rewriting it… and as of now hasn’t rewritten it.

So it’s a tricky one.

Of course these are only four methods. I’m sure there a lot of other ways there are to try to develop you characters. I know I read an article once about making an Excel sheet and a chart listing all the major traits of all the main characters and comparing them to each other to make sure there was a good balance (not a cast full of all stubborn, easily angered people). There’s a ton of other options and methods and tricks you can use.

The most important part is that you actually take the time to develop and flesh your characters out, whatever method you use to do it.

How To Make a Non-Cliche Antagonist

So I’ve been meaning to write a post like this for a while. It’s companion post How To Make  Non-Cliche Protagonist can be found here was one of the few posts on this blog written by Margaret… and also our most popular post. Am I bitter? What? No…

The reason I’m writing this now is because I myself am working on revamping my own antagonist. I like certain aspects of him, but there are also a lot of things that I don’t like about him. So I’m writing this post not only to help all of you, but to also sort of work things out in my own head.

For the purposes of this post, we’re going to assume that the antagonist is always going to be a person. That’s not always the case. Antagonists is only a force that is working against the main character. It can easily be a circumstance or an event or even the protagonist themselves. Bad guys/villains are the typical antagonists though.

So, without further ado:

What is a Cliché Antagonist (And Why Do I Not Want One?)

Despite what everyone (or what we) may say about main characters and world or the plot… let’s face it the most important part of a book is the conflict of the book. Without conflict or something that the protagonist is supposed to overcome… there isn’t a book. No one wants to read a book about an average high school girl going to school, studying, and getting good grades. They want to read a book about a girl who goes to school and finds out that her best friend committed suicide and has to figure out why her best friend would do that and discovering that someone made her do and then fighting against that person.

As I said before, for the case of this post we’re going to assume that the conflict is/is coming from an actual person. And since this antagonist is the conflict… she/he is the most important part of the book. Without him there wouldn’t BE a book.

That being said, it is vitally important that that antagonists is worthy of being read. That means not cliché. I’m sure everyone’s read a book or watched a movie with a pretty lame villain. That would be just about any villain that wears a long black cloak with a pointy beard and evil eyes and a diabolical laugh. MUWHAHAHAHA.

Yeah no. It’s pretty safe to say that any antagonist that cackles/laughs diabolically is a no go. It will induce large amount of eye rolling.

What makes a Good Antagonist?

Just like everything else in the world, not everyone will like the same things. I could love the villain in one book and not take another seriously while someone else could hate the first one and love the second. There is no perfect recipe for a villain just like there isn’t for anything else in writing.

However, in all my 16 years of reading and story-telling movie watching there are some things that tend to make better villains that others.

In my experiences the best villains are the ones that people can empathize with, to be honest. They’re characters with as much depth as the main character. A deep antagonist is always a good sign for a novel. I’ve read books for no other reason than a rich antagonist.

They have reasons for doing what they’re doing. They have history. They have a goal. We can feel sorry for them. We can understand what they’re trying to do, we might even agree with some of the things that they preach.

When you have a deep antagonist, you have a deep struggle. It makes it more real to us when we’re reading.

Now you don’t have to purposefully make your antagonist someone that you would want to be besties with or anything. And you don’t have to make them someone you can empathize with. There are more than a few successful villains that you can’t really empathize with. Any psychopath or sociopathic villain would fall under that category, the Joker from Batman among them. Or at least I hope none of you can sympathize with a true psychopath.

Step 1: Motivation

I would say that this is probably the most important thing about making a non-cliché antagonist. A cliché antagonist is evil just to be evil. That is almost directly contrary to that whole depth to an antagonist thing we just talked about.

Now this non-cliché antagonist we’re talking about has a reason to be evil, or rather, a reason to be working against our protagonist. You have to be able to actually identify what this motivation is.

Perhaps the most common ones are power, revenge, and because they believe he's trying to do something good. There are a lot of subcategories to these of course.

Power: Wanting to rule the world definitely falls under the category of power. It could also be money. Maybe your villain is trying to take over the protagonist’s company. Of the three I mentioned, power would probably be the most cliché motivation for a villain, but it’s also an acceptable one if you can make it work. Because let’s face it, most people in the real world are motivated by power. A lot of bad things that have happened in the world’s history can be traced back to someone being greedy.

So it’s certainly a viable motivation. But you do have to be able to pull it off right. Taking over the world is usually not a very good motivation unless there’s a better reason behind it.

Revenge: Just like the desire for power, it’s a great motivator because it’s real motivation for awful things. If in the past someone killed the antagonist’s family and now she’s killing the families of everyone involved in their deaths. It’s also a motivation that a lot of people can empathize with. It’s also a great exploration for revenge versus justice and where the line is and such.

Trying to Do Something Good: This is probably one of my favorites. It’s a motivation that’s become a lot more popular recently, so you may want to be careful with it… but I love it. It’s one of my favorites.

It also probably has the most subcategories. You can have the typical type of situation where a boy steals medicine for his ailing mother, if the protagonist is a cop or something. The antagonist is trying to do something good, trying to help someone, but often he’s hurting other people and doing bad things to do it, which is why our protagonist is fighting them.

Or maybe she's doing something that she thinks will benefit others in the long run. That’s the one that’s been popping up a lot recently. The “you have to destroy the world to rebuild it” mindset. To save humanity you have to first destroy it.

Step 2: Background

This goes pretty much hand in hand with motivation. What gave him that motivation? Why does he want revenge? Was his family killed? Was a close friend’s family killed? Was there an attempt on his own life?

Why does she want power? Is she trying to prove something? Was she mistreated in the past and is trying to gain the power so that that will never happen again? Is she trying to get large amounts of money to help her sick mother?  Does she think she just deserve money/power?

Did he serve in a war and want to stop it from ever happening again? Has he been mistreated and wants to eliminate the chances of that happening? Maybe he's trying to purify the world of evil and happens to think that pretty much everyone is evil… There are a lot of way to go with this. The other type of trying to do something good is a lot easier to determine the background. If he's trying to save their mother the background is his mother is in danger.

More than just explaining the background behind your character and where her motivation is coming from, you should probably take the time to figure out more about the character themselves. If you haven’t already, determine how he grew up. Poor family, rich family, mother and father or only one? Raised by a distant family member? Brothers and sisters? Did she have a good relationship with his family? Did he go to school? Did he do well in his classes? Has she ever had a job? How many? What did she do? Does he have a history of unemployment?

If you know it about your protagonist, you should know it about your antagonist.

You don’t have to tell the readers everything you know about him, but just knowing the information gives you the ability to write him in a way that shows that he has depth. Even if you never actually tell the readers her birthday or the grade that she got on her 10^th grade Chemistry Final.

Step 3: Traits

All of this will make it a lot easier to determine what traits he’s going to have. Coming up with some of her traits will make it easier to figure out that information about her past. If he’s smart, he probably got good grades. Or maybe he’s so smart that he hated school and almost failed.

Just like determining your protagonist’s traits, it’s a good idea to look at yourself and the people you’re familiar with. Take some of their traits and take some of your own. Take some of the ones you like and some of the ones you don’t. Because this is an antagonist, it would be appropriate to give your antagonist more negative traits than positive, but you can give them just as many as your protagonists or maybe even less. That’s your playground.

I personally like it when antagonists have the same flaws that the protagonists do. It just creates even more conflict for the protagonist and allows for him/her to do some soul searching that’s great for character development.

I also, personally, really like it when villains are classy. Classy villains are the best.

Step 4: Appearance

There are a lot of things you can do with your antagonist’s appearance. They can look evil or they can look normal or they can be beautiful. My advice is that whatever you do with his appearance, it has some sort of relevance. Don’t make her beautiful just to make her beautiful (the same with terribly ugly). Give it a reason. Give it relevance.

Step 5: Obsess

Here I’m going to quote my dear sister when she gave the same advice with non-cliché protagonists.

“Guys, at this point, you've got the basics. The rest of it is you obsessing and thinking about the character on a fairly consistent basis. Characters will evolve on their own and become their own person - but it takes thought and writing and time.

Lots and lots and lots of time.”

Just keep thinking about. Have fun with it. Villains can be a lot of fun to create.

You're Procrastinating

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xi3aEGo8y-E

This. This is the story of MY LIFE.

And yet, literally as soon as I wrote that sentence I went and started procrastinating again.

I realized that today was Friday and I needed to write a blog post when I logged onto my computer. But then I thought, it is Friday and it’s raining and I’m in a good mood, so I’m going to read some stories that I have saved on my computer. Then I started reading more. Then I started watching Youtube videos. Then I ran across this one.

You’d think a video that literally accuses you of procrastinating while you’re watching it would make me stop, but no I kept watching more.

Talk about helpless.

Procrastination is a problem that I think almost everyone faces. There are very few people who are immune to it. There are some people who are better at not procrastinating than others. While I do procrastinate a lot, I also always seem to be able to know when I really do need to sit down and start working. The problem comes when a project is bigger/takes up more time than you were anticipating.

I feel like the problem when us, young writers in particular, is that we have so much access to it when we’re trying to work. I’m assuming that most of us do our writing on the computer on some sort of word processor. If you write on paper, good for you, J.K. Rowling wrote most of Harry Potter on paper before typing it up. You’re also incredibly lucky that you don’t have all of the distractions that are readily available when you write on the computer.

I in particular have a lot of reasons to write on the computer. A lot of the times I do so so that I can talk to Margaret about problems that I’m having as I’m writing or get her opinion on things. I also don’t buy a lot of music so a lot of the music I listen to I do so on Youtube.

And while I’m not saying that adults don’t procrastinate with them too, I find that our generation is particularly affected by distractions such as Facebook, Instagram, Snap Chat, tumblr, fanfiction, Youtube, Twitter, Pintrest etcetera, etcetera, etcetera. There is no end of website and aps that you can waste your time on. There’s a guy in my English class who spend almost 2 days straight mastering the Flappy Bird game (and his high score is over 215 last time I heard of. Ladies and gentlemen, it doesn’t get much more procrastinating than that.)

As I said before, I am no exception. I procrastinate a ton. So does Margaret. Just a few days ago we both sat down and determined that we were going to do something productive. This was us on Valentine’s Day when I was working on the Romance post and she was working on a short story.

[2/14/2014 3:48:57 PM] Margaret: How goes it?
[2/14/2014 3:49:07 PM] Amanda : ... uh... got distracted?
[2/14/2014 3:49:18 PM] Amanda : Bad Manda
[2/14/2014 3:49:26 PM] Amanda : How goes yours?
[2/14/2014 3:49:51 PM] Margaret: ...
[2/14/2014 3:49:54 PM] Margaret: um.
[2/14/2014 3:49:56 PM] Margaret: hmmmmm.
[2/14/2014 3:50:05 PM] Margaret: We really need to be able to shut the internet off with skype still on
[2/14/2014 3:50:08 PM] Amanda : Distracted as well?
[2/14/2014 3:50:19 PM] Amanda : Yyyeeaaaaaahhhhh

(I got distracted well over three times trying to find this tiny bit of conversation)

It’s tough not procrastinating. And I think we all KNOW that we shouldn’t procrastinate. We all know that everything would be a lot better if we don’t procrastinate. We’ll accomplish a lot more, the fun browsing and mindless activities will be more fun because we won’t have the stress looming in the back of our minds… but that never actually seems to stop us does it?

And then there are the things that you can’t really procrastinate on. It’s all fine and well to avoid doing your homework until 9:00 pm the day before it’s due, but for a lot of things you have to be ready all the time so that you can be prepared at any moment. You don’t want to get a response or a call or email or whatever from an agent/editor asking for a look at your manuscript… except it’s not ready for them to look at it. Burn and crash go your dreams.

Okay so that’s a tad dramatic.

But still.

Procrastinating is something we can’t really afford to do. Especially if we really do want to have two books before twenty *titledrop*. I have less than 4 years left. You never know how long it’ll take to get published. Perhaps this post is more an encouragement to myself than really talking to you guys.

And to finish this up I’m going to give you the one quote that always seems to be able to get me to actually do something.

It was said by the Terminator himself, Arnold Schwarzenegger in a commencement speech to some USC (University of Southern California) students. You can find the whole speech here: 

But here’s the quote: 

“But when you're out there partying, horsing around, someone out there at the same time is working hard.Someone is getting smarter and someone is winning.”

So, while you’re off procrastinating, someone else is working hard and getting an agent/editor.

If that’s not motivation I don’t know what is.

How To Write a Love Story

Happy Valentine’s Day! Or Singles Awareness Day, whichever you happen to celebrate. Or if you’re Margaret and don’t even acknowledge the existence of Valentine’s Day in your life, Happy Friday Post!

This is certainly one post that I can make. I write most of the posts on this blog, but even if Margaret wrote most of them she’d probably get me to write this one.

How To Write Loves Stories

Whenever Margaret comes up with a couple or tries to write a romantic/love scene it always ends up either violent or humorous. Most of her couples either dislike each other or are friends. Whereas I crank out a 2000 word fluffy romantic love story almost every week without fail.

Don’t get me wrong; my writing is far from all romantic fluff and cutesy couples oh no. In fact that isn’t any romance in my novel. Or at least I have no intentions of adding it. I don’t ship my two main characters, though I’m fully aware that a lot of people probably will. I also do write a fair amount of the angstier, darker couples.

That being said, I enjoy writing a nice heartwarming love story.

One of the nice things about love stories is that there are a million different ways to write them, but they all involve the same thing. It involves people falling in love. Now, what those people are is up to you. Whether they’re human, another species, heterosexual, homosexual, one person falling in love with another, a love triangle, love square, love octagon if you’re really daring, that’s up to you.

Once you’ve decided that there are going to be falling in love, you have to decide on obstacles. Whether the story you’re writing is entirely a love story or an adventure with some romance splashed in, there is some conflict. That’s part of what makes a story a story. In real like we like our love lives to be as uncomplicated as we can get it, but when reading or watching a love story we typically like it with as many obstacles as we can get.

Once again, these obstacles are up to you. If the love story is the side story, the obstacles can very easily be a part of the plot interfering with our characters’ love. The Prince has to fight the dragon to get the Princess. Or if the love story is the main plot, the Prince is traveling to save the Princess with the Princess’s sister and ends up falling in love with the sister along the way except he’s betrothed to the Princess in the tower.

Just like any piece of writing, get creative.

Probably the most important part of a love story is one of the most important parts of a normal story. Just like you want your readers to rout for your protagonist, you want the readers to want the couple together. Especially if it’s a love story. I really couldn’t have cared less if Bella ended up with Edward or Jacob when I read the book. In fact I think she would have been better off with a nice human boy, or better yet, single with a bunch of cats. So the point of reading the book was ruined for me.

The problem with trying to make your readers want them together is that there are a lot of different types of relationships in the world. There are as many types of relationships as there are types of people. A relationship that might work for a pair people won’t work for another. And because of unique perceptions on romance and what it means to be in love or the types of people we think should get together, we tend to support certain types of relationships and not others.

The method I usually use when I want people to like the couple I’m writing is make them really cute together. I really love couples that are cute together. Fictional or real. That doesn’t work for all couples, it might not for the couple you’re working with. I happen to have a talent for writing cute stuff. Maybe I’ve watched too many chick-flicks in my life. Maybe I’m just naturally an optimistic person so stuff like that is natural for me. But that’s one of my favorite methods.

There’s also the Bonded By Trauma approach. Some people are really, really attracted to couples that have been through a lot together.

Another popular one is Best Friends. Best friends get paired together all the time. Especially if it’s one of the characters who’s in love with his/her best friend while the other is oblivious or in love with someone else.

The Opposites Attract method usually works pretty well too. Perhaps not as well as some of the other ones, but there are a lot of people who hold stock to the idea that opposites attract and should be with each other. Especially if they can put their differences behind them because they love each other.

The couple that seems to hate each other while they’re really slowly falling in love sometimes falls under opposites attract, but not all opposites attract are hating each other while falling in love. Whether they fall in love because they get to know each other better or one of them does something for the other or whatever the case may be, people ship them like crazy. The best example I can give you of this is Elizabeth Bennet and Mr. Darcy from Pride and Prejudice. In case you were wondering, Jane and Mr. Bingley fall under the Cute Couple category.

And finally, one of the most popular, is the poor fellow with unrequited love. It doesn’t matter if this character is male or female, if he’s in love with someone who won’t give him the time of day or is in love with someone else, everyone will support that character. Sometimes, this unrequited love is for a best friend (see above). Best example: Eponine in Les Miserables.  The canon couple is Marius and Cossett. How many people do you know who actually like them together? Everyone loves Eponine and thinks she should have gotten the guy, especially considering she literally died for him.

And that leads me to the final big category of love: Love At First Sight.

It is a very popular method among fairy tales, myths, and Disney movies. Snow White, Cinderella, and Ariel being the most prominent. While love at first sight is a very romantic idea and I’m sure at heart a lot of us would like to believe in it, it’s very rarely going to make your audience really rout for your romantic couple. Even though most of us want to believe in it, very few of us do and we always take love at first sight couples with a grain of salt. That grain of salt can very easily kill your delicate rose of a love story if you don’t back it up with some actual bonding.

There are of course other big couple types, and there are other ways to make your readers like your couple. Those are just some of the big ones.

So, if you feel like testing your hand at some romantic writing for the day love romance and overpriced flowers and chocolates, I hope this helped and Happy Valentine’s Day!

The Difference Between Editing and Revising

Okay so maybe this post was inspired by the assignment I'm supposed to have due on Monday and maybe I'm using this post as an excuse to not do that assignment... but... I'm posting something. That's good right?

Note to self: make a post on procrastination.

I'll do that next week.

*base drums and a cymbal*

Anyways.

This is a concept that a lot of people in my AP English class can't really seem to grasp. There is a difference between revising and editing. A lot of the time people, myself included, tend to use the two words interchangeably. I've told you all plenty of times that I'm editing my novel, but I'm really revising it (though there is a fair share of plain editing).

Editing usually entails going through and fixing spelling mistakes and grammar and awkward sentence structures. A lot of time when people think about first and second drafts and the like, that's the first thing they think of. That's pretty much all I did to my essays in 8th grade. And that's fine for an 8th grader turning in an essay for English class. That's not all right for someone submitting a novel.

Your first draft sucks.

My first draft sucks.

Margaret's first draft sucked.

It's safe to assume that every book you've ever read's first draft sucked.

Like a Dyson vacuum.

According to Google's automatic definitions, to revise means to "reconsider and alter (something) in the light of further evidence".

Second drafts are for changes. Real changes. You're supposed to reconsider and alter. Not just the spelling or the sentence structure. It calls for rewriting a lot of stuff. Getting rid of entire characters, adding entire characters, rewriting the first three chapters eight times, considering whether or not you're going to keep chapter 4, 7, and 13.

Just so far in my second draft, I cut out about 8 chapters of background information, added a minor character, changed the outcome of a pretty big scene, I'm trying to figure out how to seriously alter a couple of the other minor character's roles, expanding the first two chapters into more like four or five, changing the end... that's revising. And that's not even the end. Who knows what stuff I'm going to change for the third or fourth revisions? And then after that, who knows what my editors going to ask me to/suggest/help me work on changing?

Don't even get my started on the revisions Margaret's doing. She's more on like her 30th revision, but the prologue's changed who knows how many times, she's added a bad guy, her second main character's role has changed COMPLETELY, the situation surrounding her character's involvement in the plot has changed, the end has changed completely... It's ridiculously different.

Now, does this mean your other drafts have to be unrecognizable from you first, well, no. It still the same story, you should be able to tell that one is the product of the other, but should it be significantly better?

A resounding yes.

And you can always make more edits! Your book isn’t set in stone until it’s published (and even then there are editions where you can mess with stuff).

Whether you need to pay extremely, extremely close attention to editing is another post. Usually most people will say you should definitely make sure that it’s decent. No one wants to read a manuscript that’s riddled with errors. It automatically makes them less inclined to like what you’re writing. But it doesn’t have to be absolutely perfect.

Your first priority is revising though. Just about anyone with a solid grasp of the English language (and spell check) can produce a literary work that is edited and correct. Only writers worth their salt can produce a literary work with balanced pace and strong characters and gripping actions ect.

Moral of the story: Revise, don’t edit.

Fun example:

"'Never again', said the blackbird." First draft.

"Quoth the raven, 'Nevermore,'" Final draft.