Because you should get something out of my poetry school, here’s a link to a beautiful poem: http://www.poetryfoundation.org/poem/175780. Let me know what you think. Have you ever had a similar experience? Have you ever felt the way the speaker of the poem does?
I want to let you all know that an audio version of Writing Magic is now available, and I’m the reader. So, if you’ve never gotten to a signing and would like to hear my somewhat scratchy, old-lady voice, now you can. What a recommendation!
In August, Rebekah wrote, When I’m writing, I can’t seem to make my MC believable. My other characters all have memorable qualities, voices, and such (or I hope so, anyway), but I can’t seem to find my MC’s voice! Any suggestions on making her more memorable?
In response, Bug wrote, I may be misunderstanding a little, but when I had trouble with this, I switched the POV (not for the whole book) and wrote a scene from one of my minor character’s eyes. I then discovered what I had not realized about my main character-he was a lot more sarcastic then I had thought; he was funny, etc.
Bug’s suggestion is excellent. Anyone with this problem is likely to benefit from trying it. I’ve had this kind of trouble myself, and I’ll keep Bug’s idea in mind if it crops up again.
The root of this particular evil lies, I think, in reliability, and it crops up most often, I suspect, when we’re writing in first person. The reader sees our story through the eyes of our MC, so we want the lens to be clear. Sometimes, though, that clear lens washes out our MC’s distinguishing qualities. She’s showing everyone else to the reader, but how do we reveal her?
We may have to step back and consider her. She has a problem or a situation, or there would be no story. How does she approach solving it? At this point we may want to revisit our better defined secondary characters. How would each of them attack the problem? How is our MC’s method different?
If we don’t know, we can decide.
Let’s say our MC, Leona, is in a theatrical troupe that’s been sent to a neighboring kingdom to promote goodwill between the two, which have been at war intermittently for generations. In the production they’ll be performing, Leona plays the younger sister of the female star, and she’s also assistant stage manager. Her mother, the prime minister of the kingdom, has impressed on her that if this mission fails, war will result. Things are not going well. The star, who shares a room with Leona, keeps sneaking out at night. Will she cause an international scandal? The male lead hasn’t learned his lines. The director directs mostly by yelling.
The stage manager is disorganized. The first performance, which will be attended by the king, is three days off.
Oy! This is hard! I don’t know what I would do. But the situation suggests lots of questions we can ask ourselves about Leona:
• Is she direct with people?
• Or subtle?
• Is she a good judge of character?
• Or does she tend to trust the wrong people?
• Is she cautious or reckless?
• Does she worry about hurting people’s feelings?
• Does she give up easily?
• How talented an actor is she?
• Is she organized?
• Does she get along well with the other cast members?
• Can she cultivate allies?
• Does she annoy people?
• Is she shy or outgoing?
You can think of more questions. A benefit of asking them is that we see choices. We can also come up with flaws in Leona that distinguish her and make her task harder, and we’ve given her ways she can grow in the course of our story. Probably we’ll want her first attempts to go badly. If she trusts the wrong people, for example, she’s bound to make mistakes.
That’s the big picture. Now we want to know how she expresses the character that we’re beginning to develop, so that the reader will recognize her easily.
If she’s our POV character, we have direct access to her thoughts. She can seesaw between despair and hope. On the page she can think, This will never work. Then, Bad attitude, Leona. It will work! There. A few pages later she can get discouraged again and pep-talk herself out of it. Or she can pepper her thoughts with anxious questions, like, What am I doing? How can I say that? Will he hate me? Or she can recite a phrase to calm herself, like, The ground is solid, the sky is always there, and I am here. If she is a talented actor, she’ll probably be thinking about her art. If she’s not talented, if she has a role just to help her mother, she may be worrying about ruining the show. Or she may not be a worrier. Her thoughts may be exceedingly organized. Plan A attempted. Move on to Plan B.
Of course, we don’t want to overdo these thought tics. Occasionally is enough.
Feelings help the reader relate, so consider Leona’s inner life. She may be homesick or delighted to be on this mission, which she regards as an adventure. She may be confident or a worrier. She may cry easily, or she may hold her feelings in, and the reader discovers them through her thoughts and clenched jaw. She may be cheerful or depressed, or her feelings may swing from one to the other.
Distinguishing dialogue will also make her interesting. I’ve gone into this in Writing Magic and in dialogue posts. We all express ourselves uniquely, and Leona can, too. How does she speak? Slow? Fast? In bursts punctuated by silence? What kind of vocabulary does she use? What body language accompanies her speech? Again, dialogue tics, once we establish them, should be used sparingly.
And, of course, how does Leona look? Aside from her face and body, how does the inner person affect the outer? I bet you know people who look worse than they could, and vice versa, those who, through fashion sense or posture or flair, always look great. What does she wear? Does she know which colors are best on her, or does she not have a clue? How does she move? Is she graceful? Always rushing? Are her gestures big? Or do her arms stay tight at her sides?
Here are four prompts:
• Write a scene in which Leona and the entire troupe have an audience with the king the day they arrive. Have Leona do or say something that does not go well. Make sure you include her thoughts and feelings.
• Write the first rehearsal, with Leona juggling her time onstage with her stage managing. Be sure to include dialogue. Make things go badly in this scene, too.
• Using Bug’s suggestion, rewrite the first rehearsal from the POV of one of the other characters: the director, the leading man or lady, the stage manager. Show Leona through the eyes of the character you pick.
• If you like, write the whole tale.
Have fun, and save what you write!
E.S. Ivy says:
I've been lucky enough to hear you speak at the Texas Book Festival so I think the audio book of Writing Magic will be fantastic!
Thanks as always for the writing inspiration in this post.
gailcarsonlevine says:
Thank you!
Bug says:
Wonderful post, Mrs. Levine!!! I feel so honored to be mentioned in the post!
gailcarsonlevine says:
This question came into the website from McKennah:
How do you know when to stop writing stuff for a certain story? I mean you could keep writing a story forever, but how do you know when enough is enough?
I've added it to my list, but any thoughts for now from anyone?
E.S. Ivy says:
Hmmm… I get what she means because when I read a book, I always think about the story that goes on after it ends. 🙂
Maybe: Thinks in terms of an obstacle, task, or main milestone for the main character to achieve. Then your story is about how they go about getting there and the failed attempts. The story ends when the goal is obtained. I find that looking at early MG or chapter books are a great place to start picking out how a story arc.
Nikitah Luse says:
I always see my stories as movies in my head. When I'm writing, I try to have an end in mind- not the official ending, just a general one. A movie doesn't go on and on. It has a conclusive ending that hints at the possibility of a sequel, but doesn't make it so blatant that there will be one that the writer/producer is locked into a sequel. My advice? Think of your over-arching story: Maybe you have such a long idea that it "may never end", but find places where you could cut a logical ending while still leaving it open for future stories. Example: Your story idea might be about a group of questers whose destiny it is to save a kingdom. Unfortunately, that can go on forever and ever with all of the side quests and problems. So you find that in your head the story has three main moments- Them meeting, them learning to work together, and them fighting the bad guy at the end. That's three stories right there! Conclude the first after they have all managed to find one another and figure out what the problem to be overcome is, the second after they have bungled through many problems and are finally a team (maybe even one of their own is threatened- great cliff hanger!), and the third when the bad guy is defeated, the heroes are figuring out what to do to clean up the mess and what is next for them. And then you can keep going with another foe in your next story, but by this time your readers will know the characters and how they work together, so the hard part is done.
gailcarsonlevine says:
Great ideas!
Just a definition for anyone who's uncertain: MG is middle grade, which would include books and stories for kids roughly in the eight to twelve range.
Kenzi Anne says:
Great post!! I loved the questions about the characters, especially!
I also agree with ES Ivy's response to McKennah's question. I used to have the same problem, and I felt like my stories were becoming never-ending rants. I decided to choose my endings by finding a point in the story when I could wrap up all my loose ends, especially the main problem that my story revolved around. That way I could find my ending. If I wanted to write a second book, then I could also use this method to separate the first story from the second but leave enough strings "untied" to still have an ongoing plot.
I also have a question–about secondary characters. Usually I get pretty unique main characters that I feel satisfied with, but I feel like the secondary characters in every one of my stories fit the same mold–like I plop the same character into four different stories and just change the looks. "This is the funny one," or "this is the brooding one," or "this is the one that has trust issues and betrays everybody else." I guess I feel like all of my secondary characters are cliche. When I tried to make them more unique, they became too main. How do I make a secondary character interesting and unique, while still keeping them secondary?
Elisa says:
I had the same problem back a while ago. Now I no longer have problems with secondaries, because I learned that, to make good, interesting, non-clichéd secondaries, one need to use "CHARCTER QUIRKS!!!!" By now you all know that my motto is pretty much, "When in doubt, add lots of character Quirks." If they get too unique, make your MC even more unique. Of all my characters, my MCs are the hardest for me to write, because their so important, so, if they are being outshined by a quirky secondary, I make the MC even special-er. Like, I realized that my MC (Her name is Asha) was being outshined by her pet (Yes, her pet. That's REALLY BAD, by the way. if your character is being pushed out of the limelight by an animal even if it is, admittedly, one of the coolest animals on earth.) So I quirked the Asha. She has two toned eyes, really long yellow hair that she never lets anyone touch, and she is in some intensely weird (Yet extremely interesting) circumstances. Now she is no longer outshined. And I like even her better than I liked her before, though at first I was very tentative about changing her and hated it immensely. She's so COOL now that I kinda resent the person she was before. Hope I helped.
J. Garf says:
That's a great question Kenzi Anne.
I used to have that problem too, until I started thinking about people I really know. Think about your friends. What makes them different from everyone else? Maybe one of them is really tall. Maybe another only has a sense of humor when it comes to horses or hot air balloons. Maybe one enjoys math and is a total nerd. Some of your friends may be really similar to each other. For example, I have two friends that have been best friends for a long time, and when you first meet them, they seem exactly the same. They both are obsessed with Harry Potter and Dr. Who (well basically anything Great Britain), they like drama and musicals, they have tons of classes together, and they would fit into your "these are the funny ones" category. Once you get to know them though, you notice differences. The biggest one is that one is in band and the other is in orchestra, which is huge because these groups don't get along well at my school, so it's impressive that they're such good friends. So, at first, your secondary characters might seem cliched, but you can get to know them a little better as the story moves on.
Another option is to just introduce them originally as being kind of different. I have one character who was the standard, funny and supportive secondary character, and it didn't take me very long to realize that he was way cliched. So, I edited him and made him seem different from the very beginning. He is part of a group of men that has to be very strong, which he is, but I made him really short for a man. He now has one of those odd personalities that's so positive that you have a hard time believing that they're serious, which would be weird if he was the main but he's just a secondary, so it just makes him interesting. He's very friendly, immediately. He's still supporting, and is the funny one, but he's different enough to make him a unique character. Just make sure that you don't give too much detail, or too much uniqueness if you want to keep the character secondary.
gailcarsonlevine says:
Terrific ideas! I've added the question to my list.
Any more thoughts, anyone?
gailcarsonlevine says:
This came into the website:
I am writing a book for a short story competition, but with school and homework and babysitting and girl scouts starting soon, I can't get to my story very often. My document is on my computer, which is required to take to school, but my mother and I have both agreed that since I take care of little kids, it would be best to leave my computer at home. I can't write on paper, because I have horrible writing and even worse organization skills (at least when it isn't online), so if I don't lose it, I can't read what I wrote when I go to copy it over onto the computer. Do you have any suggestions on how to carve time out of my day to dedicate to writing? I know some people say that the more stuff you have going on, the more you will get around to writing, but that doesn't work for me. All the drama going on at school gives me great material for my stories, but I can't ever write it down because I can't fint time. Please help! :-[]
Alyssa
Thoughts, anyone?
Bibliophile says:
If you are like me, then you will hate one of these two options: Either wake up earlier (shudder) or stay up later. (YIPPEE!!)
Honestly though, you might want to dedicate a little notebook for notes on the school drama for easy recall. And if you can only snatch a handful of minutes here and there then that's okay. You might also want to dedicate some of the time you would normally use for other stuff like video games, to your story. Good luck though, tell us how it turns out!!!!