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!