6 questions to transform a boring character in your novel or screenplay

On a podcast recently, scriptwriter Moira Buffini was asked this question. What do you do if a character is boring?

‘Cut them out,’ said Moira.

I don’t necessarily agree.

Sometimes cutting a character is the right decision. If the narrative is too crowded. Or your brain is. And all writers need to be bold about killing our darlings, whether they’re characters or plot turns or descriptions or anything else that drags the book down.

But what if a character can’t be axed? They might be vital, especially if your story is based on real life. Still, you find them boring, or beta readers tell you they are. What do you do?

Never ignore the yawn

If anything in the manuscript is boring you, it’ll bore the reader. So your boredom is, actually, a useful writer instinct.

Let’s look at this the other way around. As an editor, I can tell if a writer is interested in a character. Especially if they’re too interested and they give more love than the reader can endure – far too much dialogue, far too many scenes, far too much attention to their wondrous deeds. Although the reader might be rolling their eyes, the writer’s interest is undeniable. It gleams on the page.

In the same way, readers can feel when the author has little interest in a character.

Only connect

What’s missing is a sense of connection. With the writer’s favourite characters, there’s usually too much connection (and not enough critical detachment). With the boring character, there’s hardly any.

This is understandable. Some characters don’t come to us easily. We’re not as curious about them as we are about other characters. But to write them well, we have to be. And we could be.  

If you have a character who is boring you, and you need them in the story, have you given them enough of a chance?

A case study

I had this problem in Ever Rest. I had seven point-of-view characters, which is quite a handful, and I enjoyed some more than others. Of course I did. I’m human.

They weren’t boring me as such. The problem was more subtle. I thought I’d been even handed, but as I read their sections I realised something was missing. I wasn’t as engaged with them. They were an emptier experience to write.

What could I do to make them as rich, to me, as the others were?

I realised the problem. I was judging them, because they weren’t like the characters I was in tune with.

This wouldn’t do. After all, everyone is the hero of their own story. Especially in their own point of view.

I decided I’d better get out of their way. Listen without judgement. It seems to have worked, because readers tell me which character they felt most in tune with – and some are the guys I struggled to write with depth at first.

Here’s what I did.

How to listen without judgement – 6 big questions (and a lot of small ones)

1 What does the character do in downtime? I wrote extra scenes around the edges of the story. I wanted to know what it was like to live as them, to have their worries and agendas. If the only scenes you show are dictated by the main plot, you might be missing other snippets of their life where they’re more truly themselves, or where we see an interesting side to them. With one of my characters, I explored her relationship with her sister and uncovered a festering rivalry that cast a new light on her life choices.

You might find, to your surprise, that some of this exploratory work ends up in the book. If it helps you understand them, it might help the reader too.

2 What makes them feel life is good? What makes them feel capable? What restores them? Imagine them playing the drums well, or mending an antique watch or making sourdough bread. Is that their superpower, or something that other people might admire? What are their hopes for the future and why does that fulfil them? What makes them believe in it – or not? Do they think they’ve reached their full potential? Are they waiting for a big break – in love, in work, in their luck?

3 What’s the best thing that could happen to them? And the worst? Would they disagree about this? Do they know what’s good for them?

4 What makes them feel justified? If they’re mean or selfish, where does it come from? Could it come from a feeling of threat?

Threat is a really interesting ingredient. As an extreme example, people who’ve been through wars or lived on the streets might learn the world is not safe, and this can lead to difficult and antisocial behaviour – anything from a hot temper to vindictive acts and physical violence. At a less extreme level, a person might feel the need to protect themselves or another person, or their job, or their rights, or their home life. If the reason isn’t known, this behaviour might be resented or misunderstood by others. Including, sometimes, the author, who thinks they’re an ass.

5 Sure, some people are just mean and irredeemable. But could you explore below the surface? Again, why is it good to be them, even if they’re bad? Perhaps the behaviour has a payoff that puts something else right for them in a muddled human way, which could add richness.

6 Which people do they have around them? Who makes them feel good? Who makes them wary? Who makes them feel life is a battle? If they don’t have these, that’s a useful insight. They have no one who makes them feel good? That’s sad. They have no one who makes them feel threatened? That might be a blue touch paper waiting to be lit. Or a massive ego heading for a fall.

Give them a chance

So if you can’t cull the character, look for connection. And maybe give them a chance anyway. They might surprise you greatly and become your most interesting character of all.

There’s a lot more about writing in my Nail Your Novel books – find them here. If you’re curious about my own work, find novels here and my travel memoir here. And if you’re curious about what’s going on at my own writing desk, here’s my latest newsletter. You can subscribe to future updates here.

An exercise in character and story development – guest spot at Triskele Books

If you’re exploring characters for your story, this exercise might help. Triskele Books is holding a creative writing summer school and I’ve contributed this snippet to uncover  interesting tensions that make a scene sizzle. And once you’re there, you’ll find several other storybending assignments from seasoned fictioneers. Step this way.

‘Everything about the characters was held within these notes’ – The Undercover Soundtrack, Jason Hewitt

My guest this week says that when he gives talks, he often says that writing a novel is the literary equivalent to composing a symphony. He describes how his lead characters are like the principal instruments, plotting the crescendos on paper beforehand (not unlike to an idea I sketched out in my first Nail Your Novel book – drawing the characters’ parts on manuscript paper, like a score). One of his novels is set in 1940 and music pervades the whole narrative, especially as the principal characters are musicians. There is music for each character’s mental signature, music for particular moments, music that helped him retune if he felt his grasp on the story slipping. And watch out for a track with a simply sublime title: And In The Endless Pause There Came The Sound of Bees. He is playwright, actor and award-winning author Jason Hewitt and he’s on the Red Blog with his Undercover Soundtrack.

Nanowrimo prep: plan your characters, improvise your plot – guest post at Romance University

You might have spotted it’s uncharacteristically quiet here today. Wednesday has, from time immemorial, been Undercover Soundtrack day, and yet you find instead a deafening hush. Rest assured, the series will return next week and I have the post in my paws already. In the meantime, I have a guest post today at Romance University.

And is that an unseasonable word in the post title? Nanowrimo: isn’t that in November? Well, one of the keys to Nano success is preparation. To make sure you keep as much of the creative fun as possible, I’ve focused on designing your characters – and then letting them run riot to give you the plot. Do hop over.  (You can also get there by clicking the pic. Last time I ran a guest post, Jonathan Moore pointed out it was idiotic not to link the pic too. Jon, I have at least entered the point-and-click age. Your wish is my command.)

 

Self-editing masterclass snapshots: Characters are grief stricken – how do I stop that becoming monotonous?

I’m running a series of the smartest questions from my recent Guardian self-editing masterclass for novelists. Previous posts have discussed how much extra material we might write that never makes the final wordcount, and how to flesh out a draft that’s too short. Today I’m looking at an interesting problem of pacing:

Characters are grief stricken – how do I stop that becoming monotonous?

One student had a story in which the characters are coping with the death of a close family member. How, she said, could she keep the new developments coming, as the grief process would take many months?

We’d been talking about pacing the story, and how it was crucial to be aware of change. Each scene should present the reader with something new, to keep the sense that the narrative is moving on. That change could be big or small – a major twist or a slight advance in the reader’s understanding, a deepening of a mood or maybe a release. What’s important is this sense of progress – because it’s one of the chief ways we keep the reader curious.

So what do we do when the characters are in one intense emotional state such as grief, whose very nature will not let them move on?

The answer is to find ways to keep the reader surprised about it. And indeed, a life-changing shock is not a one-time blow. The loss is felt in infinite details we are unprepared for, and this is what makes it so vicious. Look at any grief memoir and you’ll see how every act of normal life becomes a new ordeal. The wound is being reopened over and over.

Seven stages

Indeed, grief counsellors generally describe a number of distinct phases – up to seven, depending on how you define them. They are:

• Shock and denial.
• Pain and guilt.
• Anger and bargaining.
• Depression, reflection, loneliness.
• The upward turn.
• Reconstruction and working through.
• Acceptance and hope. (More here.)

Forgive me an apparently insensitive comment, but this is a fantastic framework for storytellers. Nature tells us how to shape our plot.

If your story is about coming to terms with a great shock, find the day-to-day challenges that keep the experience painfully fresh. Then map the overall path and how your characters will move along it.

There’s more about pacing in Writing Plots With Drama, Depth & Heart – including a section on how characters can react plausibly to shock and bereavement. More posts here about insights from my Guardian masterclasses.

I’ll be continuing this series, but next week I’m breaking the pattern. I had rather a good question about back story that I know is quite urgent for the writer, so I’ll be tackling that.

And for now… Have you written about characters who are adjusting after a great shock? How did you keep the reader’s attention, even when the grieving state lasted for a long period? How did you figure out how to shape the material? Share in the comments!

Writing unforgettable characters – guest post at Vine Leaves Literary Journal

How do you create a fictional character who not only leaps off the page, but lives on in the reader’s mind after the story is finished? Today I’m puzzling these questions at Vine Leaves Literary Journal, with examples from Emily Bronte, Robert Goolrick, Patricia Highsmith and Nevil Shute. Do pull up a chair.

Naming your characters and settings

The three chambers of fluid, lacrimal caruncle, fornix conjunctiva, canal of Schlemm, choroid, ora serrata. Where are these places? Somewhere under the sea?

No, they’re right where you are, indeed where these words are travelling. They are parts of the human eye.

I sense an artistic sensibility in the world of ophthalmic nomenclature, as though its members are preserving a sense of wonder about what these organs do for us. Next door, the brain is another grotto. It has diencephalon, fissure of Rolando, aqueduct of Sylvius, cingulate gyrus. The founding fathers of neurology were blessed with linguistic grace.

In a novel, even if your setting is a known place and realistic, each name you choose creates expectations, hints at themes and the characters’ roles.

Rebecca

Daphne Du Maurier wrote in The Rebecca Diaries how Maxim de Winter was ‘Henry’ in the first draft. She changed it, feeling ‘Henry’ didn’t live up to the troubled, vain creation she had in mind.

Of course one of the striking things about the novel is that the first-person narrator doesn’t have any name of her own at all. Du Maurier’s diaries reveal that this wasn’t deliberate. In her early drafts she couldn’t think of a name and left a blank. One day she realised it was a rather interesting challenge to write her without a first name. But what a fine instinct. It leaves us to think that the second Mrs de Winter has no name because she has no identity, only the roles that others give her.

Weird Tales

Clark Ashton Smith, who wrote for pulp magazines like Weird Tales, used to make lists of names with one or two qualities that the name suggested to him. Then when he needed a character he might pick “Gideon Balcoth” or “Alfred Misseldine” and grow the character from that germ.

Age

How you feel about the characters determines how you develop them. In My Memories of a Future Life, the narrator is a musician. I named her Carol, thinking of Lewis Carroll and trips to wonderland, and because it is musical without being fey. But this was completely lost on one reader, who chided me for choosing a name that suggested the character was in her fifties. This surprised me. My Carol is in her thirties. I knew, of course, that some names suggested an age. A Gladys, an Ada, a Mabel or a Flo. There have been fashionable waves of Dianas and Freyas. But Carol? I thought she was timeless. (Carols reading this, any opinions?)

I haven’t had an complaints so far about the hypnotist character. I called him Gene Winter because heredity is important in the novel, and I wanted to give him a sense of elemental coldness.

Names from the world

I approached names differently in Lifeform Three. The title came before the story, and that one idea set the vocabulary of the world – Lifeform Three is what they call a horse. I explored why that might be, and realised the people had an overzealous desire for cataloguing, an algorithm mentality because of their love of software and apps. So I gave them a vocabulary derived from computers and from the relentless positivity of brainwashing corporate-speak. When things are damaged, they are ‘undone’, and putting them right is ‘redoing’. The characters are named after their functions. Tickets is the doorman on the main gate. The others are PAF and a number – Park Asset Field Redo Bod. I got that idea from a motorway service station where every item was labelled Service Station Asset No. Hand driers, bins, doors, all homogenised under one label. Let us expunge the separate nouns and look ahead to a future of Newspeak.

And then there was the horse, the lifeform himself. In the book, he was named at random by a product sponsorship. A giant brute of seventeen hands, he was called, absurdly, Pea.

Places

Places are important too. My Memories of a Future Life takes place in a town called Vellonoweth. I spotted it as a surname in a magazine I was working on, and thought it carried a sense of wild weather and the elements running out of control. I liked the strong emphasis of the ‘no’ syllable, like a prohibition. Whatever you want to do, you can’t do it here. The town down the road is Nowethland, a sleepier suburb derived from Vellonoweth but less tempestuous.

Lifeform Three needed just one named place – The Lost Lands of Harkaway Hall. Fans of Siegfried Sassoon will recognise it as one of the horses in Memoirs of a Foxhunting Man, a world that becomes significant for the Tickets and Paftoo (aka PAF2).

Outgrowing their names

I’m working differently again with the names in Ever Rest. Some characters started with names they owned and inhabited right from the start. Others outgrew my expectations and have been rechristened. Others still do not have names at all yet. They are labels – [Millionaire] and [Manager]. I’ll sort them out later.

All the same

Sometimes our off-the-cuff instincts are surprisingly predictable. I’ve especially noticed this in manuscripts from other writers. They seem to have their favourite defaults. If they have a Jack, they’ll also have a Jake or a Jacqui.

This seems to happen most with minor characters, perhaps because we pluck the names from mid air as we go along.

My Memories of a Future Life had a Jerry who became very significant but was named on a whim when I thought ‘what shall I call Carol’s friend?’ Then I invented a former beau, and decided the perfect name for him was Jez. Only much later did I realise I had a confusing Jerry/Jez situation. Jerry was by then so quintessentially Jerry that he couldn’t be anything else, so reluctantly Jez became Karli. Then, darn it, I realised Carol’s other ex was Charlie. However, that looked different enough on the page, though it would have been troublesome in a radio play. (And don’t ask about the troubles I had with my audiobooks, when Gene became confused with the neighbour Jean. Lots more about making my audiobooks here.)

Names are never casual

We all grow up taking names for granted; our own names and the names of places around us. They are arbitrary and we get used to them. They are what they are. But names in novels must be given carefully. We are like those doctors, who aim to preserve mystery, wonder and respect when they name the territories of the eye and brain.
What’s in a name? Everything.

How do you name your characters and settings?

How to write dialogue that’s convincing and full of life

I’ve had this interesting email: ‘A literary agent told me my dialogue sounded lifeless and unconvincing and that my characters talked only about plot information. What might be missing? What could I do to improve?’

What’s good dialogue?

First of all, although dialogue is one of the ways we can unfold the story, it’s more than an exposition vehicle. Note that word ‘lifeless’ in the agent’s assessment: good dialogue brings a quality of real experience. It lets the reader eavesdrop on people who are experiencing the story first hand. Even in a first-person narrative, we need dialogue from other characters or the world may seem less vivid.

(Of course, you might do this deliberately, perhaps to create a highly coloured or unreliable view of the world. But usually even a first-person narrative will let the other characters speak for themselves.)

However, characters obviously must talk about what’s happening – who is going where, what so-and-so had done to someone else, what everyone should try next. So how should writers handle it? What might my correspondent’s manuscript be missing?

Again, look at the word lifeless. And consider another word that goes with it: emotion.

It’s all about emotion

I would bet the missing ingredient was emotion. And emotion comes from the writer connecting with the characters. If I talk about something I’m worried about, it colours my vocabulary, my body language, the questions I ask. So the first thing I’d recommend is:

Be aware of how each character feels about the situation. Aim to convey that, not the information.

Second, consider the characters’ personalities. Expressive, confident types might tell everybody what they’re feeling. What goes on in their heads comes straight out of their mouths. More private people might find it hard to articulate their worries to another person.

Check your characters’ personalities How does this particular person show they’re worried? And – a bigger question – how thoroughly have you developed your story people?

Also consider:
Relationships – how do they feel about the person they are talking to? Irritated, calmed, excited, flirtatious, threatened, grudging, hesitant?

And don’t forget:
Individual agendas – what personal concerns do the characters have in the scene? Are they hiding anything? Are they competing with the other characters in any way, and do they want to show this? Are they fishing for information?

If you’re finding this tricky
Write dialogue and narrative on separate days
Relax. To write convincing dialogue you need to make a mental gear change. You stop being the storyteller who knows everything. You inject yourself into the souls of the people who are caught up in the events. Many writers find it’s easier to concentrate either on narrative or dialogue in a session. And sometimes, if a character is quite different from you, you might need to concentrate a session on just their lines.

Riff, then edit
It’s hard to get the great lines instantly. Allow yourself to write a riffing draft where the characters natter. Let them go off piste if they want – natural conversation does that. Tune into their voices, their fears, their hidden agendas. Once you’re warmed up, they’re sure to surprise you too, so have fun with it. Then come back on a different day and pan for gold. Look for sections that enshrine the important differences between the characters’ attitudes, and their similarities too. Look for remarks that seem to underline a theme. Cut all of this together to make a dialogue scene full of emotion – and plot significance.

There’s a lot more advice on dialogue in Writing Characters Who’ll Keep Readers Captivated: Nail Your Novel, as well as questionnaires to help you develop your fictional people.

Let’s discuss! What would you add? Have you had to add life to your characters’ dialogue? How did you do it?

Help – my characters are all too similar! 5 tips to make them distinct

I’ve been asked this question twice recently – in a conversation on G+, and by a student at my Guardian masterclass the other week. In both cases, the writers had encouraging feedback from agents, but one crucial criticism: the characters all seemed too similar.

And probably this wasn’t surprising because of their story scenarios. Both writers had a set of characters who belonged to a group. A bunch of flatmates, or a squad of marines, or a group of musical coal miners forming a choir. To outsiders, they probably looked identikit – they’d talk the same, use the same cultural references and have similar aims.

So how can you flesh them out as individuals?

1 Look for incompatibility

The first step is to assemble your cast carefully. In real life, if you were choosing a team, you’d go for compatibility and congruent aims. For a story, you need to plant some fundamental mismatches that may threaten the group’s harmony.

So, they might seem similar on the surface, but deep down it’s another matter.

Choose as your principals the people who will be most challenged by each other’s personalities and attitudes. They might be in one choir, but they don’t have to sing from the same hymn sheet.

2 Include this in the story

Make sure these differences are exposed by the plot events.

A couple, who might be well matched in other ways, might disagree fundamentally about whether to send their children to boarding school, or whether to take out a loan. Make that a story issue and explore the fall-out. You could give one of your characters a secret that will clash with the group’s overall interests – a drug habit, perhaps, or a forbidden lover.

Or if your characters are embarked on a bigger task, such as solving a crime, make the attitude differences into unsettling background music. William Boyd’s Brazzaville Beach is worth looking at for its distinct bunch of scientists who are living together in a jungle research station (fresh in my mind because I just wrote a Goodreads review).

3 Humour, stress and swearing

Aside from the plot conflicts, your characters will express themselves individually in other ways. Think of their temperaments, and how they handle stress. One of them may go to a boxing gym. Another might stitch a quilt, which may seem intolerably mimsy to the pugilist. They’ll have different ways to express humour, or curse. There’s more here about polishing dialogue so that characters sound individual.

4 Keep track of their different outlooks

With my own WIP, Ever Rest, I’ve got four principal players. It’s tricky to hop between so many consciousnesses, so I’ve made aides-memoirs. I have a list of how they differ on important issues such as romantic relationships, ambition etc. Just writing this list produced some interesting insights and clarifications. As always, so much can unlock if you ask the right question.

Actors sometimes talk about how they don’t know a character until they’ve chosen their footwear. In a similar way, you could walk in your characters’ shoes by choosing a simple characteristic. Perhaps one of them wears glasses. One of them walks with a slight limp. One of them always worries about losing things. A small detail like this might help you remember how their experience is distinct.

Another fun tool is to collect pictures of strangers. You know how we’re told not to judge by appearances? Tosh. We can’t help it. And this instinctive trait becomes very useful when we create people out of thin air. Look through photos of strangers and you probably make instant – and of course erroneous – assumptions of what you’d like and dislike about them. It’s okay, no one will know. You don’t have to tell your mother. Here’s a post I wrote about this in detail.

5 Have dedicated revision days for particular characters

You don’t have to get everything right in one go. And we don’t have to revise a book in one go, or in chapter order, either. We might need a particular mindset to write one of our characters, so it might help to work on all their scenes in one batch.

There are tips on creating characters in Writing Characters To Keep Readers Captivated and on using characters’ personalities to create your plot in Writing Plots With Drama, Depth and Heart.

You also might like this episode of So You Want To Be A Writer, where bookseller Peter Snell and I discuss whether fictional characters have to be likable. Click this thingy for more (plus an audacious cover of a Prince track… no, not by us)

And meanwhile, let’s discuss – have you had feedback that your characters aren’t distinct enough? What did you do about it? Do you have any favourite examples of writers who do this particularly well?

‘Demons, frustrations and betrayal’ – The Undercover Soundtrack, Scott D Southard

My guest this week is making a return appearance to the series. Last time he wrote about how he’d driven his wife bonkers by playing certain albums that evoked the souls of his characters. This good spouse will surely be donning the earplugs again as his musical choice for his current novel is a striking album by Fiona Apple, which consists of drums, close-up vocals and percussive piano. He describes the pieces as having the feel of a therapy session, all raw emotion and obsession – and perfect for his characters who are all connected by an act of betrayal. He is Scott D Southard and he’s on the Red Blog with his Undercover Soundtrack.

And there’ll be a slight hiatus in my posting schedule this weekend as I’m teaching at WriteCon in Zurich. (This is tremendously exciting as it’s the first time anyone’s flown me anywhere to teach!) So I’m tied up preparing for that at the moment, but I’m anticipating some interesting issues to share afterwards.