Characters, and Differentiating Them

by

In today’s Journal

* Quotes of the Day
* One More Quick Note on Slowing Down
* Characters, and Differentiating Them
* A New Story
* Of Interest
* The Numbers

Quotes of the Day

“The way I see it, if you want the rainbow, you gotta put up with the rain.” Dolly Parton

“Pacing is a complex issue with a lot of levels. I will stop reading at paragraphs that have five different thoughts in them and are huge just because the author can’t hit the return key.” Dean Wesley Smith (see Of Interest)

One More Quick Note on Slowing Down

In a comment on yesterday’s post, one writer mentioned slowing down “for the right reasons.”

Remember that the reason is always to convey the characters’ full story. The POV character will not notice something that is not germane or even essential to the story (or possibly to a sequel).

The other side of that is to be sure when you slow down you don’t allow your critical mind to intervene. Anything you “think” should be added — anything that comes from the writer (your conscious mind) — is superfluous to the story.

Characters, and Differentiating Them

Of course, if you trust yourself and your creative subconscious, you also trust the characters and the story they convey to and through you.

Just like characters you meet in “real” life, the characters who appear with their stories from your creative subconscious will create and then reveal themselves and their personality bit by bit.

So there is nothing for you to do in that regard. You do not have to “create” (or more accurately, “construct”) them. So you do not need (or want) character sketches or questionaires or interviews or anything of the like.

The characters and the opening dialogue or word or phrase or situation that begins their story are born of whole cloth. Then the rest of the story unfolds naturally, again as yours and mine and all others do in “real” life.

Also you do not have to differentiate the characters.

By that I mean you do not have to construct or fabricate differences in their speech patterns or mannerisms or physical expressions or facial tics or any other physical attributes or movements of their body parts.

Again, as characters do in “real” life, they differentiate themselves. Each character will present differently, even among twins or triplets.

From birth, you have filled your mind and your creative subconscious with characters, their physical and emotional traits and quirks and idiosyncracies, their shared and unique physical features.

By shared physical features, I mean the arms, legs, torso, neck, head and face that are a common general feature among most people. You may well know or have seen someone who was born without one or more of these general features, but again, most are born with them.

By unique physical features, I mean the particular shape of the nose (which can also be a marker of the character’s heritage) or the lips or the tone of the skin. Facial tics, physical habits in movement, gestures and so on also are physical features that are unique to individual characters.

All of those things will come naturally and directly to you as a result of simply trusting the characters as they convey their story to you. You never need to build or construct or fabricate any of that with your conscious, critical mind.

As I wrote above, you have been filling your mind with those attributes since you were an infant. As you grew and continued in the world and encountered more people, you filled you mind with more and more of them.

The only reason ever to take a class on “creating” characters is to smooth your learning curve, to add more of those traits and attributes more quickly to your arsenal. But even then, you should not think consciously of those things as you write. Simply record how the characters present and write what they give you to write.

The best class I can recommend is my audio course, which is a close representation of the live seminar I used to do on this topic. It is titled “Course 2 — Creating Realistic Characters.” It includes 3 audio sessions plus two printable PDF handouts: Cliché Traits and Unique Character Traits.

The course is regularly priced at $65, but for the rest of January, I will reduce the price to $35 for anyone who emails me to request it.

If you want the course, click Donate Here. You may pay with PayPal or with a credit or debit card.

If you are a donor the course is yours free. Just email me to let me know you want it.

Again, and as I note in the description of the course, “I recommend this lecture only to learn about character traits and quirks and to put them in your mind. I do NOT recommend writing character sketches and other such silly techniques.”

A New Story

“The Man of Mud,” the fifth story in an interconnected series of ten magic realism stories, went live yesterday on my Stanbrough Writes Substack. If you enjoy magic realism or Mexico, you probably don’t want to miss this series of stories.

To subscribe, click the link above and then the Subscribe button at the end of the story. You’ll receive a new short story every Friday, and it’s free.

Below the Subscribe button, there are other short stories you can read in most genres. Enjoy!

Oh, and the novel wrapped yesterday.

Of Interest

Editing Observations THIS. Read this.

A Brief History of the United States’ Accents and Dialects

Episode 879: Tom Schreck

She Talked Like a Millionaire, Slept in a Parking Garage and Fooled Nearly Everybody Character. Interesting character.

The Numbers

The Journal……………………………… 950

Writing of Blackwell Ops 18: Soleada Garcia: Settled

Day 1…… 4078 words. To date…… 4078
Day 2…… 4194 words. To date…… 8272
Day 3…… 4277 words. To date…… 12549
Day 4…… 4916 words. To date…… 17465
Day 5…… 4613 words. To date…… 22078
Day 6…… 3017 words. To date…… 25063
Day 7…… 6560 words. To date…… 31623
Day 8…… 3213 words. To date…… 34836
Day 9…… 4227 words. To date…… 39063
Day 10…. 4345 words. To date…… 43408 (done)

Fiction for January……………………. 72746
Fiction for 2024…………………………. 72746
Fiction since October 1…………… 375791
Nonfiction for January……………… 19190
Nonfiction for 2024…………………… 19190
2024 consumable words…………… 91936

2024 Novels to Date……………………… 2
2024 Novellas to Date…………………… 0
2024 Short Stories to Date……………… 0
Novels (since Oct 19, 2014)…………… 84
Novellas (since Nov 1, 2015)…………… 9
Short stories (since Apr 15, 2014)…… 238
Short story collections…………………… 31

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Disclaimer: I am a prolific professional fiction writer. On this blog I teach Writing Into the Dark and adherence to Heinlein’s Rules. Unreasoning fear and the myths of writing will slow your progress as a writer or stop you cold. I will never teach the myths on this blog.