On Characters: A Series: 1

In Today’s Journal

* Quote of the Day
* On Characters: A Series
* Important Notes
* Background
* Introduction
* The Kinds of Characters
* Cardboard Characters
* Of Interest
* The Numbers

Quote of the Day

“Character is king. There are probably fewer than six books every century remembered specifically for their plots. People remember characters.” Lee Childs

On Characters: A Series

Important Notes

1. My booklet Creating Realistic Characters (2011) is an abomination. I’m no longer even giving it away. To those of you who already asked for and received that booklet, my apologies. I recommend you toss it out. Read this series of posts instead.

2. The knowledge in this series of posts (see ‘Kinds of Characters’) is from me as a critic, not as a writer. These are not considerations I ‘think about’ (conscious mind) as I’m writing, and neither should you.

I present them here only as knowledge to be absorbed by your conscious mind.

From there, especially if you study them in actual fictions, they will seep into your creative subconscious and inform your characters concerning the various roles available to them.

To “see” the character types at work in real life, I recommend you purchase a copy of Blackwell Ops 36: Temple’s Dream. The examples of character types I use in this series come from that novel.

If you are a paid subscriber, I will send you a copy free if you want it. Just email me at harveystanbrough@gmail.com. Don’t limit yourself to genre. A good story is a good story, and BO-36 is much more than a crime thriller action-adventure.

3: Despite what you believe of a character when s/he first appears, most often you won’t know whether a character is cardboard, tertiary, or even secondary until you’re well into writing the novel.

Also, if you’re writing a series or subseries, a character will often reappear and ‘move up a notch’ in the character hierarchy.

Background

If you write fiction, you want to read this series of posts.

In part, this series is derived from and based on an email I sent to my friend and first reader Russ regarding an extremely helpful comment he made in the email that accompanied his markup of Blackwell Ops 36.

I have changed parts of my response and elaborated considerably to turn this into a valuable TNDJ post. The original post ran far too long, so I separated it into a three-part series.

Because the specific real-life examples I use from characters in Blackwell Ops 36 are interwoven through the series, I recommend you copy/paste and save all of the posts in this series as a single document so you can refer back to it later.

I have tried hard not to include any spoilers regarding Blackwell Ops 36 in the examples I’ve included in this series, though to write this post I had to include some broad hints.

Introduction

In his email, Russ expressed some disappointment concerning Camille, one of the characters in the story.

I was disappointed in her too, but like all real people Cammy had frailties. As a result of Russ’ comment, I cycled over Chapter 15 again and allowed her to add a bit more to a letter she wrote to more deeply convey those frailties.

I’m constantly amazed that I know my characters so much more intimately than I know most ‘real’ human beings. I surmise that’s because my characters reveal their personalities to me more readily than most humans do.

For me, dealing with characters is like dealing with ‘real’ people.

And I assume like everyone else, I ‘want’ other people (including my characters) to be who I want them to be and to do what I want them to do and behave as I’d like them to behave, BUT—

I also expect them to be who they actually are. I think I’m safe in saying my expectations almost always (if not always) lead to disappointment or, at the best, are skewed.

Again, that’s true whether I’m dealing with ‘real’ people or my characters, who certainly are real to me.

As a writer, I was very pleased to note that Russ also apparently regards the characters as ‘real,’ given his reaction to what happened in my latest novel and earlier in BO-33: Temple’s Way.

The Kinds of Characters

In writer lingo, there are main (POV) characters, secondary characters, tertiary characters, and ‘cardboard’ characters.

Here I almost wrote ‘In reverse order of importance,’ but I’m glad I didn’t. While any characters are on-stage they are equally important.

If a character isn’t important in one way or another, s/he won’t be in the story at all. So if a characters pops into your story, trust that s/he will be important sooner or later to one degree or another.

Cardboard (AKA “Flat”) Characters

These are characters you describe at least minimally, but they are never well-rounded. (But see Note 2 above.)

Cardboard characters play a lesser, minor role, then disappear, at least for the time being. These are the waiters or waitresses or airport gate attendants or cab drivers or whatever else.

Back tomorrow with Tertiary, Secondary, and POV characters.

Talk with you again then.

Of Interest

25 Plot Twist Ideas and Prompts for Writers No, I do not recommend plotting. But I do recommend you read this (conscious mind) to allow your creative subconscious to become aware of it.

The Numbers

The Journal…………………………… 880

Writing of Blackwell Ops 37: Temple-Schiff

Day 1…… 2012 words. To date…… 2012
Day 2…… 2487 words. To date…… 4499

Fiction for February………………….. 9979
Fiction for 2025………………………. 131344 (corrected)
Nonfiction for February………………. 4470
Nonfiction for 2025…………………… 36450
2025 consumable words…………….. 161274

Average Fiction WPD (February)…….. 2495

2025 Novels to Date…………………….. 3
2025 Novellas to Date…………………… 0
2025 Short Stories to Date……………… 3
Novels (since Oct 19, 2014)…………….. 107
Novellas (since Nov 1, 2015)…………… 10
Short stories (since Apr 15, 2014)……… 274
Short story collections……………………. 29

Disclaimer: Whatever you believe, unreasoning fear and the myths that outlining, revising, and rewriting will make your work better are lies. They will always slow your progress as a writer or stop you cold. I will never teach the myths on this blog.

Writing fiction should never be something that stresses you out. It should be fun. On this blog I teach Writing Into the Dark and adherence to Heinlein’s Rules. Because of WITD and because I endeavor to follow those Rules I am a prolific professional fiction writer. You can be too.