John's Writing Tips.
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WRITING LIFE INTO YOUR CHARACTERS
At times we get so busy telling our story – A went to B, met C, D happened and so on and so on – that we forget the most important part of writing. Making the participants bounce of the page, become people in their own right. Characters.
So how do you go about it?
Well remember that the greatest saint ever in the world must have annoyed someone sometime, and some of the greatest scoundrels did acts of kindness. Which is a heavy way of saying that nobody is all good and all bad. Give your hero some irritating habits, your villain an endearing trait.
Remember that people just don’t do things. Their mind programmes them to give a knee-jerk reaction based on what happened before; a bit like Pavlov’s dogs and the electric shocks he gave them. In this case we’re not talking about the actions of the story (or the poor old dogs), but the character’s reason for doing what they do. You have got to understand their thinking, what little spurt of memory-anger or memory-love compels them along their course.
That is what we mean when we talk about getting into a character’s head. When we know and understand (and maybe even empathise with) the wants and loves and desires of the character, when we can predict their reaction to events outside the story itself, then we are in their head.
One way of testing this is to take the character along with you when you go to church or shopping or even for a stretch out in the bath. Think what it would mean to them, what their reaction would be. Would they enjoy it, would they hate it? You take time off for coffee with a friend. Would they be bored out of their minds? Would they join in the conversation or think that you and your friend talked the greatest rubbish?
Now you know how they feel. How would they react? And the reaction is the
story.
© John McAllister, 2005
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