Falling in Love with Fiction

I'm always amazed at the kind of emotions a book can jerk from me - like Francine River's "Redeeming Love." I cry every time I read the ending to that book. And Gail Carson Levine's "Ella Enchanted." My heart breaks when Ella dances with Char and he doesn't recognize her (not a spoiler, I promise!). But anyways, books have the power to do that to us. Why?

Let's explore that idea just a little bit. What makes us fall in love with a book?

I think it's the characters.

The trick to having an amazing book, in my opinion, is creating characters that seem real. Who have real problems and real lives. Not to suggest we should all start writing non-fiction, but when you tell a story, you want the reader to believe that what is happening in the book, for at least a few hours, is real.

Let's all agree that if Lucy didn't get picked on by her brother Edmund, we wouldn't root for her in quite the same way in C.S. Lewis' "The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe." She is every bit the baby of the family and the four Pevensie children seem like a real family with a real family dynamic.

So what does this say about our own stories?

As storytellers, we want our readers to love our characters every bit as much as we do. In our minds, they are vivid people who interact with us, express opinions and make choices (and I know it sounds schizophrenic, and we just might be). And who wouldn't sympathize with that type of character?

Writing a book is the art of expressing what is already in the mind on paper. Somehow, we have to translate those people in our heads onto paper so the rest of the world can get to know them. This means giving them a real world to live in. One where they have childhood memories, favorite foods, allergies, mistakes, scars, and friends.

So think about your MC for a moment and ask yourself, what do they want in life? Then ask, why do they want it so badly? This could be tied to something they didn't receive as a child. Or maybe, they were recently robbed of something and they want it back - does that thing have sentimental value or monetary value? Is someone in danger? If so, why do they want to rescue them?

Now think about the scenes your character partakes in. Who do they meet? How to they get along with other characters? Are they stubborn and opinionated? Or meek and passive? Maybe your character is loud and boisterous. If so, how to others respond to them? Is their laughter contagious, or is everyone annoyed?

This is real life we're talking about here. Of course we, as humans, don't get along with everyone we meet. We have a favorite jacket that only gets washed once a month because it's worn daily. We want things: family, friends, a dream house... If that's normal to human life, then your character should share those qualities. If you can't answer these type of questions, they likely, no one will be able to find common ground with your character, and your story will wash out with no impact.

Let me finish my saying I wish you all the very best in your character development.

Comment with any questions you have.

Hugs!

Emily

Context & Hinting

Characters are funny things. In many ways they are completely open. In other ways, they are very closed off. Knowing when they are supposed to be one or the other to the reader, is a difficult lesson to learn. Primarily because everything depends on circumstance.

Most writers botch this art thoroughly in the form of thoughts: when the writer goes into detail about a character's thought process during a scene. It's the one time we really get into the character's head and see exactly what they are thinking. But often, what most writer's get wrong, is that few stories are told from the prospective of a character looking back on their life. Most characters are living in the moment.

One of my biggest pet peeves is "information dumps." Most characters understand themselves and should not feel the need to explain themselves to themselves. In Shakespearean dramas, such things are called an "aside." If you need to say something that helps the reader to make more sense of the character's life, then you have done something horribly wrong in previous scenes.

The ultimate tool for a writer is CONTEXT and HINTING. Nothing is ever stated bluntly in a novel because most characters are too engrossed in their dilemma to be thinking clearly. Aside from that, most of them don't constantly feel the need to reiterate their backstory as they go through life. This would be a little weird if someone in real life went about thinking such things like:

As Marty walked through the halls of Lincoln High School, he considered his upbringing at the family cabin by the lake. He had two sisters, Lizzy and Beth, twins actually. His dad was a pastor at the local church.

NO NO NO. It's not relevant to what the character is experiencing and it just sounds awkward. It's the author creating an information dump. It's especially easy to do when working on a series where the lives of the same characters are followed. When this happens, it's tempting to practically summarize what happened in the previous book at the beginning of the new book. Like I said... Most characters live in the moment and do not have their life story rolling through their mind 24/7.

Now... how do we fix this?

I told you before that Context and Hinting are powerful tools. Let's look at Marty once again. If we NEED to know that he grew up in a lake cabin, we can use things in his life to help the reader catch on to that bit of information instead of blatantly stating it.

To do this, we can start a new scene with Marty sitting at home and interacting with his family. His dad might ask how he likes his new school, to which Marty might answer that he misses being home schooled back at the lake house. Then, his sisters might pipe in. Marty might smile at the way they always speak at the same time, a twin trait, he guesses. The twins might say they don't miss the lake house at all and that they like their new teacher. 

Same information gets across, but it sounds less awkward and it's not an information dump. The reader still understands the same ideas about his past. It's all about CONTEXT and HINTING. Never just dump information into a story. Characters should think and process things the same way anyone in real life does.