How to Write a Character Sketch: Learning More About Your Characters’ Motivations and Personalities Regardless of the type of writing you are doing, knowing who your characters are and knowing them well will add greatly to your work. Understanding your characters’ personalities through a character sketch helps you to understand where they are coming from and what motivates them. This, in turn, helps you understand what drives all of the action in your work, and the clearer this is, the easier your audiences will be able to connect with your writing. But how do you go about writing a character sketch? Interview Your Characters Perhaps the most straightforward way of getting to know who your characters are and what drives them is by asking them outright in an interview. It may seem like a very obvious or banal exercise, but even minor details will help you understand who your character is. Write a Character Monologue Another fantastic and highly effective way of getting to know your character is by writing a monologue as your character. Write a Day-in-the-Life Character Sketch
Questionnaires for Writing Character Profiles - Creative Writing Help Enter your e-mail to get the e-book for FREE. We'll also keep you informed about interesting website news. "I have searched the web and used different worksheets, but none have come close to your worksheets and descriptions of (what to do and what not to do). Both courses I have taken have with Creative Writing Now have been amazing. Each time I have learned something new. "As usual - I already love the course on Irresistible Fiction, rewriting a lot and improving greatly even after the first lesson. “Essentials of Fiction proved that I could indeed write and I wrote every day, much to my boyfriend's dismay (waa sniff).” - Jill Gardner "I am loving the course and the peer interaction on the blog is fantastic!!!" "I'm enjoying the weekly email course, Essentials of Poetry Writing. "Thank you for all the material in this course. "I was pleasantly surprised at the quality of the lessons and feel they were very helpful in introducing new ideas and perspectives to my writing.
Seven Keys to Writing Good Dialogue | Nathan Bransford - Blog It goes without saying (but watch me say it) that dialogue is one of the very most crucial elements in a novel. Great dialogue can make a novel sing. Bad dialogue can sink it like a stone. Here are a few ideas on what makes good dialogue work: 1. Good dialogue is not weighed down by exposition When the dialogue is carrying exposition and trying to tell the reader too much, characters end up saying a lot of very unnatural and unwieldy things. "Remember that time we stole the frog from Miss Jenkins and she ended up giving us two hours of detention and that's how we met?" So much of this dialogue would already be already apparent to the characters. Exposition and dialogue only really mesh when one character genuinely doesn't know what the other character is telling them and it's natural for them to explain at the moment they're explaining it. 2. Sometimes you'll see characters in novels bantering back and forth in a way that is meant to reveal character or fill space. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7.
3 Types of Character Arcs: Choose the Best for Your Novel How Does Your Character Change? You know your character must change somehow over the course of your novel. But how? And more than that, how do you sync the changes with the external plot? I’ve found three approaches to the inner arc, each trying to laying out how the character changes. Hero’s Journey: Quest for Inner Change In the Hero’s Journey, laid out so well in Christopher Vogler’s book, The Writer’s Journey, a character receives a Call to Adventure that takes him/her out of the normal and ordinary world into a world where they must quest for something. Melanie as an Example So, we’ve got Melanie who wants more than anything else to get her mother’s approval, but can’t because her mom’s a chef and Melanie can’t cook worth a flip. In the Hero’s Journey, Melanie might get a Call to Adventure: a challenge to create the world’s largest hot fudge sundae. Iron Sharpens Iron – Friendships As iron sharpens iron, so one man sharpens another. Back to Melanie: Flawed Way of Coping Key moments:
25 Things You Should Know About Character Previous iterations of the “25 Things” series: 25 Things Every Writer Should Know 25 Things You Should Know About Storytelling And now… Here you’ll find the many things I believe — at this moment! 1. Without character, you have nothing. 2. A great character can be the line between narrative life and story death. 3. Don’t believe that all those other aspects are separate from the character. 4. The audience will do anything to spend time with a great character. 5. It is critical to know what a character wants from the start. 6. It doesn’t matter if we “like” your character, or in the parlance of junior high whether we even “like-like” your character. 7. It is critical to smack the audience in the crotchal region with an undeniable reason to give a fuck. 8. You must prove this thesis: “This character is worth the audience’s time.” 9. Don’t let the character be a dingleberry stuck to the ass of a toad as he floats downriver on a bumpy log. 10. 11. 12. 13. The law of threes. 15. 16. 17. 18.
Spice Up Your Writing With Dialogue by Judy Cullins Does your chapter sound like a report? Does it go on and on with past tense sentences that tell, rather than show? To spice up your self help, non-fiction or fiction book and even promotional writing, you need to use much more dialogue. Why? If your aim your book at agents and publishers, the first action acquisition editors make is to find a section of dialogue. It is difficult to put just the right words into dialogue--to convey character and emotion. Tips: 1. "You can't be serious, she said in astonishment." So, show how astonished through dialogue or beat. 2. Stop using -ly verbs such as "I'm afraid it's not going well," he said grimly." Examples: Percy burst into the zoo keeper's office. "Is something wrong, sir?" "Don't you realize you're killing those poor innocent creatures, you heartless fascist? 3. You have heard about show, don't tell and all -ly forms tell. Condescending example: "I'm afraid it's not going very well, "he said grimly. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8.
How to Create Good Personalities for Your Characters Edit Article Sample Character DescriptionsCreating Personalities for Your Own Characters Edited by Secretive, Julia Maureen, Flickety, Ben Rubenstein and 19 others You're on a plane to a distant country to visit some weird old relatives you are somehow related to. Ad Steps Sample Character Descriptions Creating Personalities for Your Own Characters 1Start with a simple profile including these categories: Name, Age, Gender, and Occupation. 6Continue developing characters until your story is finished. Tips Keep the characters true to themselves. Warnings Don't copy off other characters in different, already well known books, such as Harry Potter.
Characters with Character: Random Personality Generator If you're enjoying the content here, check out our new site, Thoughtcrime Games. Thanks for visiting! If you're new here, you may want to subscribe to my RSS feed. Thanks for visiting! I don’t know about you but when I sit down for a one-shot game with a pregen character, I can’t always come up with a unique and interesting personality on the fly. Sometimes the class, race and skill combo strikes a chord, but usually it’s just numbers. Using the Generator is a snap. Motivation: What is it that really gets your character’s motor running? Instinct: What is your character’s first reaction to a threat (physical or otherwise)? Approach: What archetype is your character best known for being? Now just because every character in D&D is combat-capable does not necessarily make them all warrior-type personalities. Raven, Revenant Tempest FighterMotivation 8 (Intense Experience); Instinct 10 (Invoke Tradition); Approach 12 (Ethereal Mystic) Most living beings fear death. Serious Skills Similar Posts:
CALLIHOO Writing Helps--Feelings Table Character Feelings You can describe your character's feelings in more exact terms than just "happy" or "sad." Check these lists for the exact nuance to describe your character's intensity of feelings. SF Characters | SF Items | SF Descriptors | SF Places | SF EventsSF Jobs/Occupations | Random Emotions | Emotions List | Intensity of Feelings Poets & Writers | Contests, MFA Programs, Agents & Grants for Writers How to Write a Character From Start to Finish The best fiction is about a character who changes in some significant way. The selfish brute learns to put others first. The woman marrying for money decides to marry for love. We love to see characters transformed. —by Jeff Gerke Most of the time, main characters in fiction are changing for the better. But there’s also room for characters who change for the worse. Perhaps most intriguing of all is a “bad” character who flirts for a while with the idea of being good, but then decides that his true self is on the dark side of the street. Of course, not every story has to be about a character who changes. Whether your protagonist ultimately turns toward or away from the light will be up to you, but we’ll look at ways to send her on a journey in which she’s transformed. The Inner Journey In fiction terms, a character’s transformation is called his inner journey or character arc. The heart of this system is your main character’s inner journey. The Nexus The Seeds of Change The Role of Change