WCW: Creating Well-Rounded Characters – Dark Moment Stories

by Crystal Caudill | Mar 15, 2017 | Writing Craft

Characters are more than just the sum of their actions.  In the previous weeks, I discussed character archetypes and negative/positive personality traits, but all of these really just boil down to actions. So what more do you need to create a living, breathing, well-rounded character?

To give your characters the breath of life, you need to give them a past full of good and bad experiences, even though their full back story will never be revealed to the reader. Susie May Warren does a fantastic job of explaining how she does this in her book The Story Equation (SEQ), and I highly recommend getting it. For the meantime, here is the basic process derived from her SEQ.

Developing Character History

Your character is who they are when they walk on the page due to their histories. As an author, it would be impossible create a comprehensive life story for your character from birth to the time they walk on the page. Many of those details are not important.

 
The important details of our lives are those life-altering parts. Those moments in time that end up wounding you, burying a lie deep into your heart, and creating fears. Susie May Warren calls these Dark Moment Stories.

Dark Moment Stories

These dark moment stories aren’t as vague as “my parents divorced.” As bad as divorce is, moments within the divorce will be what really shaped the experience of your character. They are the stories that can be retold in detail to another character.

For example, take a story of a four-year-old boy whose father walked out on him. That memory is so painful, so poignant it becomes immortalized in the mind, twisting and growing roots down to the soul.

He can remember his Dad loading up the car, ignoring the son as he followed behind asking questions.

“Daddy, where are you going?”

“Can I go, Daddy?”

“Why is Mommy crying?”

“Can I help?”

Then it happened. Dad closed the door, separating the boy from him forever. The boy runs to the window and watches as the car putters off into the distance without one backward glance from the driver.

Imagine the wound developed by that. What fears would develop from that experience? The fear of abandonment. The fear of being unworthy. The fear of being out of control.

Lies will develop from this experience. I’ll never be good enough. I am unlovable. I can’t trust people. People I love will always end up leaving.

These lies and fears developed from the wound determine the actions of our characters and make them believable. The wounding story is what makes us sympathize the character and even connect with the character. You don’t have to have your father abandon you to understand the feeling of abandonment.

Bringing your characters to life means giving them experiences that readers can connect to and identify with. Give them experiences that define who they are at the beginning, but are overcome and redefined at the end.

Exercise Your Brain

This week, come up with your own dark moment story for a character (or use a real experience, we’ll never know!). Then tell us the possible lies and fears developed from that dark moment story.  Come back and encourage one another and comment on the different stories.

WCW: Developing Well-Rounded Characters – Positive and Negative Traits

by Crystal Caudill | Mar 1, 2017 | Writing Craft

What draws you into a book? Is it the thrilling plot? The sizzling romance?  The comical situations?

Or is it something more?

I am willing to bet that the reason you love your favorite book is not because of the plot but because of the characters that move through the plot.

As a writer, it is absolutely crucial to create characters that are well-rounded and real. So just exactly how is this done?

Creating Real People

A couple weeks ago I discussed the idea of using archetypes to develop a general idea of your character’s profile. While the universal elements of archetype may draw a reader initially to a character, there must be something more than just kiddie pool depth for your characters to become favorites. They must be real.

Real people have good qualities and bad qualities, or flaws as they are often referred to in the writing world. We see these traits in people through their actions. You don’t hear people going around announcing “I’m cynical” or “I’m adaptable” to the world (usually), and even if they did, you wouldn’t believe them until you saw it through their actions.

I can say I’m a morning person all I want, but until you see me actually willingly getting my butt out of bed before 9 AM and happy about it, you might doubt it. By the way, if you haven’t guessed, mornings and I are not on speaking terms.

Thus, as a writer, it is critical to determine the personality traits of your characters, both good and bad, and determine ways to show this subtly through their actions.

Positive and Negative Traits

If you are like me, at the beginning, I struggled with deciding what are personality traits and the behaviors that go with my characters.  Enter one of my favorite writing resources, Angela Ackerman’s and Becca Puglist’s Positive and Negative Trait Thesaurusus (or thesauri, depending on your grammar philosophy).

Each thesaurus includes a definition, category (they have a whole intro section on this), similar attributes, possible causes, associated behaviors, associated thoughts, associated emotions, positive aspects, negative aspects, examples in literature and film, traits in supporting characters that may cause conflict, challenging scenarios, and even how a negative trait can become overcome.

Whenever I create my hero, heroine, and even my “villain”, I am sure to pick out 3 – 4 positive and negative traits each to help define my character. Sometimes the traits are a major part of their character, and sometimes the traits are just one of those little quirks that people have.

Determining How a Character Behaves

After I have listed out their traits, I also list out the associated behaviors I can see my character doing. Sometimes I begin to see a pattern of behaviors that are repeated across traits and I realize these behaviors need to be something highly visual in my storyline. For quick reference sake, I “distill” my characters down to a few, easy to reference traits and behaviors to post onto my bulletin board.

Here is my heroine’s “distilled” list:

Values: Security, Loyalty, Honesty

• Holds on to goals long after prudent
• Unparalleled sense of morality
• fight for what is right no matter what
• Ferocious Loyalty
• Not letting others help
• Determined
• Refusing to admit defeat
• Acting without thinking of the consequences (courageous, impulsive)
• Spontaneous
• Acting in response to emotions (this and the next behavior cause inner conflict at times)
• Firm control of emotions
• Light manipulation to keep attention away from self
• Honest
• Thinks in metaphors
• Growing quiet, lost in thought
• Adventurous
• Creative problem solving

It might still need a little fine tuning, but I use it as a general list as I work through my story.

What about you? How do you determine what traits your character has? What traits do you admire in heroes or heroines?

You’ve learned part of my process above, but the traits I love most in my hero and heroines are quick wit, loyal, independent, and strong senses of justice. This is perhaps why most of the stories in my head center around some of those themes.

Come back in a couple weeks when I talk about Creating Well-Rounded Characters – Giving Them Life on 3/15/17.

Previous Post: Creating Well-Rounded Characters – Archetypes

WCW: Developing Well-Rounded Characters – Archetypes

by Crystal Caudill | Feb 15, 2017 | Writing Craft

Developing a well-rounded character takes time and purpose. I tend to be a panster (a writer who writes by the seat of their pants), but I have learned to develop my characters thoroughly before beginning to write.

Many authors do a character interview to help get to know their characters. I am slowly learning to do that using Susan May Warren’s SEQ technique (check out her book about it here), but I have also added my own twist to discovering the inner workings of my characters.

So what are those key components to take into consideration when developing a character?

In addition to SEQ, I like to explore my characters archetypes, positive personality traits, negative personality traits, and character backstory. Today I just want to focus on archetypes.

What are Archetypes?

Archetypes are just universal patterns of behavior that have positive and negative aspects.

Caroline Myss, “a pioneer in the field of energy medicine and consciousness”, suggests each person has a combination of about 12 archetypes that make up their psyche, each having varying degrees of presence in your life depending on your situation. I don’t get into all that “new age” feel stuff, but her collection of 72 Archetypes Cards are very useful in developing fictional characters.

Some examples of her archetypes are:

• Artist
• Child – Orphan
• Child – Wounded
• Detective
• Judge
• Knight
• Networker
• Prostitute
• Warrior

Developing Character Archetypes

For my characters, I choose between four and six archetypes that define who they are during my story. In fact, the list above is the archetypes I chose for my hero and heroine in my WIP.

Each archetype has positive and negative traits. Because the prostitute archetype might be a little concerning to you, I will share that one as my example.

“The Prostitute archetype engages lessons in the sale or negotiation of one’s integrity or spirit due to fears of physical survival or for financial gain. We prostitute ourselves when we sell our bodies or minds for money, or when we compromise our morals and ethics for financial gain… The core learning of the Prostitute is that self-esteem and self-respect make you impervious to selling out.”

– “Prostitute”, Caroline Myss Archetype Cards Booklet

Caroline Myss adds more, but as you can see from this description that “Prostitute” is not exactly what you first think. No, my heroine is NOT sexually immoral or active. What she does do is compromise her morals due to her fears of physical survival.

Have you ever compromised your morals due to self-preservation? It doesn’t have to be big and earth-shaking. It could be the one time you blamed your toddler sibling for eating all the cookies before dinner, even though you believe lying is wrong. See how the archetype can be used for everyday situations?

Picking out four to six archetype cards really helps to round out your characters and make them multi-dimensional. The general strengths and weaknesses are outlined for you to expand upon and fine-tune for the uses of your own story. Characters can even have overlapping archetypes, yet be completely their own person, just like the human race in real life.

Because archetypes are universal in nature, readers will connect to your characters because they see aspects of themselves within the story.

When developing your own characters, I highly recommend taking into consideration their archetypes. If you struggle with archetypes, I suggest picking up Caroline Myss’ Archetype Cards.

What other archetypes are you familiar with? Still confused? Leave a question below. I promise to get back to it as soon as I can.

Do you have any resources you use to help develop your own characters?

WCW: Crafting the Perfect Chapter – It’s Elementary, My Dears

by Crystal Caudill | Jan 18, 2017 | Writing Craft

*This is an expanded edition of my guest blog post to Southern Writer’s Magazine on December 14, 2016.

Crafting the Perfect Chapter – It’s Elementary, My Dears

Before becoming a stay-at-home-mom, I taught fifth-grade students to analyze writing. I hadn’t given much thought to applying what I taught to my own writing until I substitute taught a fifth-grade reading class. That day, I discovered a crucial concept for every fiction writer.

Students all over the country are forced summarize every chapter they read by looking for these key things: Somebody… wants… but… so… then…

We, as writers, need to zero in on every chapter we write to make sure we can answer: Somebody… wants…. but…. so… then…

How do we do this? It’s elementary, my dears.

To illustrate this concept, I will use chapter eight of George Washington’s Socks.  I will assume most my readers have not had the enjoyment of reading this children’s novel, so I will just give a very brief introduction to the story.

George Washington’s Socks

A mysterious rowboat transports five adventurous kids back in time to the eve of the Battle at Trenton where they experience the American Revolution. Through encounters with Hessian soldiers, revolutionaries, and even George Washington himself, Matthew, Quentin, Hooter, Tony, and Katie watch history unfold before their eyes as they see first-hand, the grim realities of war and the cost of freedom.

– Amazon.com Blurb

Somebody… wants… but… so… then…

Let’s break it down:

Somebody…

Who is the central focus of this chapter? This can be one or two characters if you are splitting your story between points of view, but even if there are multiple points of view, a chapter is generally about one person. Who would students identify as the main character for your chapter?

In George Washington’s Socks there are five focus characters, however, chapter eight focuses solely on the perspective of Matt.

Wants…

This is the goal of the main character for this chapter only. What is it that the character wants to accomplish in this small timeframe? More often than not it is a small goal that builds into something bigger.

For Matt, his initial goal in the chapter was to return General Washington’s cape.

But…

No story is engaging without conflict, and neither is a chapter. What obstacle does the character face? It can be internal or external in nature, but it needs to be plausible and, if at all possible, unforeseen.

Matt’s challenge comes in the form of a captain who believes Matt is a rebel soldier.

So…

This is the reaction to the conflict. What does the character do? What does he/she think? Do they change their goal? What about the supporting characters? How do they respond to the conflict, and how does their response affect the main character?

Matt changes his goal. He goes from wanting to return General Washington’s cape to retreating to the safety of the boat.

 Then…

This is where a consequence occurs or an additional problem is added to the plot. There could be a hint to the subplot, or a difficult obstacle the character must face, or it could leave the reader with a cliffhanger. Whichever course you choose, the “then” is used as a hook for the next chapter.

Matt’s chapter doesn’t end with him being forced into battle. His “then” is the fatal injury of the only man who can get Matt home.

Combine all the elements and you get:

Matt wanted to return General Washington’s cape but a Captain thought he was a rebel soldier trying to desert, so Matt tries to return to the boat. Then, as Matt is being forced into battle, the only man who can get Matt and his friends home suffers a fatal injury.

Somebody… wants… but… so… then… is a quick, easy summary that drives to the heart of a chapter.  Do each of your chapters contain these elements? Could you summarize them in this way?

Even scarier…. could a fifth-grader?

I challenge you to share one of your chapters in this way, and just so I am being fair, here’s my example from chapter one.

Kessara wants to pay off her grandfather’s debt, but she doesn’t want him to find out she had to save the family name again, so she goes to the cemetery at midnight to retrieve her secret stash of money. Then as she is returning to the carriage she stumbles upon a clandestine meeting between two criminals who spot her.

What do you think? How would you break down one of your chapters?