Tag Archive - characters

Getting to the Core of Your Characters

August 8, 2012 in The Heart of Your Story with 43 Comments

Leon Surmelian in his book (written forty years ago) Techniques of Fiction Writing, has this to say about creating characters in fiction: “Characterization is a complex and elusive art and cannot be reduced to exact rules or to a comprehensive statement. The more we talk about it, the more we feel has been left out, and this is necessarily so because the human personality remains a mystery, subject to obscure forces; it is a universe it itself, and we are strangers even to ourselves. . . . Characterization requires self-knowledge, insight into human nature . . . it is more than impersonation.” Continue Reading…

Creating Not Good but Great Characters

August 1, 2012 in The Heart of Your Story with 16 Comments

Since this blog is dedicated to help writers get to the heart of their stories, there is nothing more important than character, for your protagonist is at the heart of the story. I don’t want to get into the nuts and bolts of developing characters. There are plenty of online websites and blogs that have lessons in coming up with characters and how to make them seem real and not like wood posts. What I do want to explore, though, is a deeper and more personal approach to developing the characters in your novel. Continue Reading…

Endings That Spark Beginnings

May 16, 2012 in The Heart of Your Story with 7 Comments

I covered scene beginnings and middles over the last few weeks, so let’s look at endings. Just like beginnings, endings carry a special burden. The reader must be left with a feeling, like an aftertaste. So you need to stop and think. Just what feeling do you want the reader to have? Shock, sadness, warmth, confusion, curiosity? You want to keep in mind that the basic storytelling structure for a novel is action—reaction—action—reaction.

Too many scenes end with a character experiencing something and then . . . it ends. We need to see how the character reacts to what has just happened. You don’t have to do this every time, and in some genres where plot is king (suspense/thrillers), you may often end with the building exploding and you have no idea if your character just died. But as a general rule, you want to be with your character and see their reaction, feeling, or response—even if just told in one line—to what has just happened. Continue Reading…

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