How do we take our characters from their sketchy beginnings and make them come alive?
How do we make them convincing?
All writers struggle to make characters believable. The paradox we face is how to create characters who behave consistently without being predictable.
Like real people, our characters have habits, personality quirks, and traits, a belief system, a worldview, a history. And all of this governs their reactions to what happens on the surface of the story.
But much of what readers come to know about a character is nuanced and intuited. It’s beneath the surface.
In this episode, we’ll explore 3 ways to go beneath the surface to create convincing characters.
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Episode at a glance:
[02:12] Frequent challenges writers face include characters veering dangerously toward stereotype. Or characters who are unique, but still not convincing. Or everything is directly stated. And so the reader isn’t able to use her own imagination to fill in what’s unsaid.
[03:09] Hemingway’s Iceberg Theory. In order for a character to have sufficient depth, what’s unsaid must exist clearly in the writers mind.
[04:14] Begin with the truth. Whether we’re writing fiction or memoir, we’re really in the business of getting at the truth. Not an absolute truth. Not a factual truth. But the true experience, the true scene witnessed, the true emotion. So, to create convincing characters, you need to connect your emotions with your characters’ emotions. And that requires empathy.
[05:43] Learn the difference between empathy and sympathy. And why you don’t have to have experienced what your characters are experiencing in order to write about it.
[08:02] Learn how characters are revealed in relationship to one another, and why creating situations that bring your characters together is a more organic way to think about plot.
[11:02] Revision is where you really get to know your characters. Learn why exploring characters through several drafts is a great way to dive beneath the surface.
Link mentioned in this episode:
Episode 116: Story Triggers: How To Generate Powerful Fiction and Memoir
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