Characters who draw your reader in

It's been two weeks since my intensive week at my MFA residency. I like to write blogs on things I've learned because it helps reinforce the knowledge for me and hopefully gives you something to work with as well. As Jonathan Mayberry said in his workshop, "Writers need to help each other out." That is the goal of this blog. To pass on what I learn, so that we can all make our writing stronger.

I sat in a great workshop given by Randall Silvis, novelist and character writer. The following is from my notes on the workshop:

The reader wants characters they can relate to, identify with and care about. How do you get that? By creating a character who is inherently dramatic. They should have traits, motivations and contradictions that invite drama. They should stand out with a distinctive voice by taking interesting actions, making interesting choices based on their motivations. The events of your story should grow out of the character's choices and actions.

There should be external and internal conflict. The external conflict drives the story while the internal conflict drives the character and the character drives the external conflict. Think of it as the circle of life for your story.

How can we fashion conflict? By identifying the characters needs or desires, then identifying the tasks or goals the character has to fulfill their needs, finally identify and create the obstacles to their goals. (Work from the least dramatic to the most dramatic as you build your story.)

Take a moment to do this little exercise with your current main character (or any character you're working with.) Answer the following:

1) what is their external need?

2) what is their external task?

3) what is their internal need?

4) What is their internal task?

How are these different, exciting and dramatic for readers of your genre? What kinds of obstacles can you use in your plot to block them from fulfilling their needs or completing their tasks?

Here's my example:

Toni Ryder's external need is to build a successful gluten-free bakery business. Her external task is to drum up business, create customers, bake goods. What blocks her from doing this? She set up her bakery in her home town of OilTop Kansas, where wheat farming is a big part of the community. She must convince the community and the wheat farmers her bakery is not a threat to their livelihood. The biggest block to her task-a man is murdered on her doorstep. All kinds of things happen after that in a cascade of trouble that block her need to build a successful business.

Toni Ryder's internal need is to find her place in her hometown and fit into the community she has recently returned to after her mother's death. Her task is to create relationships with people she once abandoned as too small-minded, and to build a family and a web of support for her internal needs. What blocks her is her own feelings of rebelling against the community. After all she did pick a wheat town to build her anti-wheat bakery. Then there is her struggle to accept her "unconventional" over-sized family and the characters that are related to her. Her struggle to date after a nasty divorce. Her own lack of confidence in her choice of males. Her grief at the death of her mother and her unwillingness to make the home her mother left her her very own.

Do you find her dramatic? Does she stand out? Can you identify with her?

I'll leave you with a final quote:

"I would never write about anyone who is not at the end of his rope." Stanley Elkin

Building Characters

Do your characters come to you fully formed? Or do you create them from the ground up? No matter which way they arrive at your door, you can use character building tricks to add quirks, foibles and realistic human traits to create depth to your characters which in turn will take your plots to greater heights.
So where do you start? Start with the very basics--goals, motivation and conflict. Seems simple, right? And yet time after time I have seen writers have to rewrite entire chapters because they are wondering about. Their characters have no purpose-no goal in the scene. If they have a goal such as attending the school of their choice then you need to motivate the reason why. It needs to be a strong motivation to vigorously move the story forward and keep the reader from thinking your characters are too stupid to live. Once you have them with a goal-in each scene-and strongly motivated you need to build internal conflicts that drive them to change. Here's an example of an internal conflict: as a small child the protag watched her mother struggle raising babies. She internalized that babies are bad. Therefore she has made the internal decision to never have children. Now-she finds herself either a) pregnant or b) in love with a man who has or loves children or c) must rescue a baby and bring it on her journey. This means that the character has to change her fear or dislike of babies to move forward. GMC is the basic building blocks of creating a character-even an evil villain.
Now- let's flesh your character out a bit. Some people do a family study. What I mean is that they assign the character a place in a family-oldest, middle, youngest or only child and use psychological profiles of these child placements to add depth to characters.
Another method is to do an astrology chart on your character- are they a Pisces? A Leo or a creative Aquarius? How does this help or hurt them? What descriptors can you take from horoscopes to add to your character. Remember people/characters are a million pieces of the world around them.
I sat through a wonderful workshop on Personality theory. The speaker gave us Freudian Hang ups, Archetypes and Trait Perspectives based on what he knew as a psychologist. People in all fields categorize other people-socially and by personality. Do a little research and you can use these categories and descriptors to flesh out your characters to create 3 dimensional beings in your story.
I have mentioned self help books in past blogs. Some of these can help you to create characters that real life readers can identify with. For instance someone overcoming bad relationships, someone overcoming childhood trauma or even weight issues, health issues, disability issues-all can be heroes or villains. I have this great book called Personology--the precision approach to charting your life, career and relationships. It gives who you are and your traits based on your year of birth, your astrological sign, your Chinese zodiac, etc. No- you don't have to believe in these things to write strong characters, but you can use the information offered to add details to your characters.
Think of the Goal, Motivation and Conflict as the skeleton for your character. The flesh and details come from their experiences, zodiac sign, family traits and personality traits. Finally you add in eye color, skin color and hair. Some people will do a search of photos and print them out or cut them out to pin up so that they always have a visual of their character. Think of a photo in the opening of a police file on someone. It's all there--anything and everything you want to know about your character. Now that you know them inside and out you understand how they will act and react in any situation and you set them free inside the world you built last week and see what happens.
What is your favorite method for character building? Have I left anything out? Is there anything you would like to blog about in detail? Let me know. Cheers~