The beginning of our stories is crucial. It’s the appetizer for the entire dish. If it’s not tasty, chances are the rest of the meal will have the same bland flavor.
And nobody wants to spend their time reading a bland blah story.
The beginning of your story must be engaging, intriguing, and packed with a punch.
BUT the first page, sentence or even word can be the most agonizing part of the writing process because there is so much riding on it.
But there’s no need to worry.
Relax and let these 3 methods aid you in starting your story so that the reader is hooked from page one.
#1 Start somewhere in the middle.
Though you might not know where to begin, or even how you want your story to end, you may have certain scenes already in your mind.
Start with that. Start with what you have in your mind and let the story unfold before you and them.
Don’t be afraid to start with what you have. Make your idea a short story first. You can expand on a short story later. Get it written down.
If it’s a great idea your mind will keep toying with it and take it further. If it is a dud, you will most likely forget about it or lose interest.
Who knows? Maybe you’ll write it down today. Forget about it for 3 years and pick it back up and write the next big seller. You just never know.
As you move forward with your story you’ll have a better idea of where to start. And as you mold your characters and thicken your plot, you just might get the inspiration you need for the perfect beginning.
Our stories are going to go through A LOT of editing before they are done, so don’t worry.
There will be many moments along the editing part where parts of the story get changed. And you can always go back and add or take away from the beginning.
Sometimes a story can take an unexpected turn and you decide to start the story in the middle and do flashbacks instead of starting where you thought was going to be your beginning.
The point here is don’t be afraid to start writing down your ideas and start writing the story because you are worried it won’t be good enough.
If you let that fear drive you, you’ll never write anything and rob yourself and the world of another good story.
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Though it may seem a little too binding, starting with the title can actually give you the freedom you need to start your story.
When you pick a title, it will give you the direction that you need to put the pen to the page.
Starting with your title in mind gives you a good heading for the journey of your story.
You know where you are and where you want to be so you can begin sailing.
And while you’re writing you can always have an epiphany and go back and revise the title.
If you didn’t go ahead and make a title at the start you would have to make something up at the end and you’ll have missed out on possible title inspiration along the way.
Another good reason to start with the title is that you’ll be starting with the end in mind.
In most projects, this is a wise system of thinking. Start with the end in mind.
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Though it may seem too obvious, sometimes the best way to start is the easiest way.
This is a very specific method, but it is a tried and true method.
Also, this method is simple and it’s a great way for anyone to start a story even if they end up chopping it out later.
It’s an easy and simple starting point for anyone writing a story.
By starting with an introduction you are introducing a main character and a major problem or question for your reader to be curious about.
For example:
“Hi. My name is Hayden, and I’m here to tell you my story.”
“Hi. I’m Ray, and I’m hiding a secret.”
“I’m Brett, and you won’t believe what I just overheard my teacher say. My life will never be the same again.”
Can you see how easy it was to give our character a name and instantly introduce a curious secret or an interesting life-changing idea?
If we are going to hook our reader we have to be interesting from page one or they’ll never make it to page two.
Don’t make starting a story harder than it has to be.
In conclusion:
remember, these methods are only to help you start the writing process.
You always have the power to rewrite, fix or evolve the story any way you please. So don’t let that first sentence get you down. Instead, go ahead and start, even if you don’t feel it’s the best.
Nothing is set in stone.
Get moving forward and give yourself more to work with than just the paralyzing question of “where to start?!?!”
We hope this short post helps you!
Happy writing!
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Every story that’s ever been written has moods. Different than the tone, which is set by the author, the moods help set the feeling the reader gets from our story.
The moods of our story can ebb and flow as the plot evolves and our characters develop into who we want them to be for the occasion.
As you are writing your story, carefully consider the way you want your readers to feel during each scene.
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Will they feel it because the mood is set well in a natural way?
Setting the mood is like setting the mood in a room.
A house has many rooms and each room can have its own personal mood.
If we dim the lights and let in natural light and paint the room a light color and set up comfy sofas in the room it might have an uplifting mood.
If we take the exact same room but cover up the windows, paint the room black, throw in a strobe light, some black lights and a bunch of black light glow objects with some bass beats it’ll change the mood for that room dramatically.
Stories are much like houses and chapters are much like rooms.
If you have a chapter with a funeral in it you have most likely created a somber or inquisitive mood for that chapter.
If the chapter has a celebration party from a hard-fought win with no casualties then the mood is more relieved, upbeat, and happy.
Some moods are easy to make and some take more complex thinking to put our reader into the emotions we want them to feel at any given moment.
Use the setting to help set the mood you want them to feel.
We hope this quick list will help spark your creativity for your writing.
Hope this helps!
Happy writing!
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It’s easy to write and even easier to make simple common writing mistakes while you’re writing. Creating checklists is a good way to make our musings effective and efficient.
Writing is fun but sometimes it can be daunting to know where to start.
Making a checklist can be useful.
Use this checklist to help think through fictional characters you are writing.
When writing fictional characters it’s easy to get lost and end up making similar writing mistakes as other authors that didn’t do as well with characterization.
Use this checklist to watch for some common yet potentially grievous writing mistakes.
Writing Mistakes to Watch Out For:
1. Stereotypical
Writing mistakes come in all shapes and sizes and writing a stereotypical character is one of them.
It’s easy to say “write original characters” but to actually do it can be tough.
So many characters exist and it is hard to break the mold.
To avoid writing stereotypical characters think about who your character is, if you can think of five other famous fictional characters just like them you may be in the stereotypical realm.
Maybe don’t ditch the character altogether at that point, but do have them do some surprising things.
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Some writers would say every character has to be very useful and usable in more than one way.
We disagree.
I for one have enjoyed immensely certain characters that show up for short cameo blips and only have one use in the entirety of the story.
Think about when Stan Lee would show up in a Marvel movie for a cameo.
His Character wasn’t always useful in many ways but it was enjoyable to see.
So make some characters show up unexpectedly that maybe only one use. This might be just the thing to make the story more dynamic and less predictable.
Sometimes a character shows up just to help accomplish one small piece of the puzzle for the protagonist and then leaves disappears or dies.
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Just like the humans we know and see every day our fictional characters need to have m.o.’s.
M.O. stands for Modus Operandi which just means someone’s habits or methods.
Everyone seems to have an m.o. a way that they do things.
Your character’s m.o. might be too get coffee at 7, read the news at 8, be at work by 8:30 and to be home by 6.
If they get honked at in traffic they honk back.
If someone says hi to them they usually say hi back.
Things like these are considered someone’s M.O. The way they do things.
The mistake to watch out for here is to have your character not have a consistent character.
One day they say hello the next day they scream and run for no apparent reason. The next day they randomly have a different accent and say “Howdy!” for no explained reason.
For most characters, they will keep the same personality over long periods of time just like your friends and family, but for other characters, they will go on a learning journey where habits and other things in their life will change. They may talk a little different or choose to be a better person or a worse person.
They will still be the same person but they can always try to change habits just like normal people do.
Habits people often try to change normally:
Eating
Sleeping
Caffeine
Smoking
Drinking
Drugs
Cell phone use
Etc
Things like these are acceptable for a person to try to change, but remember that readers like the character to be consistent, especially if they have been for a long time and if they change dramatically or too much too quickly a reader might find that hard to believe.
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This is a tragedy because it just isn’t true. Some critics feel that people are sick of the underdog sorry and we just have to say that they aren’t true yet.
It could happen.
It just hasn’t happened yet.
Don’t be deterred from writing a less lined character that rises above everything that’s stood against them:
Authority
Bullies
Teachers
Enemies
Dictators
Tyrants
Mean spirited people
Etc
People still live to root for the underdog because most of us feel a little bit like an underdog on the inside just trying to succeed.
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Our characters must have goals or else our reader will just stop caring at some point in their surmisable pointless journey.
It’s fine t start them out with no seeming point or reason, but the reader is on the lookout for the BIG WHY.
Our BIG WHY is why is our character being written about and talked about.
If the reader never finds a good reason they are likely to put our story down and NEVER pick it up again. They might remember it though…as being horribly boring. 🙁
So don’t do that to yourself or your reader. Give your characters goals 🙂 .
They don’t all have to have the same goals. In fact, it is more interesting if they don’t have the same goals and are against each other is some goals and with each other in others.
For instance, they could be rivals. This means they have the same goal, but against each other.
They could be rivals but have a common enemy. This still makes them have the same goal against each other but for the moment they could benefit from taming up. Very fun.
They could have the same goal and decide to be allies in that goal and work together as partners or friends.
They could have a group of people that become their allies.
They could be secretly pretending to be partners, but scheming to betray each other at the last second when it really counts.
There are many fun and interesting options we can use when it comes to giving characters goals and what that means the conflicts and resolutions of our stories.
Writing Mistakes to Watch Out For:
7. Thinking they have to earn everything
Fictional characters don’t have to earn everything we see them have or get.
A prince is a prince and with that we expect them to have certain privileges above other characters.
Nice clothes
Meals
Beds
Hair
Makeup
Weapons
Armor
Etc
If it is a person who is down and out and struggling, we expect to see them struggle through and earn things along the way.
It is okay for us to write some characters having honor, fame, glory and other notions before our reader meets them.
In Harry Potter, he had notoriety he didn’t even earn himself and we as readers accepted this. Ron had less, we also accepted this. This is how the world works, so your reader won’t be expecting you to take them through every event the character has gone through before they started to read about them.
They want to go through the interesting parts of their life journey. That’s why they are reading.
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This seems like a no brainer, but we will cover it briefly and move on.
A story must have a coherent plot.
If it goes off into random tangents our reader may lose interest when they realize there was no point to some side plot in the story. OR worse they’ll get to the end and feel gipped. Then they won’t pick up book two.
A plot skeleton should be kept fairly simple and expand as necessary:
Introduction
Hook
Conflict
Climax
Resolution
This plot skeleton is extremely simple on purpose.
There may be multiple mini conflicts with mini resolutions along the way, but one main conflict and one main resolution make for most great stories.
Don’t run off into meaningless side stories that don’t have anything to do with either creating interest for the main character or the main antagonist or characterization.
Our story is like a river it may bend and it may have reservoirs but in there somewhere it needs to come to a raging waterfall for our reader to plunge down in order to find out where the river ultimately leads.
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Your reader doesn’t need to know the in-depth background of every character that steps onto the page, but for some sidekicks and some secondary characters, a little depth and back story can be quite interesting.
Their backstory doesn’t need to be revealed all at once. In fact, it can be more enjoyable if it doesn’t happen all at once but over many chapters.
A little revealing here and a little revealing there. Keep the reader curious about the right characters. Create questions in their minds. And answer those questions in time.
Be purposeful about what you reveal about any character especially secondary characters. Make sure that it is important to a key point in the plot.
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Nothing ruins a story more than an evil diabolical no-good…boring villain.
An unconvincing villain can ruin an otherwise extremely good story with a great plotline. We could have all the characters and the best storyline and plot, but if the villain or antagonist falls flat it’ll make for a very disappointing reveal sometime in the story.
Writing Mistakes to Watch Out For:
11. Writing mistakes: forcing a part of the story that doesn’t quite fit.
We’ve all been there. You’re thinking through this amazing idea for a storyline. You write a really amazing introduction and some killer plot points. One day you write a scene that is amazing and that you love personally.
As time goes on you keep writing, but that awesome scene that you wrote doesn’t really seem to fit in anywhere.
But it’s an awesome scene and you love it. What happens to it? It can’t just die and never be remembered, can it?
Unfortunately, I think it can. It is sad, but it’s important to just let some things go in the editing process.
If you wrote something you love that doesn’t seem to make sense anymore, don’t try to draw lines to it and from it only to leave the reader scratching their head about it, just put it down in your “I loved you once” scenes journal and let it be.
Don’t make your reader question whether you can put together a coherent storyline all for one scene. It’s not worth it in the long run.
If it makes you feel better you can add a section at the end of your book called “deleted scenes.”
Don’t let writing mistakes get the best of you.
I hope this helps!
Happy Writing!
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Conceptualizing your plot to make it great can be tough if you do not know where to start and don’t have any emergent ideas.
Hopefully this little go through will help you spark some ideas for your plot that will take you to the next level in your story or book. Your first actionable steps for your plot.
1. Start your plot with a big problem
Most readers don’t care about your characters and your world-building without some major problem that needs solving.
A reader wants to go through a journey where some major plot problem is resolved.
Depending on how you choose to resolve the major issues, the reader feels a certain way about the story and your plot.
So focus on your big climactic problem first because that is the most important and pivotal part of any great story.
Keep in mind your major problem doesn’t have to be human. It doesn’t have to be a good guy vs bad guy. It could be human vs nature.
A great hurricane is coming unless you can stop it or if not help others and yourself survive.
What is the BIG PROBLEM you are going to give your characters and how are they going to solve it?
Where does it lead them? And why?
Think about the potential consequences of solving this problem.
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Your major goal goes hand in hand with your big major plot problem.
If your hero’s goal is to stop the bad guy from destroying the kingdom then your problem is the bad guy and his major plans to destroy the kingdom but the goal of the hero is to stop the bad guy.
You can see how these are closely tied together and extremely similar.
And indeed they should be.
If your major problem and your protagonist goal don’t go hand in hand there is a major plot problem.
Unless you’re writing a comedy of course, then your character’s main goal could be ridiculously far from the major problem and it ends up being surprising, funny, and entertaining for your reader.
Going with the example above if a great hurricane is coming unless you can stop it or if not help others and yourself survive.
The great problem is the hurricane, but your character’s goal is to survive and help others survive.
Maybe their major goal is to save loved ones in harm’s way.
Think about the big goal and big major problem makes us naturally think about characters.
What major goals can you give the main characters based on the problems they face?
Does your character have major goals before the big problem arises that they must forfeit in order to stop the major problem?
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3. Choose 1 to 3 or 3 to 5 major characters for your plot
This doesn’t have to be religious, but starting with 1 character to follow and explain is an easy place to start. 3-5 characters is a good place to start also
It gives you something to work with and draw from and it can always change as you go. Like we said it isn’t an “it must be this way every time” rule as much as it is helpful to start somewhere and get going than to be otherwise paralyzed by an infinite amount of choices.
Just start with one character and usually, the others will naturally follow. And don’t be afraid to change them in the editing process to make them more coherent with the entirety of their existence in your story.
Use your major problem to help you naturally create the personality and persona of your main characters by the choices they make based on what they then end up facing.
Even as you think about your major problem you can start to visualize your main character starting to live through it. It’s only natural to imagine things this way.
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Once you’ve got these major ideas in mind it’s a great idea to go ahead and start to put the pen to the page or the fingers to the keyboard.
Try to not go a day without writing at least 100 new words. That’s a pretty attainable goal. Don’t get caught up in continual revising when your starting. Focus on getting words on the page that you can work with.
Just let it flow and worry about changing it later.
Now get out there and write something!
Hope this helps!
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Anyone can grab a knife or a gun and swing it around violently, but does that really make them dangerous?
A dangerous villain is able to capture our emotions and feelings and leave us feeling conflicted about whether or not we should be on their side instead of the heroes.
1. Write a dangerous villain as a mortal anthropoid
Some of the best villains aren’t born villains. They have interesting background stories.
They are born with a mom and a dad. They grew up down the street. They were in boy scouts. They went to church. They played little league.
They were a good kid until one day a traumatic event happened that changed their world view forever.
Or maybe they weren’t born of parents at all, Maybe they came through a secret door in our basement.
Maybe they were left at the doorstep with no explanation.
They don’t always have to be human but make them human-like.
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2. Write a dangerous villain as a professional at blandishments
Not all villains have fangs, a pitchfork, and ooze green goop.
Some of the best villains have charm and pizzazz.
They exude an aura that makes you want to follow them. You secretly root for them. You wish they weren’t evil so they could be your mentor or friend.
They are able to make a good point and cause others to see their side of things, that there is not just the hero’s way, but that may be perhaps there is a better way of doing things. Or that maybe the hero’s way is actually the wrong way.
This creates great drama and conflict and confusion for the reader and the characters to deal with.
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3. Sometimes to write a dangerous villain, a villain must be born from a “good person’s” evil deed
Just like villains aren’t born villains. Hero’s aren’t born hero’s.
Hero’s have a past, and some of there past ain’t pretty.
Some heroes were bullies in high school. Some heroes were vengeful. Some heroes did time in jail. Some heroes made their millions selling weapons to genocidal maniacs.
A person is not always summed up by the bad or good things they’ve done. Sometimes it is based on who they want to be today and who they are trying to be despite bad choices in the past.
But don’t think for a second that bad choices whether yesterday, today, or tomorrow don’t have consequences.
It’s almost a rule: most good choices have good outcomes, most bad choices have bad outcomes. It’s not math, it just works that way the majority of the time.
So even if a hero is making good choices today their bad choices of yesterday may have left some people hurt or broken on their journey to becoming “the hero.”
Some of the best villains are born of the hero’s bad choices.
I hope these ideas help spark your creativity!
Happy Writing!
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Thinking about fantasy weapons for fictional characters we want weapons that are going to capture our own curiosity and the curiosity of our reader. Let’s try to put ourselves into our reader’s mind and imagine what they imagine. I hope this list and others like it on this site help inspire you to your characters’ ideal fantasy weapons.
We’re working on a weapons series for fictional characters right now so feel free to look around to see more ideas for weapons for your Fictional Characters. We hope you find something inspiring here to help spark your creativity.
List of 10 Fantasy Weapons for Fictional Characters
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Use weapons in stories to give your reader an image of your character wielding it.
Give them a weapon that will add to the persona you are looking to give them.
The weapon you choose for your character can be a major piece of the puzzle of how your reader perceives them.
Choose the right weapon for your character depending on if they are a hero or villain.
Think about how to describe the weapons giving them special details to make it slightly different from normal weapons we’d see every day.
Sometimes you can make a character carry multiple weapons and have hidden weapons on them.
Figure out what weapons work well for your fictional characters.
Do they carry a large weapon?
Do they prefer many small weapons?
Do they have trick weapons hidden all over them?
Do they ride around in a car with a bunch of weapons in the back seat in a bag?
Do they have an organized trunk full of weapons?
Do they use their weapons to protect the weak?
Do they use their weapons to overpower the weak?
Are they partial to one specific weapon?
Do they use weapons and throw them away after they are banged up or used?
In other words, feel free to think through what weapons you want them to have and how weapons look as a part of their outfit and character profile.
We hope you enjoyed the quick inspiration list: List of 10 Fantasy Weapons for Fictional Characters. Hopefully, it helped you think of some weapons for your fictional characters.
I hope this helps!
Happy writing 🙂
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When thinking about fictional weapons for our fictional characters we want weapons that are going to capture our own imagination and the imagination of our reader. We want to put ourselves into our reader’s shoes and see what they see. I hope this list and others like it on this site help inspire you to your characters’ ideal fictional weapons.
We’re working on a weapons series for fictional characters right now so feel free to look around to see more ideas for weapons for your Fictional Characters.
List of 10 Fictional Weapons for Fictional Characters
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Fictional weapons can be used by an author in a lot of ways. A weapon can define a fictional character. It can give them an image. It can give them a certain look we want them to have.
Handing them specific weapons can make them look more angry or outraged. Some make them look more noble and valiant.
The weapon you choose for your character can be a major piece of the puzzle of how your reader perceives them.
Choose the right weapon for your character depending on if they are a hero or villain.
Think about how to describe the weapons giving it special details to make it slightly different from normal weapons we’d see every day.
Sometimes you can make a character carry multiple weapons and have hidden weapons on them.
Figure out what weapons work well for your fictional characters.
Does your character carry one big weapon?
Do they prefer many small weapons?
Do they hide many weapons on their person?
Do they ride around in a car with a bunch of weapons in the back seat in a bag?
Do they have an organized trunk full of weapons?
Do they use their weapons to protect the weak?
Do they use their weapons to overpower the weak?
Are they partial to one specific weapon?
Do they use weapons and throw them away after they are banged up or used?
In other words, feel free to think through what weapons you want them to have and how weapons look as a part of their outfit and character profile.
And don’t be afraid to play around with it. Have some fun and test different weapons with a certain character in your mind. Do you like the way they look and carry it? Or is it not right and need to find a better one for their emotions and persona?
I hope this helps!
Happy writing 🙂
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When creating close relationships with fictional characters, their dialogue matters immensely. Their dialogue shows their true heart and reveals a lot about their character.
How to create a close correspondence with fictional characters
Not all stories must have multiple characters.
But for the stories that do you must consider how to make your characters’ correspondence make sense.
Character correspondence helps define their relationships and how they interact and deal with each other. Their correspondence will shape them in the imagination of your reader.
It will play a key role in who the character is as a person and their worldview.
Not all of your character’s correspondence will be evident at the beginning of their story. Most interactions and conversations will happen after the reader meets the character and your reader will get to go on that journey with them. Some will happen in their past and therefore will be in flashbacks.
Depending on what you choose as the writer will immediately affect how your reader perceives your character and their past and present experiences.
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If you enjoy Creating Close Correspondence with Fictional Characters and writing fiction, you might love owning a domain of your own where you can write about it? Ever want to own your own domain name (Yourname.com)?
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If you enjoy Creating Close Correspondence with Fictional Characters and writing fiction, you might love owning a domain of your own where you can write about it? Ever want to own your own domain name (Yourname.com)?
Bluehost hosts your blog so that you can own your domain and make money blogging. Check them out only if you’re interested in making money blogging; otherwise, go for a free blog instead 🙂
If you enjoy Creating Close Correspondence with Fictional Characters and writing fiction, you might love owning a domain of your own where you can write about it? Ever want to own your own domain name (Yourname.com)?
Bluehost hosts your blog so that you can own your domain and make money blogging. Check them out only if you’re interested in making money blogging; otherwise, go for a free blog instead 🙂
If you enjoy Creating Close Correspondence with Fictional Characters and writing fiction, you might love owning a domain of your own where you can write about it? Ever want to own your own domain name (Yourname.com)?
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When thinking about weapons for fictional characters we want to not only think of how they’ll look swinging it around. We want to understand how the reader will feel about them using their choice weapons. I hope this list helps you think through which weapon would be ideal for the fictional character you are working on.
List of 10 Weapons for Fictional Characters
We’re working on a weapons series for fictional characters right now so feel free to look around to see more ideas for weapons for your Fictional Characters.
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If you enjoy Weapons for Fictional Characters and writing fiction, you might love owning a domain of your own where you can write about it? Ever want to own your own domain name (Yourname.com)?
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Intro to: 5 Tips to Reveal a Character’s Personality Smoothly
This post: 5 Tips to Reveal a Character’s Personality Smoothly, will hopefully help you with smooth characterization.
Characterization is the process by which the writer (you) reveals the personality of the character. And to do it smoothly, would be to do it in a way that is simple and easy for your reader to enjoy rather than feel like they are working to understand your characters’ personalities.
Have you ever been to a carnival or fair?
Have you ever gone and bought your $8 ticket only to get inside and end up paying $100 or more to do anything else all day?
$4 for fries
$2 for the Ferris wheel
$2 for the whirly spin
Before you know it your wallet is empty. But you had so much fun spending all that money and didn’t even think it was odd that they charged you $8 dollars at the beginning of the day just so you could get inside and pay them more money.
Now that’s what I call smooth.
But this acceptance of paying money to get in to pay more happened long ago and without you even knowing it.
The idea of “the fair” being in town was set up long ago to pull dollars out of peoples’ pockets in the set up so that the fried cheese curd man didn’t have to convince you to pay more money for his cheese curds. In fact, it was so smooth that the man at the gate didn’t have to try to convince you to get in for $8 just to pay the county more upon getting inside.
So how do we as writers become this smooth to get our readers to enjoy and digest mentally our characters’ personalities without having to use more words to convince them?
I call this trick the passive onlooker.
Tips to Reveal a Character’s Personality: #1
Make Your Reader the Passive Onlooker.
You’ve been the passive onlooker before.
You’re out in public and you see a dad holding his son’s hand to cross the street. You might not think much of it, but you might think that’s a good dad that cares about his son.
You look the other direction and see another parent dragging their screaming child across the street yanking on their arm viciously and you might think they’re a mean bad parent.
Now the point here isn’t whether either parent in this fictional (or not so fictional) scenario is a good or bad parent. The point is that you were a passive onlooker in this scenario.
You didn’t have to do any work simply looking and thinking. However, you did assume some personality traits of both of the parents you saw.
Let’s create that same scenario for our reader with our characterizations and what we want our reader to assume about our characters.
We don’t want to have to say, “She was kind and charming and caring.” We want our reader to see these traits in action as a passive onlooker.
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Just like they charge outrageous prices at fairs and carnivals and we gladly oblige, they don’t have to convince us at the gate that this is worthwhile because of the setup.
We are also going to create a smooth setup so our reader passively ingests who our character is hook, line, and sinker without much effort on their part.
To start a good setup you yourself need to know, “Who is my character?”
“What do I want my reader to assume about my character?”
Tips to Reveal a Character’s Personality: #3
Make a list of traits you want your character to have:
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This example list is a small but a good start to get an idea in your mind of how you want your character to be received by your reader.
Next, for a good setup to work, you need to convince yourself.
Tips to Reveal a Character’s Personality: #4
Convince yourself.
Convincing yourself is not just important for your character’s future; it’s also great practice for you and will help you IMMENSELY when you’re trying to find the right actions and scenes to display to your reader the complex character they are following.
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So how do we convince ourselves?
Imagine you are sitting, having coffee with a friend and your friend says “Hey, I heard you met someone new last night.” (Your potential character). “What is her/his name?”
You respond, “Johnny.”
Your friend, “Oo Johnny, tell me about him. What does he look like?”
“Well, he’s tall. Handsome, but not too handsome. He’s not like a model or anything, just a normal good-looking guy.”
That’s okay but it’s not good.
“What color are his eyes?”
“His eyes are light brown.”
“Jawline?”
“Uh, his jaw isn’t too pronounced, pretty normal I guess. Oh! But his eyebrows are thicker than most men.”
Good, good. Getting better.
“Tell me about his personality.”
“Well, he’s kind and caring. He drinks wayyyyy tooooo much though.”
“Wait, if he drinks too much then how do you know he’s kind?”
Bingo. Now we have started to create a conversation about the character. I would encourage anyone to do this in-depth exercise or similar ones to help you think through who your character really is.
One, it’s fun and two, in order to smoothly convince your reader that your character is real, you need to know this character enough to tell your friends about them.
So, now we’ve gotten to another good point.
Your friend just asked the golden question and the question we must ask ourselves. How will my reader know they are kind?
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How do you know anyone is actually who they say they are?
Simple: observe them.
If someone told me every day for a month that they love to write but never actually wrote anything whenever I inquired of them about it, one might question whether they actually don’t like writing all that much, or they enjoy doing something else more. Because in theory if someone really likes something they’ll make time for it, even it’s just one minute a day. If someone can’t spend 60 seconds a day doing something, maybe they don’t actually like it as much as they thought they did, or they just don’t find it important enough to prioritize.
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So here’s a quick scene that shows that even though Johnny drinks too much, he is kind in nature.
The scene:
Johnny left the bar late that night. He had his normal six, but after his eleventh, he couldn’t remember how many he actually had.
By the time he made it to his door he had sobered up a little from the time it took him to walk home but he thought it was 1:00 AM. It was closer to 4:00.
When he tried to quietly stumble through the door, he knocked over the plant that he had just bought last week to replace the other plant he knocked over previously.
“Crap,” popped out his mouth in a loud whisper.
He starred at it for a long moment and shook his head.
He stumbled and fumbled his way to the kitchen and took about 5 minutes to get a glass of water which he gulped down in seconds. He burped and made his way to the couch so he could enjoy passing out to some television. That would help drown out his thoughts.
He not-so-gracefully made his way back to the couch and plopped onto his favorite recliner.
Before he could find the remote he heard a noise from the steps. “Crap,” he whispered again.
“Dad?” It was Susan, his sixteen-year-old daughter.
“Hey, honeeeeey!” He was still whispering and slurred.
“Dad? Are you okay?”
“Yeah, honey. J-usts peachy.” He smiled a dumb grin that wasn’t hiding anything. “I didn’t meea-n touh wake youh. Sorry sweetieee.”
“You really shouldn’t be drinking too much, Dad.” She was cold.
“Aw, I know, honey.”
“And you need to be getting more sleep. Did you know it’s 4 am?” She kept her stern tone.
“Crap, I thought it wauhss 1:00. I’m s-so ssorry, honey.”
She let out a disappointed sigh, “Did you break something?”
“I’m s-so sorryyea.” His cracked as He began to cry a little. “I broke your new plant. I’ll get you a new one. I promissse.”
“It’s fine dad. I don’t want another one.” She kept her cold demeanor.
“I’m so sorry. s-s-sweetie.” He held back his cry but teared up more. “Do you want to go out for ice cream this-sweekends?
“I don’t think so, dad. Get some sleep. I’m going back to bed now.”
“Oh okay, honey.” His voice cracked again with shame and remorse. “Sleep tight, don’t let the bugs bite you.”
She walked back up the stairs without turning back, a little perturbed at her father.
Johhny never turned on the television. He just cried a little, ashamed of himself. He missed Lora as he passed out.”
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In this scene, we didn’t hit all of our listed traits. That’s intentional. Instead, I’d keep your list handy and create scenes trying to display at least one. But if others flow into it naturally, that’s great too.
From just observing this one scene, one could start to think that Johnny might be a habitual drinker. One might also start to think that he is kind. He could have been an angry drunk, but instead, we observe him being nice and kind in the scenario even though his daughter gives him a hard time and seems to resent his choices.
We also see that Johnny is sad, and one might start to question who Lora is who was introduced in the scene at the end. Lora might be his wife. Maybe she has left him, or passed away? (It’s good to create questions like these in your reader’s mind that you will answer later. But for this example’s purposes, we can at least start to see that Johnny might be kind, sad and a regretful drunk.
Now, of course, this is just a rough draft and it would be edited and read over several times by several or more people before hitting an audience, but the idea and practice are good, helpful and true.
5 Tips to Reveal a Character’s Personality Smoothly
So for your characters:
Try to make a quick simple list of traits
Write about them simply as if you were telling a friend
Create scenes that convince yourself and others that your character truly does possess these traits, without stating it straight out.
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5 Tips to Reveal a Character’s Personality Smoothly
Now you are on your way to being a smooth operator.
If you have done this setup well, your reader won’t be working to find out what your characters’ personalities are.
They will be enjoying your writing and storytelling abilities as they gobble it up off your pages of strategically laid out scenes that give a great mental picture of who your characters are.
Like I mentioned before characterization, well done is more like a marinated meat than a buffet. The more time it has to soak up the juices, the better.
You might not want to overload them with information about your character as if you just handed them an official brief on the character. Save that for the secret agents.
Take your time and show who your character is over much time and many scenes along the way.
This isn’t to say that your character can’t change along the way either (in fact, they should change in some way), but that change could make some of your other traits even stronger.
For example: Johnny could decide to quit drinking because he loves his daughter. This will strengthen the fact that he is kind and add that he is caring more about others (his daughter) than himself and his own desires.
Take your time to create scenes that intentionally display your character’s traits without listing them straight out. Present who your characters are through scenes and dialogue. Explain without explaining.
Put in the hard work so your readers don’t have to.
I hope this helps!
We hope you enjoyed 5 Tips to Reveal a Character’s Personality Smoothly and that it helps you to create characters and scenes that are engaging and fun for your reader.
Happy writing!
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