CV Rick

Another Thing about Character - A Writing Exercise

Great characters are multi-dimensional.

"No shit, Rick.  I came all the way to your blog to hear you tell me this.  Next you're going to recommend clean drinking water and breathable air."

Hear me out! 

One of the things that separates great stories from the mediocre is the depth of the character Nothing shows character depth more than contradictory personality traits.  The reason for that is that people are contradictory in real life.  We don't act the same way all the time and we change our personalities to suit the situation.

Think about a classic television show - M*A*S*H.  The antagonist is Frank Burns, a military disciplinarian whose unwavering patriotism often gets in the way of common sense.  Episode after episode have Pierce and McIntyre infuriating Frank with their laid back approach and unprofessionalism despite the fact that both of those surgeons are gifted in the operating room.  But this cardboard characterization only takes the viewer so far - and it's offset by character traits that are contradictory, but endearing.  For example, he trusts Radar O'Reilly despite showing on many occasions that he doesn't respect enlisted men.  Some of the best scenes are of him and Radar in unguarded moments where he talks about his affair with Margaret (Hot Lips) and his dependency on his wealthy wife back home.  Another seemingly contradictory trait centers on his religious beliefs.  Normally he claims to only rely on the Army and its regulations, but when faced with real danger he is shown to pray, sometimes sincerely rather than desperately. 

Here's today's exercise:

Heroic Qualities - A Writing Exercise

The one thing you learn about characters is that the more a reader identifies with that character, the more they care about him or her, and the more they care about the story you've put him or her in.  Think about that for a second. 

I've been told by people that they don't like Science Fiction stories for various reasons, or thrillers, or horror, or romance.  People tend to avoid genres that don't interest them.  But if you hand someone a story with a really good character they'll read it and they'll keep reading it and they will do so regardless the "genre" it came from.  There was this story about humans who journey to an alien world, encounter bizarre (to us) alien species and the landing party gets killed or enslaved by these creatures.  If that's the description I use to explain Mary Doria Russell's fantastic book, The Sparrow, people assume I'm talking about a science fiction story and many of them dismiss it.  But if I tell them that there's this story about a Jesuit priest who leads an expedition and that during this expedition he has a crisis of faith and abandons all his hope until there's nothing left in his soul and then he rebuilds his belief after having undergone the most cruel tortures that beings can inflict upon the psyche's of each other, then they're more interested. 

It's about the characters.  It's about the reader being able to see something of themselves in those characters and for them to imagine themselves in that situation - "What would I do?"  When you can make characters believable and heroic and you can convince the reader that in this incredible situation that this character's actions are believable, and this character's emotions are believable, that you succeed. 

Today's Writing Exercise is in four simple parts:

1. Write down the name of a real personal hero of yours.
2. What makes this person a hero or heroine to you?  What is his or her greatest heroic quality?
3. What was the moment in time in which you first became aware of this quality in your hero/heroine?
4. Assign this quality to your protagonist.  Find a way for he or she to demonstrate that quality, even in a small way, in his or her first scenes.

My entry:

1. Al Gore

2. He has the courage to press forward in the face of opposition, to acquire knowledge, to use that knowledge to bulldog his views through that opposition, calmly and confidently.

3. I first realized this after the 2000 election, when he withdrew not because he didn't have the right to proceed and not because it was just but because he knew that what was better for the country was a smooth transition of power and not a protracted and extra-constitutional power struggle.

4. In my own story, I'm assigning this quality to Alma right from the beginning.  It's not that he didn't have it, because he did, but now I'm conscious of that and can make the readers know that he is confident without being loud, he is determined without being angry.  He's going to have a quest for the knowledge of truth about himself, his religion, and his race. 

Please, play along.

And now about last week's exercise.

Description as Emotion - A Writing Exercise

How'd y'all do on last week's exercise? 

I picked a section from C.L. Hanson's novel, Exmormon:

As it turned out, the four of us weren't the only ones who had the misfortune of learning about sexual purity. Every single schedule had some class on it somewhere with a title like "Chastity" or "Holy and Unholy Types of Intimacy."

"Wow, they really don't want us to miss that chastity message, do they?" remarked Cookie. 

"Well they probably figure that by putting all these boys and girls together on one campus hormones will be running high, so we have to be reminded of what not to do," said Alexandra.

"I don't think we're likely to forget what it is we're not supposed to do," said Jenny.

"But they want the message to be fresh in our minds when temptation strikes, and they're right to do it," interjected Tammy. "It's mostly for the boys anyway. They don't have as much to worry about from us girls. They're just making us attend the same lessons out of fairness and to specify where we should be drawing the line when a boy gets all kissy and like that."

This is a great example of boiled down dialogue.  She captures four distinct voices in this section, with four different attitudes toward Mormon teachings on chastity.  Cookie is sarcastic, Alexandra is attempting to rationalize, Jenny is rebellious, and Tammy has completely bought the message, the hype, and the stereotypes peddled by the church.  It's hard to make various voices in a group sound like individuals rather than just facets of the author's own voice.

Julieanne Henneman contributed:

My daughter E and I this afternoon.

"Okay, you're gonna be late."

"I know that mom, but guess what? I was ready, like two frickin' hours ago and--"

"And what? You're retarded?"

"No, God sped up time, okay?

"Yeah, honey, well, God just does that."

That's right down to the core of a conversation, filled with wit, banter, and a great punchline.  This is script-worthy back and forth.

This week's assignment is description as emotion.

     

"He Turn Me Into A Pros-e-tute" - A Writing Exercise

I'm starting a new feature here on CV Rick, Ninja Writer.  Writing Exercises.  I know not all of my readers are also writers, but it's good for you to know what writers think about and how we craft our stories.  You're welcome to play along and like my MeMes, participation isn't mandatory, nor am I going to "tag" anyone. 

Dialogue is a challenge for many writers because they can't get past the fact that real people don't talk like that.  Watch some quick, funny dialogue on television - like Sex in the City or Gilmore Girls - and you'll be amazed at the quick give and take, the breathless comebacks, and the succinct wisdom uttered in quips of effortless wit.  If you think about it too carefully you'll wonder why you and your friends don't talk like that.  Are those women just smarter than us, or are the writers skilled? 

In normal speech thoughts take longer to complete and interruptions are frequent.  We overtalk and change subjects, sometimes without ever returning to the point.  We litter our speech with pause placeholders - umm, ah, eh.  We say every detail and expect the listener to go, "uh huh" dozens of times through our recounting of events.  That kind of stuff doesn't appear in well-written dialogue because written speech is meant to cut right to the point and fool readers or viewers into believing a typical conversation has taken place. 

Here's a fantastic example.  In this conversation between late night television host, Jimmy Kimmel and a couple of men who were banned from a Chinese Buffet because they ate too much, the large man doing the talking tells every single detail, leaving nothing out.  A writer leaves out a lot in order to get to a point, yet leaving enough detail in so that the reader forms the complete scene in her mind.  Watch it and think about how you'd have to rewrite the dialogue to make this interesting story explode from the page.

Let's get to our assignment.  Over the next week I want you to listen to your own conversations and those of others.  Yes, listen in - at work, on the bus, in the bar, at the store - and think about how the words spoken have to be distilled in the writer's mind in order to achieve dialogue worth reading.  You don't want to bore people.  Then pick one of those conversations and write it without the extraneous b.s.  Give us a distilled, clever version that you feel pops when spoken.  Make sure both, or all, parties to the conversation sound distinct.  Put this conversation on your blog and send me a link, or send me the dialogue directly.  I'll put them all on my blog in a week, and issue a new assignment. 

After the jump, my overheard conversation, which includes the words in the title of this post.