Tag Archives: advice

Jun 15 2013

How To Make Your Character More Likable

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As I cruised the forums, I found a post that’s ongoing about how to make a character likable. It caused me to shake my head. Characters are people. What makes a person likable? Well here goes:

1. Personality

2. Flaws

3. Mindset

4. Actions

These are the same that allow us to differentiate between people we like and those we don’t like. And, in my opinion, we’re all assholes, it’s just whether we get along with them. There’s a great quote on that subject in Die Hard 2: Die Harder:

John McClane: Guess I was wrong about you. You’re not such an asshole after all.

Grant: Oh, you were right. I’m just your kind of asshole.

That sums us up as people. Each of us are arrogant (some more than others), calculating, self-centered, and insecure. It’s those qualities that not only differentiate each of us from others, but it’s also the thing that makes us human.

How many times have you read a novel and found the character to be flat and wooden or a straight up Mary Sue? It really turns you off to the book doesn’t it? That’s because the writer didn’t take time to develop the character and make them real. Now that doesn’t mean you need to give every ounce of back story either. Stephen King had a good quote on that:

“The most important things to remember about back story are that (a) everyone has a history and (b) most of it isn’t very interesting.”
― Stephen King, On Writing

The best way to make a likable character is to give them some quality that people can relate to. Even the ‘loner’ character can cause the reader to root for him or her. So, to put things in a nutshell, it’s making real, breathing characters. If you have a hard time doing that, than look at the people around you. What makes them who they are? How do they act? What do they believe in?

A likable character comes from another element writers need to do: be observant.

Happy writing.

Jun 9 2013

The Writing Process

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One of the many things I read on writing forums are questions about the writing process. I’m not sure why beginning writers ask other people what the process is like because there’s no one size fits all approach to it. Each of us is different and how we approach writing, carry it out, and then edit will never be the same. Some folks can’t stand if they don’t edit as they go along, while some (like me) just want to get the, for lack of a better term, verbal diarrhea onto the screen and then saved before editing. To each their own.

What’s really different between us all is how we are when creating. There are folks who need an outline of everything to know where they’re going, while others like myself just work and work to get the first sentence and go from there. I remember a Hemmingway quote basically saying the same thing. If you having a hard time writing, create the best sentence you can and then go from there.

Me? I’m different in the fact that I let my novels grow biologically. So, there can be fits and starts in the rough draft, and things that seem like a tangent until I rewrite and start to polish. However, it works for me. Another thing I do is to I’m a ‘method writer.’ What I mean by that is I literally become my characters when writing and sometimes it’s hard to break away for the day because it becomes ‘real’ to me. It’s a similar concept to method acting, which people like Pacino, Duvall and Nickelson are masters of.

I don’t not endorse this for everyone.

While method writing gives me a very close contact with my characters, I can see how it would be dangerous for those who are not as mentally strong as I am. It’s very easy to lose sight of what’s reality and that can come back to haunt you. Even knowing that the world I’m writing in is fictional, it’s still very hard to walk away and I will become depressed over leaving. This can be bad if a writer isn’t capable of being able to make that break away.

So, there are literally thousands of different ways of approaching writing. What’s the most important thing, though, is letting go of your darling and letting it out into the world. With the growing surge in e-books, getting rejected by agents and the Big Six doesn’t mean the death of a dream or career. You may have to run a blog and take to social media to market your product. Just make sure it’s a polished and good as you can make it before sending it out.

And one last thing: don’t compared yourself to other writers who have been published. You’re not Grisham, Patterson, King, etc etc. You are you and the goal to shoot for is to be the best you can be and not be like someone else. To do so will do nothing but drive you crazy.

I hope this helps.