Interesting characters with conflicting desires are the heart of your story. There is no story without them. Five elements make up a character that immediately grabs the readers attention:
1. Exaggeration The exaggeration can be physical, mental or emotional, or a combination of them. Exaggerating your characters makes them inherently stand out and makes it easier for your readers to create a mental image of them in their heads as they are moving through the story. 2. Unusual Position Putting your characters in an odd position or situation that conflicts with their personality makes them immediately stand out and grabs the attention of the reader. 3. Introduction Get the bare bones of who your character is into the readers mind the first time they meet them. People judge a book by its cover. You're not going to get a second chance to make a strong impression. Create a memorable characteristic entry action that introduces the character to the reader and provides context on who they are, how they're likely to behave in situations throughout the story and how they contrast with the other characters around them. Another powerful tool used to describe and visualize your characters whenever you introduce or reintroduce them in the story is to use a collection of two to four words set aside in the entire story to apply only to describe your characters physical characteristics and their personality traits which include their clothes and the props they carry with them. Main characters like the protagonist and antagonist can get more to strengthen their mental image in the reader's mind. When we first meet people, we notice their eyes, face, hands, and clothes first before we get to know their personality through interacting with them or seeing them interact with others. Use this to your advantage when introducing characters while moving through the story. Sight offers the most substantial amount of information in the shortest amount of time than any of our other senses. Use the other senses and details to complete the vision. A few examples of Harry Potter characters introduced with this tool are: - Hagrid. Large, hairy, beetle bright eyes, Large overcoat, pink umbrella. - Hermione. Lots of bushy brown hair, large front teeth and a bossy sort of voice - Snape. Greasy black hair, a hooked nose, and sallow skin. - Professor McGonagall. A very stern face and this was not someone to cross - A Goblin. True, swarthy face and long fingers Use the names of the characters itself as allusive to who they are in addition to the visual descriptions and traits used to describe and identify them in the course of the story. Can you trust a Snape? Root for a Potter? The role of the character, their obsessions, and dialog can add to the help crystalize the visual image projected into the reader's mind. Introductions are essential; you can't afford to screw it up. Take your time to get it right. 4. Believability The most compelling character becomes a cartoon if they don't act and behave believably in the story world according to who they're set up to be. They need to be a whole person with a life of their own outside the events that happen in the story. You'll do most of this work in Sequels, where you'll show their emotions, reaction, and decisions to the scenes that happen to them throughout the story. 5. Empathy This element takes time and the course of the entire story sometimes to get right. You'll need an exaggerated character, placed in an unusual situation for them to be in, have them introduced and reintroduced well, and have them believable to start. After that, you'll need to put them in situations that relatable to the reader, like paying bills, grieving after a loved one dies, having a crush and being afraid to make a move. Get this right and get the reader to love who you want them to love and hate who you want them to hate, and you 'll have to reader come back to your stories and characters over and over again. How can you add these five elements while creating your characters?
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Writing genre fiction is work and learning the craft of writing will help you write well-paced engaging stories with solid characters even when you don’t feel artistic or inspired to write. There is only one way to learn the craft of writing, and that is with hours of deliberate practice. There is no short cut around it. This path is also one way to write stories, but not THE only way.
Story Craft Story craft is about getting thoughts, emotions, and images from your head to another person in the most impactful and accurate way possible. You do this by creating a narrative about a protagonist settling out to obtain an important goal. As the story progresses, it becomes more and more doubtful that they will achieve their goal based on the antagonistic forces set against them in the story. In the final climax, your protagonist either succeeds or fails based on their choices and actions they make in the course of the story. Story craft, in the end, is just a toolbox used to exploit and manipulate human psychology and emotions in your favor. Conflict All stories are about conflict. To have conflict in a story ALL characters in a story need to have goals, and if they don’t, they don’t belong in the story. The best way to create conflict in character is to give them a specific important goal and a really strong why and motivation to achieve that goal. When you're telling your story, with the intention of having the readers construct a movie in their heads as they are reading it, you NEED to follow the stimulus-response flow. If you don't, you will kick your readers out of the movie they’ve been creating in their heads faster than you can say “Let me explain.” Once that happens, you’ve lost your opportunity of telling an engaging story. Point of View Success or failure of your story comes down to your choice of your point of view character. First person point of views is “perfect point of views” because that's not only how we see the world ourselves, but it's also the most effective way to get your readers into the story world fast. Downsides of using the first person point of view are that you need to start tracking what other characters are doing “off stage.” This approach will force you to make your protagonist very proactive, nosy and in everyone's business as that's the only way they will get the information they need to get to their goal or overcome their current obstacle. Third person viewpoints allow you to add more than one POV character into the story and expand the creativity you’ll have in telling the story. It, however, comes with the complexity and danger of messing things up for the reader's engagement in the story and the characters. Its recommended that you start with the first-person viewpoint first before moving into the third-person point of view. When wondering which characters to pick when writing, choose the character that has the most to lose in that scene, as you will have the characters and the readers deeply invested in the stakes and outcomes of that scene. Story Skeleton The story skeleton used to build your novel/s, characters, subplots, scenes, sequels and climax on top of can fit into a two-sentence framework. [When something happens] [Your Protagoinist] [pursues a goal]. But will they succeed when [Antagonist provides opposition]? When brainstorming a story idea, go through 99 iterations of this story question and pick the one that resonates with you the most before moving on to build anything else for your story. |
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