All About Characters

December 29, 2024 by Harvey

In Today’s Journal

* All About Characters
* A Limited Time Giveaway
* The Writing
* Of Interest
* The Numbers

All About Characters

Containing brief notes on

• Character archetypes,

• Creating vs. “crafting” (constructing) characters

• Learning about character traits and quirks, and

Character Archetypes

If you’re honest with yourself, every character you ever meet in real life is at first only an archetype. It’s true, and there’s nothing you can do about it.

When you first encounter a person you’ve never met before, your brain instinctively leaps to two conclusions:

The first conclusion is your perception of whether the person either is or is not a threat. Then you react accordingly.

The second conclusion is that the person is a particular archetype: he’s a redneck or a gangster or a hillbilly or a city boy or wealthy or poor, intelligent or less than intelligent (compared with yourself) and so on. Then you either like the person or you don’t.

So everyone is initially an archetype. And if circumstances do not permit you to get to know that person at greater depth, s/he will remain an archetype for as long and s/he remains in your memory.

But if you are around that person long enough to witness some of his or her personal traits emerge (angry or bitter or calm, in possession of a sense of humor or not, a moral compass or not, etc.) the archetype fades and the unique person comes more into view.

In other words, you don’t construct the true character of the person. The character of the person reveals itself over time as you interact with him as he lives his life.

Creating vs. “Crafting” (Constructing) Characters

For those of us who write into the dark, it’s exactly the same.

When we first encounter a character in a story, s/he is at first only an archetype. We don’t attempt to construct the character in advance or from that point forward.

We neither need nor want that artificial safety net. Constructing a character in advance costs us time that we could be writing. Forcing a construction on a character as the story progresses slows that progress.

Instead, who that unique character truly is becomes evident to us (and to the reader) as the story unfolds and the character reveal his traits and quirks. To steal a line from a famous puppet, “Yup, just like a real boy.”

In allowing the character to reveal himself to us, we are also trusting him, allowing him to be who he truly is instead of forcing him into some mold or some preconceived notion of who we think he ‘should’ be.

In other words, we are again recording the authentic character, warts and all, in the character’s authentic story as we run through the story with him and it unfolds around us.

To be clear, we who write into the dark trust our characters. We have determined they are not a threat (at least to us) and we have allowed them to reveal who they are as the story unfolds, just as we do in real life. Sometimes we like them; sometimes we don’t.

We apply this same technique (or lack of a technique) to all of our characters, from the main or POV character all the way down to the secondary or tertiary “cardboard” character who pops into the story, usually to foreshadow something or other.

But for a different take on writing characters (I can’t bring myself to say “creating,”) see Of Interest. Not that we don’t all use traits, etc. from people we know or have known. But those traits are already in our creative subconscious. We who WITD simply draw on them, subconsciously, as the story unfolds.

Learning About Character Traits and Quirks

Nobody can think of everything all at once.

We become aware of the individual traits and quirks of characters we meet, either in real life or in fiction.

But as writers, we can learn in advance a lot of the physical, mental, and emotional traits and quirks that characters routinely display.

In learning (becoming aware of) those traits and quirks, we also ‘upload’ them to our creative subconscious. In turn, our characters pick up those traits and quirks as necessary and use them as their story unfolds around you and you write it down.

There are probably other compilations of character traits and quirks available. But for now I’ll just mention my own: Creating Realistic Characters.

A Limited Time Giveaway

I’m looking forward to revising CRC, but for now, you can get it completely free by emailing me at harveystanbrough@gmail.com. Please put Creating Realistic Characters in the subject line.

By return email, I’ll send you a PDF of Creating Realistic Characters as well as a PDF document titled “Cliché Traits, Character Arcs, Rooting Interest Techniques” and a PDF document entitled “Partial Listing of Character Traits.”

When I’ve completed the updated, revised version of CRC it will include the information contained in those other PDF documents.

But you can get it all right now. Email me.

The Writing

Yesterday I cycled back over part of the novel again and cut another 500 words. Remember in an earlier post I said the writer is actually two people?

• One, you’re the recorder. As the recorder you run through the story with the characters, doing your best to keep up as the story unfolds around you.

• Two, you’re the presenter. As the presenter, you pay attention to nuance, doing your skill-level best to present the story as best you can.

As the recorder of this one, everything that’s happened thus far in the novel is recorded accurately and authentically.

As the presenter of this one, I deleted almost 500 words—but only because I’d already recast that part of the story more accurately and more authentically than I’d originally recorded it.

An important distinction

• Recasting is a function of the creative subconscious. You write the scene (or part of the scene) again from scratch, giving both yourself and the characters a second shot at it.

• Rewriting is a function of the conscious, critical mind. You don’t delete anything. You go through word by word and sentence by sentence and rewrite as you go. (Even sounds like drudgery, doesn’t it?) This process invites author input. For that reason, it is not conducive to telling the characters’ authentic story.

Of Interest

How to Easily Create Convincing Characters

Dr. Mardy’s Quotes of the Week: “New Year’s Resolutions” This was a no-duh addition to TNDJ. Goals, anybody?

The Numbers

The Journal…………………………… 1030

Writing of The Intermittent Ghost: Temple’s Way (BO-31A)

Day 1…… 4202 words. To date…… 4202
Day 2…… 3055 words. To date…… 7257
Day 3…… 3412 words. To date…… 10669
Day 4…… 3352 words. To date…… 14021
Day 5…… 1153 words. To date…… 15174
Day 6…… 1785 words. To date…… 16959
Day 7…… 4638 words. To date…… 21597
Day 8…… 3278 words. To date…… 24875

Fiction for December………………… 96972
Fiction for 2024………………………. 843072
Nonfiction for December…………….. 27580
Nonfiction for 2024…………………… 390150
2024 consumable words…………….. 1,233,222

Average Fiction WPD …. 3463

2024 Novels to Date…………………….. 19
2024 Novellas to Date…………………… 1
2024 Short Stories to Date……………… 32
Novels (since Oct 19, 2014)…………..… 103
Novellas (since Nov 1, 2015)…………… 10
Short stories (since Apr 15, 2014)……… 269
Short story collections……………………. 29

Disclaimer: Whatever you believe, unreasoning fear and the myths that outlining, revising, and rewriting will make your work better are lies. They will always slow your progress as a writer or stop you cold. I will never teach the myths on this blog.

Writing fiction should never be something that stresses you out. It should be fun. On this blog I teach Writing Into the Dark and adherence to Heinlein’s Rules. Because of WITD and because I endeavor to follow those Rules I am a prolific professional fiction writer. You can be too.