On Characters: A Series: 3

In Today's Journal

* My Quotes on Characters
* A Chart of Character Traits
* On Storystarter Scenes
* Of Recent Note
* Of Interest
* The Numbers

My Quotes on Characters

To follow up on yesterday's post, here are some thoughts I've had over the years concerning characters:

• "In fiction, character voice is what matters, and that doesn't always mean words."

• "Let the characters direct the reader. They, not you, are living the story. Never correct the maestro in how to wield the wand."

• "My characters always know how to get from A to Z, but why wouldn't they? It's their story."

• "My characters enable me to know things I would not otherwise know and experience lives I would not otherwise experience owing to the physical limitations of my body and my situation."

• "There is no greater conflict than that of a character with a conscience, a choice of paths, and an urgent need, provided by an external stimulus, to choose one path or the other."

• "Why do I focus on character and setting? Because maybe 10% of a fiction is comprised of events and those take place in a setting. The other 90% is the characters' reactions to that event, which also take place in a setting."

• "A fiction isn't 'about' the characters' story. A fiction IS the characters' story. The characters are assuming all the risk."
  "You're a writer, not a character. Never stand between the reader and the story."

• "Fully giving yourself over to Story—allowing your characters uncontrolled access to your creative subconscious and complete control of your fingers as you and they race through the story that they, not you, are living—is easily among the more sensual, intimate, and purely truthful acts you can ever perform as a writer."

Character Traits

On Story-Starter Scenes

One of my personal favorite story starters is a scene that features working fishermen queueing up for their pay in a shack on a dock.

I've started several stories and a novel series with that setting and that scene.

When you have tired, sweaty men of mixed but nearly always mysterious backgrounds at the end of a long day, tying boats to the dock in advance of a coming storm, inadvertently getting in each others' way, etc. conflicts and complications are bound to happen.

In a setting like that, you also have all the sensory input you need: for example,

• the feel of the wind or breeze, of the heavy boots on tired feet, sweat-dampened shirts on torsos,

• the sight of the boats and the clouds and seagulls and growing whitecaps in the distance, the shack, the dock itself, the characters, the road to town,

• the sound of the wind slapping a door and the waves lapping or crashing on the pilings and the dialogue mixed with all of that,

• the smell of the sea and the dock and the sweat,

• the taste of the salt air and the anticipated taste of whatever food and drink await the workers at home or in their favorite bar and eatery just up the road, and

• the emotional senses of relief or joy or dread,
  plus whatever memories any of that conjures up for the characters,

Try writing an opening with a scene like that, and it will almost write itself.

Of Recent Note

from Writers in the Storm, a good article on passive construction: what it is or is not.

See "Using 'was' is passive writing, or is it?"

Back tomorrow with a guest post on generative AI from Sean Monaghan. (Thanks, Sean.)

Talk with you again then.

Of Interest

Making Use of Storystarter Scenes in Fiction

How To Use Traits to Create Character Arcs No idea whether this is any good, but I thought it was timely, given the chart above.

The Numbers

The Journal…………………………… 630

Writing of Blackwell Ops 37: Temple-Schiff

Day 1…… 2012 words. To date…… 2012
Day 2…… 2487 words. To date…… 4499
Day 3…… 4597 words. To date…… 9096
Day 4…… 2790 words. To date…… 11886

Fiction for February………………….. 14576
Fiction for 2025………………………. 135931
Nonfiction for February…………….... 6210
Nonfiction for 2025…………………… 38190
2025 consumable words…………….. 170401

Average Fiction WPD (February)…….. 2894

2025 Novels to Date…………………….. 3
2025 Novellas to Date…………………… 0
2025 Short Stories to Date……………… 3
Novels (since Oct 19, 2014)…………..... 107
Novellas (since Nov 1, 2015)…………… 10
Short stories (since Apr 15, 2014)……… 274
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.

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