Take A Risk Tuesday: Getting into Character

Our characters are the life blood of our writing. Whether you're writing fiction or nonfiction, it is the characters that will propel the reader through to the end. The last thing we want is homogenized characters that are reflections of ourselves. The best way to keep that from happening is to allow yourself to explore diverse personalities. 

1)  Find a subculture to drop yourself into. 

The other  night I went to a death metal show at Studio Seven in Seattle. Wow, was I out of my element but talk about fodder for unique character traits and images. I really believe it's healthy for us to be open and experience new and different perspectives. Am I going to gauge my ears and tattoo my chest? No. Do I now love and listen to screaming vocals and hard scratchy guitar.? Hardly. What I do have are great sensory detail and visuals that can come into play in my fiction.

2) Get in touch with your dark side. 

We all have one, even if we have to dig pretty deep to find it. Have you ever been jealous, angry or manipulative? Everyone has at some level. When you've gone to the trouble of creating an awesome protagonist, don't weaken him with a lame antagonist. There needs to be a real fear that your hero could fail.  You have to be able to understand and get inside the head of your antagonist. Don't be afraid to explore that side of yourself.

How do you get into character?

Why Isn't This Scene Working?

Tweet    "It's 2:00am and I have been up for two hours frantically typing a scene for my current middle school MS. You know what I'm talking about, the kind of scene that won't let you get on with anything in your life until you get it on paper."

    Sound familiar?  Well, it had been two months since that night and I still couldn't figure out where the scene fit.  Still sound familiar? Well,  I revised it, tried it in several different positions but it still wasn't working. So I decided that I would just put it aside and deal with it later and picked up one of the current books I'm reading, The Architecture of the Novel by Jane Vandenburgh. In her section on plot  she writes:

      "So plot is story's sequence--the 3,2.1 or the 2,3,1 of it's scenes. These are events arranged not necessarily in the order in which they chronologically happened. Rather, they are positioned so they best show us what we are to understand about each event in the moment in which it occurs. Sequencing has everything to do with the way plot weaves layers of time... we can look back...and understand and events significance-- only later, when we encounter meaning in the story's narrative future.' (Vandenburgh, 78) 

Eureka! It suddenly occurred to me that the scene that I believed was for my protagonist,  was actually a scene involving her deceased mother. So now I had to discover where in my plot this information/ scene would be meaningful and how my protagonist would learn about it.

Uncovering story and plot is such an adventure! Have you had any eureka moments you would like to share?

It's still not to late to enter my 80 followers celebration give-away, enter here. Amazingly in only two days I have now jumped to 103 followers, so....in celebration I will be adding another copy of Possession, doubling the chances of winning!! :) Be sure to enter before 12:00 midnight on December, 9th.