dramatic dream (Photo credit: unNickrMe)
I’ve been dreaming about my characters lately. My subconscious has been putting them in all sorts of strange situations, and they’ve been forced onto the back foot and had to find a way out of them. The scenes generally have nothing to do with my novel, but they are interesting in their own right.
What this is doing, of course, is cementing certain characteristics and traits in my mind about these people I have created. By putting them through things that would never come up in the course of the narrative, I am learning a lot about them and they’re evolving at a rate of knots. Of course, they were pretty well fleshed out before – my earlier post about not knowing them well enough is now well and truly irrelevant – but now they’ve got a depth they were previously lacking.
I have to admit, I didn’t even realise they were lacking until this past week, but now I know better. It’s amazing what having someone dangling off a cliff, hanging onto a fragile root system for their very survival, is doing for their character. Or how someone else tries to save them. Really, it’s a fascinating process.
In this case I have my subconscious to thank. I’ve seen writing exercises where you put your characters in strange situations and see how they respond, but I’ve never really done one of those. (Yes, I know, I’m sadly lacking in this sort of thing.) In previous stories I’ve written I’ve known my characters so well that I was barely writing them, but instead putting them in a scene and then stage-managing and watching what they did of their own accord. I wasn’t quite at that level with these characters – nearly, but not quite. Now I am.
As such, I have in my own way learned the benefits of doing this sort of writing exercise. Sure, I wasn’t writing, but dreams are still your creativity at work and I was getting my characters well out of their comfort zones, even more than the novel requires. And of course I benefited enormously.
This has got me thinking. If this is so useful, then what other writing exercises should I be doing in order to get this manuscript as good as it can possibly be? My general tactic is to write the scenes from several different points of view, to make sure I get each person’s motivations and reactions right, but this is the first time I’ve tackled things that weren’t directly related to the story I’m telling. And it was brilliant.
So now I’m asking you: What tips and tricks do you use to get your story right? What writing exercises work for you? Because if we all share our techniques and try new things, then we’ll all become better writers.
Related articles
- A Writer’s Less Than Supportive Subconscious (jmmcdowell.com)
- All Hail the Subconscious (jenniferlesher.wordpress.com)
- Inspiration-Dreams. (iwriteinspiration.wordpress.com)
- Dreams (electricbohemian.wordpress.com)
Aren’t dreams wonderful? I spend a lot of time dream writing and will often wake up to discover my phone suddenly contains pages of dream inspired rambles.
One of the exercises I’ve found most useful for developing my characters, particularly those other than my protagonist, is to jump back a few years and write from their perspective what they were doing however many years ago. The brain being as it is, I will usually write a scene that explains how they got to where they are in the story. It is interesting and fun. It does work for protagonists too but I find to a lesser extent given I’ve usually covered a bit more of their past in the story.
That’s my two cents. Xx
Now there’s a good idea! Maybe I’ll try that during a low time at work. (Only kidding, boss!) I have the backstory worked out for most of my characters, but there are a couple who I haven’t charted so I might try that for them. Thanks!
I swear that my subconscious is smarter than I am (although maybe that’s not saying much). Many times it’s worked out things that I (the conscious me) couldn’t.
My character profiles include a few questions that prompt me to consider my characters in situations that aren’t necessarily related to my WIP. But to answer your question, a good tip (albeit not character-related) is to ask yourself ‘what’s the obvious thing that would happen next?’—and then discard the response. Think of multiple possibilities and pick the most interesting; it will never be the first idea that comes into your mind.
Another good idea, Peter. Thank you! I have used your character profiles and found them extremely useful, but like you I think my subconscious is more clued in than I am sometimes. But I really like the idea of discarding the obvious and going from there. Makes for some interesting thoughts!
They say that if your characters talk to you in dreams, you are doing something great. I tend to start off on the physical. My protagonist is a Peruvian woman in her mid-thirties, lower economic bracket. Being male, I have to do extra homework to get her right. A woman’s book club had me as a guest and loved my first book but one woman wanted to know what kind of shoes Nina wore. What? She wears boots with her uniform, sneakers when she is solving crimes and pumps if going out. Yes, but what kind of shoes? I was caught off-guard. Never again. So now I start off scenes (internally) with a checklist: what is she wearing? How has she done her hair? In a ponytail because she is running a quick errand and it’s windy? What kind of shoes is she wearing? How many pairs does she own? No more than a few pair. One good pair of black heels to wear on special occasions. She keeps them in the box and wipes them off when she puts them away. Can she afford nail polish? What does she think of nail polish? Jeans? What kind of jeans would she wear if money were no object? Does she have an opinion on spending a fortune on jeans when a third of her country is hungry? The physical leads to the psychological. Lipstick? Believe it or not, the lipstick question got me on a Google search of Peruvian department stores. I settled for a brand I thought a woman her age on a budget might think was OK without being cheap or flashy. But she is Latina with a sense of style North American women might not share. All of this helps me get into her head.
I find the physical is a great place to start. Elmore Leonard once said his criminals go to the closet every morning and ponder what pants to put on.
You know, that’s a really good point. Even as a woman I don’t really think about what shoes my character is wearing or what she prefers, but that’s because it’s not something that’s important to me. To other people, though, it is, and I should probably pay more attention to things like that if I want to engage my (female) target audience. Thanks for the tip!
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Thanks for adding my blog to your links. Also thanks for reading my blog. I hope you have a great day.
Thank you! And you are most welcome.
Thanks for the link to my blog! I appreciate the notice.
I don’t have any specific tricks for getting my stories and characters right – I write them and then revisit them after a bit, then ask others to read for me and note anything that doesn’t quite work for them. There’s probably a faster way though.
You’re most welcome!
Asking others for advice is always a sound way of getting your characters right. I’m a bit thingy about that, though – I don’t like sharing too much until I have my first draft finished. Then, I’m happy to pass around to all and sundry for feedback, but in the meantime for whatever reason I struggle through alone. This probably isn’t wise, I know, but it’s how I operate, at least for now. Thanks for the feedback!
I haven’t tried this yet, but it makes perfect sense to me and I’m about to try it: writing a short story about one of your characters. Can be something totally outside the story you’re telling, from when they were younger. Or it can be a sort of day-in-the-life thing. I’m going to do that for the story I’m working on, just to get a more personal feel for the backstory, the past events that led to what is happening now.
Also, I wanted to let you know that I’ve nominated you for two blog awards (you can have both, or only one, as you choose!): the Booker Award for book bloggers and the One Lovely Blog award. Head on over here to find out more: http://crestingthewords.wordpress.com/2012/09/13/updating-the-blog-part-1-or-the-honour-of-receiving-and-the-joy-of-passing-on-awards/
You know, that’s a really good idea too. I’ve done it – I referred above to writing scenes from different characters’ POVs, and that can help get the narrative really on track from a characterisation viewpoint. I have gone further, though, and written things that happen outside the scope of the main narrative – not short stories so much as extra scenes, I guess, but they still help with keeping my characters in line. Great idea!
Also, thank you so much for the blog awards! *blushes* I’m heading to your blog now to check them out. Unfortunately it looks like I have a bit of a backlog in accepting awards but I will do my acceptance speech as soon as I can. Thanks again.