Make your characters hurt

AuthorAppleton on April 2, 2018

Most writers have a little difficulty building their characters into third dimensional creations. Eventually as the story progresses they fall in love with at least the majority of their characters. Without this creative transformation the story feels flat, but most writers struggle with the next essential phase of creative story development:  making their characters hurt.

When I was writing my first novel,  Swords of the Six, I received my first editorial critique. I remember feeling disappointed because the editor had been unable to make a strong  emotional connection to the characters.  But she adeptly noted that the connection could be made if my characters did not continue to come unscathed out of every battle.

This  was a  revelation to me as I proceeded with the story. I had a scene that I was working on and after a vicious battle with sea serpents my hero did emerged unscathed. So I went back and rewrote it,  leaving the hero with scars for life. The result was eye-opening. As the character recovered from his wounds, I found myself creating interactions, with  other characters for him, on a whole new level.  Suddenly this was not a legend without reason, he had become a hero truly by blood sweat and tears.

Inflicting pain on the story’s hero made me fear for his safety in a way that I had not realized I could. Prior to this the story was fascinating, one could say it was enthralling, but it hadn’t felt real before. Not in the sense that it could be part of the real world that we live in. Now, I could imagine my own terror, my own dread of the consequences of the battles he was facing.

Hurting my characters became an essential element to every story that I wrote. In my primary series this has served me over and over again. In “The Sword of the Dragon: Offspring” I was afforded another opportunity when the heroine emerged out of a battle that completely disfigured her. I had written it out so that the dragon prophet healed her of her wounds, but when an author friend commented on it I realized there was a much better angle to take to that. When the dragon healed her of her wounds I changed it so that he received her scars on his own body. The result was sensational! Suddenly what he had done for her did not seem so light a gift. Suddenly the gift was a test  and demonstration of his true love for her.

Make your fiction characters hurt and make the consequences permanent. Little speaks to their moral fiber as much as showing how they respond to tough circumstances or limitations. These are the fires in which the writing gold is refined.

Q: Do your characters hurt?

How to avoid cookie-cutter characters

AuthorAppleton on August 3, 2015

Cookie-cutter characters kill fiction. Weak villains and weak heroes, characters that we can easily forget. How do we avoid this to strengthen the books we write?

Remember that childhood tale of the Gingerbread Man? Oh yes, he was cut out of cookie dough and ran away from the little old woman, shouting, “Run, run as fast as you can. You can’t catch me, I’m the gingerbread man!” He ran until he came to a river and there the sly fox fooled him and at the last ate him.

The story is simple by design, yet it gives readers and incredibly memorable impression of the gingerbread man. Why? Because in a short time you understand the gingerbread man’s primary traits. Namely, he is over-confident and brainless. He is so consumed by his desire to escape everyone that wants to eat him that he jumps into bed with the devil himself.

Create memorable characters by focusing on the traits that make them themselves. What makes them tick? What makes them different from their peers, or do they follow the crowd? What strengths can they use to rise above their circumstances… or what failings will we see bring them to a miserable end?

It was said of J.K. Rowling that she created 3rd dimensional characters in her Harry Potter series, and I quite agree. The characters had personality. They had depth. We could feel what they were feeling, or at the least understand the motivations behind their actions.

All great fiction stories are like this, even if they are plot-driven rather than character-driven. Weak characters will kill any good story. If you mold them in the image of known characters the readers will resent it, or at the least find it forgettable. But if you fashion a new individual with their own set of traits and deep-rooted motivations for the actions they take, you will create a story worth re-reading. One that one generation will treasure for the next.

Q: What stories have you felt use too many “cookie-cutter” characters?