Hey everyone, we’re back here again with another great post. I just want to start this post by thanking everyone who has been reading these posts. I really appreciate all the reads no matter if you pick and choose what to read or read everything in order. Thank you so much for all the views! I also wanted to apologize for the late social media update for last weeks post. I totally forgot to update anything. But I’m grateful for everyone who checked anyway. Haha. This week’s post is something that I always struggled with but I think it’s important nonetheless. I hope that it helps. So, without further ado…
Ten Writing Commandments: Know Your Characters
This week’s post is on knowing your characters. Whenever I talk to other writers about this, they all have a different point of view on exactly what knowing your characters means. I’ve heard multiple different ideas and also multiple different ways of knowing your characters. If I tried to share all of them, I think it would take more than one post so in this post I’m going to try and share my method to why I think its important to know your characters and how to do it.
Have you ever read a book, and when you’ve finished you didn’t feel like you knew the character at all? Have you ever read a book and when your friend asked you how was it you say, “It was a good story, but I hated the character.”? This happens to me all the time. You can have the best plot in the world but if you didn’t know your character while you were writing it then your reader won’t relate and will find the story tedious or boring. Its similar to talking to someone for the first time. If you spend more time getting to know them and you can understand where they are coming from then you will be able to have a more entertaining and meaningful conversation with them. However, if they just introduce themselves and then go into a thirty- or forty-minute story about the horrible experience they had last week at the dentist you will quickly get bored. Why? Because you don’t understand or relate to the character.
Also, readers are usually more perceptive than the writer will give them credit for. If you don’t know your character than your reader will usually pick up on how fake they seem. If the character seems fake and fictional then suddenly the whole story is purely fictional, and they don’t relate to the story at all. Yes, your stories are generally supposed to be fictional but even fictional stories can sometimes ring true and if you don’t know your characters it makes that even harder.
Also, character motivation can get muddled when you don’t know them. If you don’t really know your character all that well, then when your character and you reach a new difficult situation then you, as the writer, will simply take a hit and pick the path you think will be the best for the story. However, often times this isn’t what your character would’ve done. But you didn’t know your character. You didn’t know what they’d do and so you chose what you would do.
These are all the reasons for knowing your character but one of the most difficult parts is HOW to know your character. There are many methods out there but for me I use one particular method that I feel lets me know my characters rather well.
The part of it that most writers don’t actually like to do but that I tend to do for any really intense project is fill out one of those really super in-depth character sheets. Sometimes these are not super helpful for some. For me, I really enjoy the results of filling one of these out. It isn’t necessarily a fun process, but it always gives me a bit of depth and window into my characters mind and makes me as a writer closer to my characters. It doesn’t just give me a logical understanding of my characters but also brings me closer to them. I learn to appreciate my characters and even enjoy them. If you as a writer don’t enjoy your characters, either you don’t know them well enough, or you are using the wrong characters for you story.
The second thing that I usually do to really get to know and understand my characters is hypothetical situations. I think about situations, outside of what would happen in my fictional world, situations my character probably won’t have to face in my story, and I write a short response on how I think they would respond and through this I learn to really understand my character and their motivation.
So those are all of the things that I think are important. Those are the reasons you need to know your characters and also how I personally do it. There are a lot of different ways to get to know your character. Explore. Find what works best for you and once you do, stick to it. It will help you write a good story. Next week we have another good post in the ten commandments series, and we are halfway through! I hope you enjoyed this week. Don’t forget to share, subscribe and follow me on social media. And never forget,
Get Up, Get Writing, and Get Published. See you next week!
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