When I run writing workshops I tell the students that all the words they are going to write are already inside them...rather like your teeth.
Finding those precious words is an act of mining; digging deep into the seams that run through our subconscious and bringing the words and thoughts and images to the surface. One of the most effective ways of mining is simply thinking. Meg Rossoff recently wrote in a blog that writing is only 20% of the work of forming a novel. The other 80% is thinking. I absolutely agree with her.
The problem in our high tech, race around world, is allowing ourselves the space to think. When I was young ( i.e. before marriage and kids and sharing all my space with other human beings) I spent an awful lot of time just lying on my bed dreaming into space, thinking and thinking and thinking. Today with all the distractions in our lives this seems to be so much more elusive, that magical thinking time when you let your mind wander and follow the thought all the way to Mars and back...you know what I mean.
But without deep thinking the novel remains on the surface, unlayered, undeveloped, the characters never truly reveal those hidden characteristics which will make them so memorable long after the last page is read. Yes, some of that comes as a gift, leaping onto the page as we write. But a great deal of those deep and important details sift up to the surface through the seams and seams of words and thoughts, during the hours of simply – thinking.
As working writers maybe we find it difficult to give ourselves permission to sit and think, or walk about and think. We might feel that we have to have an excuse, like, ‘Just off to the gym’ or ‘Must take the dog for a walk’ and yes, those might be the best ways for someone to do their thinking.
But thinking is such an important part of the work of writing that we should not feel we need to make any excuse at all – if ‘they’ come upon us, sitting on a chair, staring silently into space. We should be able to say, I’m thinking. And that should be seen as work as much as walking the dog or bashing away on our laptops.
So the next time you see me sitting without speaking, eyes glazed over, you will know exactly what I’m doing..... won’t you?
www.miriamhalahmy.com
Use Character Traits to Make Your Character Sympathetic
Yesterday, we looked at 9 character traits that can be used to develop sympathy for your character. Today, we’ll look at using those traits in your story. It’s not enough just to tell yourself, or write on a checklist, that your character has these traits and is, therefore, instantly sympathetic. You must USE these traits. How?
Literary agent Donald Maass is a master of telling us how to use traits to create break out novels. He pushes you to go farther and deeper at ever turn.
Using the Character Traits
- Flaws. For character flaws – a necessary part of a sympathetic character, since perfect characters are not sympathetic – try making the character aware of his/her problem. When the character berates him/herself for being so grouchy in the morning, we have sympathy. When I announced to my 5:45 a.m. spinning class that I was a Grouch, that I had gotten up on the wrong side of bed, they all laughed and were extra kind to me that day. (The instructor still made me work hard, but at least I didn’t have to talk to anyone and pretend to be nice.)
- Hero or Heroine. Take any of the character traits we talked about before and push or shove it until it becomes heroic. Be careful not to become comic or melodramatic; but push the limits of what you can do with one trait.
- Multiply. Remember we said that victims get a certain amount of sympathy and pity. What if your character is a victim of multiple things? Pile it on and we’ll sympathize even more. Not only is your character in a wheelchair from a car wreck, but the bank is about to foreclose on her business; and she’s about to discover the cure for the common cold. That piles it on AND gives it a wider, public scope. Be careful here or we’ll get that contempt for this poor victim who can’t rise above her circumstances. But multiplying conflict is one way to increase sympathy for a character.
- Inner conflict. Give your character conflicting Dreeds and Plopes (dreams, needs, hopes, plans) and you increase sympathy. How can your character possibly choose between justice and the ineptness of the justice system?
- Paradox: While characters should be consistent, if you can add a believable paradox, you quicken our interest. The key is making it believable. What is it that your character would never say, do or think? Have them say, do or think it! But make sure you make the motivations and emotions clear.
- -Er or -Est a Trait. Push the trait to an extreme: Bigger, smallest, most vulgar, funnier, more clever, clumsiest. Make sure the reader notices your character!
- Raise the Stakes. Take their Dreeds and Plopes and make them matter more, put more at stake. The outcome of the hero/ine’s sacrifice will affect their family, their profession, the world. Why do you think evil men are always trying to “take over the world”? So they have the widest possible stakes. Take a cue from that cliche, though: make the increased stakes believable.
- Inner Change i
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Yes, my experience exactly! I have some really good ideas lying in bed in the morning, waiting to get up. It's just accepting that this is working time, rather than lounging about. Defy the stereotypical gubbins put about in our increasingly unimaginative society!
I have a lot of thinking time walking backwards and forwards to Waitrose. I regard that as thinking time! Very necessary.
Adele, I do exactly the same! And Soldier Boy came entirely out of seeing the shadow of leafless branches lying over the footpath on the way to Waitrose.
Descartes did all his work lying in bed. And it hasn't done his reputation any harm. Cartesian geometry came about because he saw a fly buzzing about his room while he was lying in bed.
I'm just off to Paris to do some thinking. I'm not sure how to convince the Inland Revenue that this is an essential part of my work, though... Might cite this post. Thank you, Miriam, it's all so true!
Excellent Anne - we all need to know if we can set out thinking time of against tax!
I love the way when I'm working on a story it takes over most of my 'spare' thinking time .. and some that wasn't actually spare as well (but I seem to have got away with that so far). What I mean is that when I'm in the middle of a story ( I write short fiction and poetry) I tend to think about it when I'm doing anything that doesn't need all my concentration. It's then I find myself trying to do something like put the milk container back into the mug cupboard instead of the fridge! Carol Ross.