Character + Setting = Story (Almost)

Part I: Character
A recent Facebook discussion on my wall led one of my FB friends Leslie Guccione, an author of 30 books, to blog about the importance of totally knowing your character and setting. 

Leslie Guccione

I have often thought how stories are built from the inside out.  Appropriately, her blog on character is named, "Know Your Characters Inside and Out." She listed a variety of questions writers should ask about their character. This list is similar to an handout that is in Teaching the Story which you can download here. 


I hope you'll read her entire blog, but here is her ending advice:

Whether your character works against the background you’ve devised or reflects it in stereotypical detail, you’ve provided a solid frame on which to weave voice, behavior, attitude and goals as you hook your reader with their tale you’re telling.

By the way, I highly recommend Donald Maass' book, Writing the Breakout Novel Workbook. His exercises are probing and will make you get to know your character in such a way that you can portray him or her authentically.

Part II: Setting

On Leslie's blog about setting, "Your Character's Physical World," she uses two fantasy books to demonstrate the importance of creating extensive, believable worlds for characters to live in. She lists several aspects of a fictional world that the writer must create. You can also download my handout, "Set the Scene" or "Create an Imaginary World" to help you begin this brainstorming process. 


Leslie summarizes that blog with, "Your goal is to breathe life into every individual & create atmosphere for every setting. You have to take your readers there. And they have to want to stay."

I found Richard Russo's article, "Location, Location, Location: Depicting Character Through Place" in Creating Fiction (Story Press, 1999) to be helpful on this topic.

Part III: Plot

What about plot and conflict? Let me recommend two books to help you tackle that most important story componenent. The first is Many Genres One Craft: Lessons in Writing Genre Fiction which, according to Leslie, is crammed with good advice. She should know--she contributed an article and it just won its second "Best" award for a writing how-to book in 2012.

Second, consider purchasing Becky Levine's book, "The Writing & Critique Group Survival Guide." She has an excellent chapter on critiquing for plot along with a great deal of other useful information. 

 

Creating Mr. Bad Guy

Today, in preparation for the class I am teaching at Central Piedmont Community College,  I am thinking about what makes a memorable antagonist.  All writers are tempted to create absolutely good protagonists or absolutely evil antagonists. But as Robin Hemley points out in Creating Fiction, "Most people are neither all good nor all bad, and even the best are capable of small and large betrayals." (p. 84)


I subscribe to Delanceyplace.com which sends daily selections from a variety of books. Today's e-mail was from Deeper into Movies and shared excerpts from Pauline Kael's 1972 review of Marlo Brando's acting in The Godfather. This struck me as a good example of an interesting and layered antagonist:


"Don Vito could be played as a magnificent old warrior, a noble killer, a handsome bull-patriarch, but Brando manages to debanalize him. It's typical of Brando's daring that he doesn't capitalize on his broken-prow profile and the massive, sculptural head that has become the head of Rodin's Balzac - he doesn't play for statuesque nobility. The light, cracked voice comes out of a twisted mouth and clenched teeth; he has the battered face of a devious, combative old man, and a pugnacious thrust to his jaw. The rasp in his voice is particularly effective after Don Vito has been wounded; one almost feels that the bullets cracked it, and wishes it hadn't been cracked before. Brando interiorizes Don Vito's power, makes him less physically threatening and deeper, hidden within himself." (p. 422-423)


Hemley makes a number of good points in her essay, "Sympathy for the Devil: What to do About Difficult Characters." Here are a few:


"While fiction certainly deals with conflict, it's also about seeing into the true nature of people, uncovering falsehoods and half-truths. Most people (and by extension, most characters) have fatal flaws." p. 88


Interesting characters are complicated. "If we understand why someone feels she has to kill her child....we might be brought to a place of genuine compassion and understanding that would hardly seem possible without the prose writer's magical ability to make us recognize our deepest selves, the ones we try daily to bury." p. 89


How about you? How do you layer the antagonist in your work? Or, what character have you found in literature who portrays this mixture of good and evil? Let me know and I might include your comments in my class on Thursday night!

Crafting Characters that Connect- Part 1

To prepare for my Central Piedmont Community College class on "Crafting Characters that Connect" I am reading several excellent essays in the anthology Creating Fiction (Associated Writing Programs, 1999). I thought I'd share some tidbits with you over the scope of several blogs.

First up are some quotes from "Icebergs, Glaciers, and Arctic Dreams: Developing Characters" by Kim Edwards on using your life experiences and emotions.

"For a character to be convincing, what's on the page must somehow evoke knowledge that extends beyond what's strictly visible." (p. 45)

"When [Raymond] Carver ....says that 'everything we write is, in some way, autobiographical,' he doesn't mean that authors stay close to true events when they write--indeed, to do so can actually rob a character of the freedom to react in a natural and individual way--but rather that there's a clear relationship between the events of the world and the events of a story. Art doesn't imitate life but grows directly from it."
.......

"Even when an author has not experienced what her character is experiencing, she can find parallel events and emotions in her own life on which to draw." (p. 47)

"Writers leap from the particular experiences of their own lives to the universal emotions and states of mind those experiences reflect. From there they can particularize the experience once again, into the life of the imagined character." (p. 48)

Creating Fiction ends each instructive chapter with writing exercises. Looks like I'll be adding this book to my bookshelf of writing resources.  

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