Blurred Line

Sorry for the lack of posting lately. First, there was general laziness. That was followed by a grand weekend adventure involving a very large fire, a creepy baby doll, Chuck Berry, an industrial sized breakfast, and far, far too much alcohol. Then a day-long bout with fatigue. But, here I am now, perfectly recovered.

So, I thought I'd talk a bit about some a method of fleshing out your character early on in the writing process. I don't do this too often, so I might end of talking about stuff that I've got no authority to comment on but, hey, isn't that what blogs are for? Anyhow, I'd been thinking about these character description sheets that we got back in grade school for writing stories. They'd be about four pages long, double-sided, with far more questions about your character than was really necessary. Stuff like "What's your character's favourite kind of pizza?" or "How does your character relate to the colour blue?". Our teacher was very adamant that, even if we didn't use all of this information in our stories, we had to know it. We had to know our characters frontwards and backwards, in four dimensions.

Of course, then everyone would have stories that started "Harold was pretty much indifferent to the colour blue, even when he was eating his favourite kind of pizza, pepperoni and mushroom."

Although I'm sure there's something to be said for getting to know the ins and outs of your character beforehand, I've always thought that it made more sense to get to know your character the same way your reader will. Your first chapter (or whatever the first section that introduces your character is) should be a lot like a first date. You get some of the basics - a general feel for the character and maybe a few details, like occupation and that kind of thing. There should also be a few hints towards the deeper, more veiled personality traits.

I remark on this because I recently got a submission where someone played all their character cards in the first few pages. By the fifth page, you'd learned pretty much everything there was to know about the character - what their personality was like, what their concerns were, etc. As you can imagine, it wasn't a very developed character. This is because it's the small stuff, the subtleties, that really make up a fully-realized character.


Profile Editor. Writer. 9-5er. Lord of the Dance. Blurredline.com Apodis Publishing Fusion Fragment cterrill(at)blurredline.com Buy Goodbye, Darwin Amazon.com Amazon.ca Chapters.ca Barnes&Noble.com Read it free in PDF Format Buy Blurred Line Amazon.com Amazon.ca Chapters.ca Barnes&Noble.com Read it free in PDF Format The Short Stuff "Learning Magic From Mint" - published May 2007 in Atomjack "Between Eternities" - published October 2005 at Speculative.ca "Smoke and Mirrors" - published June 2005 in Byzarium Submissions Log Total Subs: 25 Acceptances: 3 Rejections: 17 Withdrawals: 3 Subs Out: 2 Quality Blogs Scalzi's Whatever Dave's Blogography Bookslut The Struggling Writer SF Signal the0phrastus Paperback Writer Scribe's Writing Desk Nathan Bransford Lyons Literary LLC The World in the Satin Bag Book In The Oven The Word Perhaps We Learned Something... Words, etc. Archives March 2005 April 2005 May 2005 June 2005 July 2005 August 2005 September 2005 October 2005 November 2005 December 2005 January 2006 February 2006 March 2006 April 2006 May 2006 June 2006 July 2006 August 2006 September 2006 October 2006 November 2006 December 2006 January 2007 February 2007 March 2007 April 2007 May 2007 June 2007 July 2007 August 2007 September 2007 October 2007 November 2007 November 2008 December 2008 January 2009 February 2009 March 2009 Et Cetera Cavan @ Last.fm Cavan @ LibraryThing Feeds Atom Feed RSS Feed	Monday, June 26, 2006 - First Dates Sorry for the lack of posting lately. First, there was general laziness. That was followed by a grand weekend adventure involving a very large fire, a creepy baby doll, Chuck Berry, an industrial sized breakfast, and far, far too much alcohol. Then a day-long bout with fatigue. But, here I am now, perfectly recovered. So, I thought I'd talk a bit about some a method of fleshing out your character early on in the writing process. I don't do this too often, so I might end of talking about stuff that I've got no authority to comment on but, hey, isn't that what blogs are for? Anyhow, I'd been thinking about these character description sheets that we got back in grade school for writing stories. They'd be about four pages long, double-sided, with far more questions about your character than was really necessary. Stuff like "What's your character's favourite kind of pizza?" or "How does your character relate to the colour blue?". Our teacher was very adamant that, even if we didn't use all of this information in our stories, we had to know it. We had to know our characters frontwards and backwards, in four dimensions. Of course, then everyone would have stories that started "Harold was pretty much indifferent to the colour blue, even when he was eating his favourite kind of pizza, pepperoni and mushroom." Although I'm sure there's something to be said for getting to know the ins and outs of your character beforehand, I've always thought that it made more sense to get to know your character the same way your reader will. Your first chapter (or whatever the first section that introduces your character is) should be a lot like a first date. You get some of the basics - a general feel for the character and maybe a few details, like occupation and that kind of thing. There should also be a few hints towards the deeper, more veiled personality traits. I remark on this because I recently got a submission where someone played all their character cards in the first few pages. By the fifth page, you'd learned pretty much everything there was to know about the character - what their personality was like, what their concerns were, etc. As you can imagine, it wasn't a very developed character. This is because it's the small stuff, the subtleties, that really make up a fully-realized character. Cavan blogged at 11:02 AM \| 1 comments	Progress Zilch! 0/0 Listening A.J. Croce - "Maybe I'm Amazed" My Music Reading Bright Lights, Big City - Jay McInerney My Library Watching Black Book: B Sweet and Lowdown: C Breakfast on Pluto: B Wishlist Bridge of Sighs - Richard Russo Rachael Yamagata - Elephants...Teeth Sinking Into Heart