Workshop Eight

All characters have sayings, gestures, habits and personal objects that are unique to them. This week, we’re going to be thinking about the material goods in a character’s home, bag, office, locker, or wherever, we’re going to be listening to our character’s voice, studying them as they move, and trying to figure out from these details who these characters really are.

Let’s think about OBJECTS first of all.

If a female character lives in an apartment with nothing but fluffy teddy bears and Hello Kitty dolls lining the walls that shows you something about her, right? If she has a small dog that she dresses in sunglasses, if she only drinks cream soda with ice made from the water of a river in Fiji, if she has a romance novel in her purse, do you get a sense of who she might be? The things a character owns are HINTS for a reader.

Now, imagine you were given two suitcases to go through. One was full of neatly folded clothes, neatly filed paperwork, on top of which lay a photograph of two young children, smiling. The other bag was messy, stuffed with scrunched up T-shirts, a novel by Arthur Slade poking out. What assumptions would you make about the owners of each of the bags?

How about the objects a character puts in a shopping cart?

What do your characters buy and what does it say about them?

What books does your character own and read? What movies?

Every object that you place in a character’s possession gives you as the author the OPPORTUNITY to give the reader hints about your character.

Moving on from objects, think about how your character SPEAKS. Is there a particular word they use all the time, a quirk of language (each character in your book might have one of these, which is a great way for a reader to feel like they are getting to know your characters).

For example: Does your character always use the word, ‘like’, as a filler in sentences? Or does he enjoy long words that most people never use?

Now think about in what way your character talks. Do they shout? Or whisper? Do they rattle out sentences or think before they speak?

Can you see how all these details make a character different from someone else (both in real life and on the page)?

Does your character have a ‘characteristic’ GESTURE? Do they wipe their nose all the time or pick at their front tooth? Do they giggle a lot? And what are their HABITS? What does your character do every day, every week?

Notice the word I used there: CHARACTERISTIC. What we’re thinking about this week are your character’s CHARACTERISTICS – the things that are TYPICAL of them as a person, the traits that make them unique.

If you’ve already finished a novel, I suggest going through and making sure that your character’s CHARACTERISTICS are the same all the way through. And, this is key, that EACH OF YOUR CHARACTERS has DIFFERENT CHARACTERISTICS. If all of your characters are pushing their hair back from their faces, texting all the time, etc, can you see that it makes it hard for a reader to distinguish one from the other?

If you haven’t started your book yet, use this opportunity to think about each character’s traits so you know them all well before you begin.

This week’s writing prompt:

Moving forward from the character interview that we did last week, we’re going to answer more questions about our character focusing on their CHARCTERISTICS.

This time, it’s not the character answering the questions, but you as the writer.

What would your character pack on a trip?

What objects are in your character’s room?

What books has your character read in the last year?

What three habits does your character have?

What would be something typical that your character might say?

Describe a typical gesture your character makes.

And this is a bonus question, suggested by BurntWords (thanks for your input!), and it’s an excellent one: Tell me one of your character’s secrets.