A few posts ago I wrote about creating characters, giving them goals, fears and baggage. This is a good starting place but is it enough to create believable characters? I would argue that the people in your book are the most important element needed for good story telling. Plot, theme, use of language all have their place in good writing too, but without believable character’s to carry the weight of the story, not even the most clever turn of phrase will be enough to turn bad writing into good writing.
You need to turn your character’s into human beings that the reader can identify with. They may not like the character, but as long as you write your character in a manner that is believable, then your reader will identify with them and they will become real. The way to make your characters human is to tap into their emotions.
Our emotions is what makes us human. Even the most stoic individual has feelings and thoughts that make him or her unique. You need to tap into this aspect of your characters to breathe life into them. I have a few techniques that I use in my own writing that help me do this.
Tap into your own emotional experiences
Most of us live relatively “normal” lives. My day to day life is relatively uneventful, and I wouldn’t have it any other way. The books I write are dark, violent and full of tense situations, which is the antithesis of my current life. A common piece of advice given to beginning writers is to write what you know. My interpretation on this piece of advice is to tap into the emotions you’ve experience in your own life and translate them into the situation you put your characters in, and feel what they would feel. I’m going to give an example of what I mean by this.
In a book I recently finished, I wanted the characters to be driving on a long, winding road and discover their brakes had failed. In order to write this scene I need to think back on my own life, to tap into the fear that would be present in a situation like this. After giving it some thought I realized I had a situation in my own life that I could use to help me write the scene. When my daughter was a baby, my brother was giving a ride home from a doctor’s appointment. What we didn’t know at the time, but realized later, is that the brake lines on his car had corroded to the point where there was little brake fluid left. While we were driving, my brother turned to me and told me very calmly that we had no brakes. I knew I had to keep calm, because panicking in this situation wouldn’t do either of us any good, but inside I was terrified. My baby was in the back in her car seat, and all that was running through my mind was what if something happened to her. Obviously we made it home in one piece, but it was one scary car ride. When I had to write a scene with my character’s in a similar situation, it came pretty easy since I could remember what being in that situation felt like. You don’t need to have an exact situation occur in your own life if you want to put it in your book. Think of a situation that you’ve been in where the emotions you felt reflect the emotions of what your character would feel in that situation. We all know what it’s like to be afraid, what it’s like to be joyful and what it’s like to fall in love. Use it in your writing and I’m sure you’ll notice a difference in how your character’s come across.
Using free writing reveal depths of emotion
Another exercise I use to help delve into the emotion of a character is free writing. Free writing is the process of sitting down and writing without thinking for a certain period of time. If I have to write a scene that I know is going to be emotional or difficult to write, I prepare for it before hand. Before I start the free writing session I give a little bit of thought into who is going to be the POV character, and what situation they are going to be in. I then set a timer for ten minutes and write about the situation from the character’s point of view. I’m not talking about writing the actual scene this way. What you want to do is feel what your character is feeling, you want to become the character for those ten minutes. Clear your mind for that period of time, close your eyes if it helps, and write a narrative of the situation in the scene from the first person perspective (first person uses “I”). It should almost be like an internal monologue of what’s going on inside your character’s head. Once the timer has gone off, take a breath and read through what you’ve written. You may be pleasantly surprised. I like to print off what I’ve written and post it by the computer in preparation for writing the scene, and I usually refer back to it when I need to. You may even find yourself culling bits and pieces of your free writing to use in the scene.
Become an actor
When writing about a character, it helps if you become that person while you are writing them. When you character frowns, you frown, just so you are in tune with the physical sensation of being that character. If anyone were watching me while I write I’m sure they would think I’d gone around the bend. I sigh, I laugh, I growl, grit my teeth and sometimes I even cry. I do all this to put myself into my character’s shoes.
These are some of the techniques you can use to help make your character’s more believable. I hope you can use some of them to help you in your writing journey, or to even become a springboard for developing techniques of your own.
See you soon.
