Week 2 Creating characters on the page
Don't always go for the default!
… and then there's the leap, and then there's the ending, which changes
everything that went before. And I think it's the same thing with the telling.
it's not just showing for the sake of showing,
but it's telling, it's sort of you, show to tell.
It's the voice that actually gets you back, in
some sense, most closely to the project.
The Story Reveals Who We Are
Don't write in dialect unless your ear is really good.
It's so important to listen to the way real people are speaking.
So, then you can do a little shaping and a little chemistry and a
little magic to put it into dialogue that your reader will be able
to hear the way you want them to hear it.
Week 2 Voice While it's important to have a strong sense of
Quirks, Tics, and Bad Habits what kind of physical tics or oddities or quirks
your character has, you don't want to overuse
them.
You can only know these things when you
begin to use your imagination, or if you see
these things on a character in real life. You
then have to begin to think about what
meaning you find in that detail.
The deeper you connect all of these details to
the character, the more this character comes
to life for your reader. It's not because you
have to answer all of these questions on the
page, but it's so important for you to have
them, in some sense, in your back pocket.
Not ideas of people, but actual people who
come alive on the page, on your page.
How do you make your character to the reader
Make sure that every line of dialogue and There's a way in which I start to feel
every page hits the following three points: inhabited by a character and that's how I
• Illuminates character (the essence of the know that the character is potentially
character, it couldn't be anybody else going to be real to me.
speaking).
• It advances the story, so there is a point to
us reading that section of dialogue. There's
a reason for us to read it and it's not just to
get information.
• And when possible, the dialogue is
interesting in and of itself. if you're stuck in a story, just have
another character walk into the room.
You make your character engaging even if they
are not lovable. But you have to, in some
sense, enter into them and be able to write “How are you, I'm fine, thank you”
about them doing bad things, unsympathetic and the sort of filler dialogue that
things, without making them into a cardboard does nothing to create anything
character, without making them so negative realistic on the page, ironically
that they just appear like a comic book villain. enough.
