by Nancy Noell Burk
For tonight’s presentation, I’m going to steal a bit, from myself, and from Lorrie [Pullen]. I once said, perhaps not eloquently, that if you feel while you write, the words will take care of themselves, and your reader will feel, too. If you feel while you are writing, you will touch the same spot in your reader – the shared core of emotions we all have as human beings. If you don’t feel the same emotions you wish to evoke in your reader, you must step back and ask yourself “Why not?” Am I too close to the situation? Is it still too painful? Am I holding my own reactions at arm’s length? If you don’t feel scared while writing a ghost story, it will be unlikely to frighten your reader. If a fictional injustice doesn’t rouse your ire, your reader too will be apathetic. Maybe you yourself don’t care what happens to a character or how a situation is resolved. If you don’t care, you won’t compel your reader to care, either.
How does this relate to character development? Whether your character is likable or not, she must be believable. She must have at least a minimal emotional content in common with ourselves. What are the most compelling aliens in movies? The ones who have faces that most resemble our own, whether they are Klingons in Star Trek or E.T. the Extraterrestrial. What aliens are the most difficult for actors to portray? Those whose makeup leaves little of the actor’s own face and expressions visible. An extreme example is the Cybermen from Doctor Who, where no part of the actor’s face is visible and character must be conveyed solely through body language and vocal inflection. No matter how evil, villainous, immoral, uncouth, despicable, depraved, or unlikable your character, there must be at least a touch-point on the emotional level. Maybe you only intend to reach the shadow-parts of your readers. That’s OK. Remember the scene in Star Wars where Darth Vader uses the Dark Side of the Force to nearly throttle an officious little bureaucratic snake to death? Who didn’t enjoy that? Who wouldn’t like to do the same, even though they may not allow themselves to act on the desire?
The other point I’m going to borrow without asking permission is from Lorrie’s presentation on dialog. The trick to good dialog is to hear it in your head. Read it aloud, if necessary, or enlist a partner to run through your lines, as though you were actors rehearsing. The trick to good characters is to hear their voices in your head. Do they have an accent? A speech impediment? Use colloquialisms? Perhaps they simply pronounce things wrong. All too often I hear young people today say “pacifically” when they mean “specifically.” It drives me crazy, but that’s who they are. They say what they say in the manner they do for a reason. It speaks to their personality, their education, their past. How they speak is a vital part of who they are – their character. If you hear their voices while you write, then just like with emotions, your reader will also partake.
The textbook approach to character development is the biographical profile, the interview. But this is merely the first step. An instructor once told me, “to be a writer, you must write like hell.” There is no substitute for doing, and for doing often. In this way you take the all-important next step with your characters. You write them, and write them often. As you do so, you learn who they really are, you watch them grow, and if you’re lucky, you grow right alongside.
The last bit of advice I’m going to give is to remind you that real people, like realistic characters, are walking non sequiturs. They are a bundle of received as well as self-generated opinions, morals, and theories of how the world around them works, or should work. Often what wisdom has been instilled in them is at odds with their own experience. Like most of us, they hold conflicting, even contradictory beliefs. The philosopher W. V Quine wrote in his book, The Web of Belief, that people use reason and logic to resolve conflicting beliefs into a consistent worldview, or “web.” I would like to know what sort of people he knows, because this has not been my observation of the human race. Use this also to flesh out your characters. Maybe, like me, they are passionate about animal rights, but still enjoy a good steak now and then. Maybe they are firm believers in human rights, unless the humans in question are illegal aliens crossing the border. To err is human; to hold mutually inconsistent ideas is even more so.
That’s it. That’s all I’m gonna tell you about character development.
So, what I’m going to do instead tonight is to point you in the direction of some resources that will help you get started. I will provide links to articles on interviewing your characters, filling out biographical sketches, alternatives to the textbook approach, some drawing templates from a Role-Playing Game for the more visually artistic among us, even a truly fascinating piece on strong characters and weak character, as in lack of moral fiber. But what I really want to have you do tonight is to write like hell. Because there is no substitute for doing, I want to focus on the writing exercises. Hopefully those I have selected will take you beyond the biography and past the job interview to the emotions, voices, and unique personality of your characters.
Let’s get started.
© 2004 Nancy Noell Burk. All Rights Reserved.
