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    Writing Characters Who'll Keep Readers Captivated: Nail Your Novel
    Writing Characters Who'll Keep Readers Captivated: Nail Your Novel
    Writing Characters Who'll Keep Readers Captivated: Nail Your Novel
    Ebook233 pages3 hours

    Writing Characters Who'll Keep Readers Captivated: Nail Your Novel

    By Roz Morris

    3.5/5

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    About this ebook

    How do you create characters who keep readers hooked? How do you write the opposite sex? Teenagers? Believable relationships? Historical characters? Enigmatic characters? Plausible antagonists and chilling villains? How do you understand a character whose life is totally unlike your own? How do you write characters for dystopias? How do you make dialogue sing? When can you let the reader intuit what the characters are feeling and when should you spell it out?

    Roz Morris is a bestselling ghostwriter and book doctor, and a literary author in her own right. Her titles have sold more than 4 million copies worldwide. She has mined 20 years' worth of writing, editing and critiquing experience to create this book. It contains all the pitfalls and sticky points for writers, laid out as a set of discussions that are easy to dip into. And it wouldn't be a Nail Your Novel book without a good dose of games, exercises and questionnaires to help you populate a novel from scratch.

    Whether you write a straightforward story-based genre or literary fiction, this book will show you how to create people who enthrall readers - and make you want to tell stories.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherRoz Morris
    Release dateMay 1, 2013
    ISBN9781301481460
    Writing Characters Who'll Keep Readers Captivated: Nail Your Novel
    Author

    Roz Morris

    STOP PRESS! Roz Morris's novel Lifeform Three was longlisted for the World Fantasy Award.NEW RELEASE! Ever Rest, Roz's long awaited 3rd novel, launched on 3 June 2021. Read it now!Roz Morris writes fiction and essays about unusual ways we can be haunted and how we seek people and places we belong with. Her work has been profiled by The Guardian, Literature Works, the Potomac Review, Rain Taxi and BBC Radio.Her fiction has sold more than 4 million copies worldwide, although you won't have seen her name on the covers - she began her career in secret, ghostwriting fiction for big-name authors.Now she's coming out of the shadows. Her own novels have been described as 'profound tales and compelling page-turners', with fine-honed language, unforgettable characters, and gripping, unusual storylines. Plaudits include a top-ranked title in the American Library Journal programme, a longlisting for an international award alongside Neil Gaiman and a finalist position in the People's Book Prize 2017.She is a writer, journalist, fiction editor and the author of the Nail Your Novel series for writers. She teaches creative writing masterclasses for The Guardian newspaper in London and is also the author of a series for writers - Nail Your Novel.If you want to get to know her a little better, drop in at www.rozmorris.wordpress.com and her blog www.nailyournovel.com - where she keeps a regular diary of challenges she's tackling in her writing. Follow her creative adventures in her newsletter https://tinyurl.com/rozmorriswriter

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    3.5/5

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    • 4/5
      This is the best book in the series so far. Hands down.

      Maybe that's because creating characters is the thing I find most interesting about telling stories. Which may be because of my tabletop roleplaying experience.

      Whatever the reason, this book is great! Just like the others in the series, it's filled with no-nonsense, logical, and easy to follow advice. I especially enjoyed the deep dive into character goals and motivation, because "what does this character WANT?" is one of the most interesting questions to figure out.

      Editing wise, it isn't perfect, I'm sorry to say. Some missing articles and other words here and there, which is unfortunately, what cost it that coveted fifth star in my eyes. But it's still a truly fantastic book!

      1 person found this helpful

    Book preview

    Writing Characters Who'll Keep Readers Captivated - Roz Morris

    WRITING CHARACTERS WHO’LL KEEP READERS CAPTIVATED

    NAIL YOUR NOVEL

    By Roz Morris

    Published by Red Season

    Copyright 2013 Roz Morris

    Smashwords edition ISBN 9781301481460

    Connect with Roz Morris at Twitter @Roz_Morris

    website Nail Your Novel

    This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, please return to the store and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

    This book is wholly the intellectual property of Roz Morris. It is completely and utterly her copyright. No part of it may be copied or reproduced without the prior written permission of the author, Roz Morris. All rights reserved.

    Contents

    Introduction

    1 Most commonly repeated advice: show not tell

    Remind yourself to switch to showing

    Resist the urge to steer the reader

    For your toolbox

    2 Why plots happen − motivation, need and conflict

    Dramatic need

    Conflict − a quick guide

    A simple idea + emotional conflict = a story

    Don’t forget supporting characters

    For your toolbox

    3 Fictional people are individuals

    What the writer intended and what came out on the page

    Character’s dramatic need is glossed over in generalisations

    No internal life − empty or enigmatic?

    Writer feels out of their depth with that character or situation

    Males, females and culture

    Characters have no life outside the plot

    Too much trivial detail

    Describing characters − too much physical detail

    Please, not like a famous person

    Looking in the mirror: awkward reasons for characters to ponder their appearance

    A carnival of odd misfits − tics and physical characteristics are not character

    Teenagers

    What do they hide, even if they are ‘normal’? Rounded characters and the double life of Isobel

    Narrator has stranglehold so characters never come alive on their own

    Characters too similar to each other

    Should you change to a new viewpoint character once the novel is well under way?

    If you have a viewpoint character, who should it be?

    Characters who are only symbols

    Dystopia problem: characters are dummies to show off the world

    Too many characters − problems with a huge cast

    Send in the clowns − comic characters are jarringly obvious

    Passive central characters

    First-person narrator has no character of their own

    Likability − and what makes characters interesting

    Recognition and the universal − keep asking ‘why’

    For your toolbox

    4 Change

    Catalyst characters

    Characters who resist change

    For your toolbox

    5 Villains and antagonists: what goes wrong with wrong ’uns

    Writer puts the bad character in solitary confinement

    Narrator intrudes to tell us who will turn nasty: foreshadowing the bad deeds

    Bad to the bone − only negatives

    Weak motivation for villainy

    The nebulous enemy: the trouble with battling ‘society’

    For your toolbox

    6 It’s all relationships: romances and significant others

    Rules of attraction: relationships that fail to grab the reader

    Don’t forget to show the moment it started

    Romantic dialogue and discomfort with moments of intense emotion

    Leaning on strong words instead of engaging with the characters

    Where characters splurge their feelings

    Startling confessions erupt out of nowhere

    Sexual tension for bashful writers

    Too coy about seductions

    Lexicon of love: how to describe sex

    Special friendships need glue

    Special friendships must come to life

    Relationships have their own landscape and language

    Happy families

    Relationships that end their journey too soon

    For your toolbox

    7 Supporting characters and walk-ons

    What secondary characters talk about

    Secondary characters need less screen time: use summary

    Supporting or peripheral characters must contribute to the book

    Walk-on characters in too much detail

    For your toolbox

    8 Dialogue - more than a transcript of speech

    No dialogue

    Beyond talking

    Remember we see dialogue as well as hear it

    Internal reactions too vague

    Characters talk about distressing things without getting upset

    Author interrupts too much and slows the pace

    Look for inequalities

    What else might be happening under the words? Subtext

    Long speeches instead of conversations

    Be informal

    Dialogue used as information dump: exposition

    Desperately avoiding the info-dump

    Characters talk about events we have already seen

    Most of the plot presented in dialogue

    Thinking out loud, in quotes

    Too may social niceties and nothing interesting

    What vocabulary does your character use?

    Going yokel

    Characters all sound the same − funny voices part 2

    All characters have the same sense of humour

    Bossy dialogue tags

    For your toolbox

    9 Character design: questionnaires and other games

    Be a creative vandal − a warm-up

    Make your characters different from you − but still write with insight

    Make your main characters different from each other

    Fuel the story

    Imagine you met the character

    Playing favourites

    Swap the career stereotypes

    Supporting characters

    Other character design games

    For your toolbox

    Appendix: Top 10 novice mistakes with characters

    Good characters too saintly

    Everybody likes them (so the reader must too)

    Writer leaves scenes out in case they make us dislike the character

    My lovely character hates everyone

    My lovely character has to work with idiots

    My lovely character is downtrodden but will grow

    Characters too damaged at the start of the story

    Main character too vulnerable and incapable

    Can we spot which character is based on real life?

    Character’s sudden emotional change has no consequences

    For your toolbox

    Afterword

    Introduction

    The main reason readers keep turning the pages of a novel is to find out what happens next. But what happens to whom? It’s the characters who make us care.

    Compelling novels are about people we’re drawn to read about. People who deserve to be at the centre of a story. People who keep us captivated even when they do questionable things.

    In 20 years of writing and coaching, I’ve assessed a lot of novels in progress. I’ve seen characters who demanded attention from first glance, and stayed alive long after the final page. Equally I’ve seen writers go badly wrong, but with excellent intentions. Their plot makes the characters into unthinking puppets. Their iconic everyman is a bland nobody. Their troubled protagonist is an annoying whiner. Their mysterious stranger is a nonentity. Their tender lovers are soppy and cloying. All the characters seem roughly the same except for their names. And sex scenes... well let’s not scare everyone just yet.

    I’ve seen novels where I can’t tell who’s who. The fictional people are well drawn but they are all clones, with perhaps a variation in hair colour, job description or gender.

    These problems can all be fixed – and sometimes the fix is a question of nuance rather than wholescale nuke.

    This book is structured as a series of tutorials that tackle these fundamental problems. It is an in-depth examination of what goes wrong, why and what to do instead. Section by section, it will build your awareness of how characters drive fiction, how readers respond to them and what works for your kind of novel − whether that’s breathless thrillers or literary character studies. What’s more, your plot will flow more naturally because you’ll create people who make you want to tell stories. The sections will help you troubleshoot a manuscript in progress, and exercises at the end will guide you to populate a new book from scratch.

    Of course, you might want to disregard conventions and what is ‘accepted’. An awkward effect I’m discussing may be exactly what you want the reader to feel. Nothing here is a prohibition. Art thrives on rule-breakers and mavericks. This book will teach you what works and how.

    Dip in and read one piece a day. Or dig in for an intensive journey of discovery.

    Who am I?

    You’ll have seen my novels in the bestseller charts, but you won’t have seen my name because I was a ghostwriter, hired to write books as other people. I’m now coming out of the shadows with my own fiction. As well as writing, I have an extensive background in publishing and editing. I’ve appraised manuscripts for a London literary consultancy and also as a freelance, and my clients include winners of prestigious national awards. From my work with authors I wrote the first book in this series, Nail Your Novel: Why Writers Abandon Books and How You Can Draft, Fix and Finish With Confidence. Others are in the works.

    1 Most commonly repeated advice: show not tell

    The advice I write most frequently in manuscript appraisals, even to seasoned authors, is: ‘don’t tell us; show us’. Showing, rather than telling, is a basic tool for bringing a story to life, especially the characters. Whole books are devoted to its many forms and uses, and I’ll be mentioning it a lot. So for now, here’s a simple explanation.

    This is telling:

    Otto is fun.

    This is a statement made by the author. Contrast with (from Christopher Isherwood’s Goodbye to Berlin):

    Otto has a face like a very ripe peach. He has small sparkling eyes, full of naughtiness.

    This is a description that lets, you, the reader, decide that Otto is fun. It is persuasive and memorable. (By the way, there’s nothing wrong with writing ‘Otto is fun’ and then following it with his peachlike countenance and twinkly peepers. For some narratives that will run more smoothly than the description on its own. But in isolation, the sentence ‘Otto is fun’ does not bring him to life.)

    Here’s another example of telling:

    David was multitalented.

    Compare it with:

    David had a master’s degree in chemical engineering, so he seemed an unusual choice as editor of a prestigious literary journal. Nevertheless he had doubled its circulation in six months. He was a crack shot with a pistol and every year challenged himself to learn to sing the principal tenor role of an entire opera.

    When I read this, I’m convinced that David is multitalented.

    Telling isn’t forbidden, of course. It has distinct uses, depending on the emphasis you want. But when a writer tells, they have made the judgement for the reader. When a writer shows, they offer the evidence and let the reader decide that the character is fun, talented, beautiful, mean, cruel, generous or troubled. The reader owns the judgement and remembers it because they made it themselves.

    Which is exactly how we form conclusions about flesh-and-blood people.

    Here are two tips to help you show, not tell.

    Remind yourself to switch to showing

    Showing instead of telling is a habit you have to develop. And even seasoned writers need to be reminded.

    Why? Because showing takes mental sweat. It requires the writer to live the scene alongside the characters. Telling is much less demanding − and incredibly easy to do by default.

    It doesn’t help that much of the preparation work we do on a novel is factual summaries. If we sketch out characters beforehand, we usually write a string of facts or intentions − ‘Bill doesn’t like snakes’, ‘Steve is in love with Lucy’, ‘Tiffany resents the White Witch’. Small wonder that when we write the text, we continue in telling mode. It helps to make sure our notes include ‘shown’ examples instead of ‘told’ ones, but we need to make a conscious switch to this more vivid state of immersion.

    Your outline and notes can tell; but when you write the text, it’s time to show.

    Resist the urge to steer the reader

    Writers also tell instead of show because they worry we won’t see characters the way they intend.

    Here’s an example from a scene where an author wanted us to feel the strain of characters at loggerheads on a family holiday:

    Maggie could feel the tension between her brother and his wife. She felt sorry for her brother because his wife seemed so difficult and stuck in her ways.

    These lines would be fine if supported by other observations. Otherwise, they’re not enough. They are the judgement − but the reader wants the evidence. How did this tension look? Was there a prickly silence at the breakfast table? Were the couple bickering about the best way to pack the deckchairs into the car and taking no notice when Maggie offered suggestions?

    A scene like this is pressing the reader to agree with the writer’s view of the characters. The writer gives only conclusions − ‘difficult’, ‘tense’, ‘stuck in her ways’. This can make the reader feel hectored, as if the author is nagging them to agree.

    Indeed, the characters in this excerpt hardly seem real. The lack of specific detail makes them a standard-issue dysfunctional family. But if we’d witnessed a petty argument about deckchairs, we’d be agreeing the pair were unreasonable and stubborn − but making up our own

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