Writer’s Guide
Healing Your Hero or Heroine

Mood disorders are all the rage for characters in fiction these days. But how do you lift your melancholy heroine out of the doldrums when she meets the man (or woman) of her dreams? Yes, your equivalent to Prince Charming might be “all that,” but, let’s face it, even romance novels don’t rely on Mr. Tall-Dark-N-Handsome to come to the rescue completely nowadays. Your gal has to stand on her own.

Let’s look at it realistically. What heals depression in real life? Sunshine, laughter, exercise, proper sleep, and proper nutrition are the biggies. So let Jack and Jill (or Jill and Susan, if you prefer) go on a picnic in the sun. Let them eat farm-raised salmon, which has the all-important Omega-3 fatty acid without the stigma of supporting the commercial fishing industry, and laugh through some rousing dialogue that gets your readers laughing along with them. (Other nutrition ideas can be found at http://www.newstarget.com/.) That’s just one example, but I think you get the idea: heal your heroine realistically.

Jill can’t miraculously snap out of what appeared to be bipolar or manic depressive disorder because Jack professed his undying love. Finding love might be one step on Jill’s path to health and happiness, but there have to be others. Show the other steps to make her transformation into a spunky, happy character believable. In my fantasy novel Choices Meant for Gods, Chariss doesn't make her grand entrance as this fancy, powerful, well-adjusted, let's-go-kill-the-bad-guys warrior. No, the chick is flawed. Sure, she's great and her wizard guardian would have a conniption if he heard me say otherwise, but she doesn't believe in herself (flaw #1) and she's not in the habit of standing up for herself (flaw #2) and she tries to convince her mentor to flee again when all the signs are there to stay put (flaw in judgment), but just watch this character arc. It sweeps you through the book (that and a few other plotlines). And that's what you have to do with your heroes and heroines. You have to make them go through an arc that is believable. I couldn't just turn Chariss into a god-smackin' empress overnight. I had to show the reader how she came into her role gently (but pretty quickly because I only had 417 pages to do it).

(Sandy Lender has been an editor in the magazine publishing industry for fifteen years and is the author of the new fantasy novel Choices Meant for Gods, available from http://www.archebooks.com/.)

“Some days, I just want the dragon to win.”

Tags: Choices Meant for Gods, fantasy novel, writers guide, Amanda Chariss

Writer’s Guide
Character Sketches Part III

In addition to Word of the Day and Grammar Guide, this site for writers includes items that relate to the artistic side of the craft of writing. So we’re doing a series on Character Sketches. If you missed Parts I and II, you can find them in the archives on Thursday, February 8, and Thursday, February 15.

As I pointed out before, sketching out your characters is as important as sketching out the plot of your story (and we’ll talk about storyboarding in an upcoming Writer’s Guide). You need to be intimately involved with the people or creatures who carry your plot. I’ve given you an exercise to learn some of the top momentous events in your characters’ lives and talked about the importance of giving your main characters a good (but solvable) flaw/faulty life view to make him or her relatable.

Now, did you catch that little parenthetical in there? Solvable. You want the character’s faulty life view to be solvable. The flaw or faulty life view of your main character should get solved during the “character arc”. If you don’t solve this by the end of the book/story, ah, well, ah, perhaps an editor can help you rework your ending…

The character arc is the process the main character goes through specifically to solve (a) his or her problems (faulty life view) and (b) to save the day/solve the mystery/finish the plot/save the damsel in distress/banish Lex Luther. You get the idea. In the case of Choices Meant for Gods, Amanda Chariss Derdriu must overcome the fear of being without her wizard and embrace the responsibilities she was born to take on. Now, this doesn’t mean she has to do everything without her wizard at her side. (Good Heavens, Hrazon wouldn’t leave her alone in this battle even if the gods showed up and ordered him to.) But this heroine has tasks to complete that Hrazon can’t do for her, and she must learn independence. This is something the reader can relate to, and, by the end of Book I of the Choices trilogy, she’s completed the first of the arcs she must go through.

What solvable life view did you find in your main character from last week’s Writer’s Guide? Now think of how you plan to solve it by the end of the character’s arc. Share! Let’s discuss this!

“Some days, you just want the dragon to win.”

Tags: Choices Meant for Gods, writing tips, character sketches, character arc

You Might Want to Leave Britney Spears Alone
Or…How to annoy your readers with unwanted character developments

We’ll feature another installment of the Writer’s Guide Character Sketches series tomorrow morning here at The Dragon, but I have to make a side note concerning characters and the arcs they go through to fulfill their purpose in a story. And, considering how very much attention Britney Spears has received since she had her head shaved like some kind of G.I. Jane or Ripley’s-Got-An-Alien-Followin’-Her Wannabe, I just had to forewarn you writers of something.

You CAN annoy your readers if your characters do something stupid.

If your character is supposed to go on a quest for self-righteousness (and I’m not implying Britney Spears has been on such a quest), you can’t let this dear, innocent, everyone’s-falling-in-love-with-him-or-her hero (or heroine) suddenly dive off the deep end and have a sordid romp with some two-bit loser in a back alley (and I’m not implying Britney Spears has ever done such a thing). You want your characters to have their surmountable flaws and their moments of crisis, but, wow, you’ve got to keep it in check.

But there’s another lesson from Britney Spears for writers working on character development. Watch closely.

What you do is gradually take a character from Point A to Point B to Point C and so on until he or she reaches the end of the arc at the end of your story. If you want your angelic Charlotte Church to end up in a tattoo parlor with no panties (that’s a guess on my part) and a shaved head, well, you know, just make sure she first marries some guy no one’s ever heard of and helps him make a fool of himself; make sure she has allegations of child neglect surrounding her in the papers for a few weeks at a time; have her walk into gross public restrooms without shoes or socks on; and then have her call up the aforementioned husband while he’s filming a TV show and humiliate him by dumping/divorcing him by cell phone. That’s a class act right there, my writing friends. But what you see is a believable character that’s developing over time. Your audience will come to expect certain behaviors. By the time you get to the beauty salon, the readers won’t be surprised when the character demands the hairdresser get out the razor and buzz away. Your readers will merely shake their heads in despair as this character heads on over to the tattoo parlor. Now, I’m not saying your readers are going to adore this character, but you’ve got a definite pattern of unwanted character development.

And that’s good fiction.

“Some days, you just want the dragon to win.”

Tags:Britney Spears, tattoo parlor, Dragon

Anna Nicole Smith, Assisting with Character Development
Is this a Writers Guide topic?

Anna Nicole Smith's passing will be met with the usual sides squaring up to either demonize or victimize her. I'll do neither. Because this is a site dedicated to writing and getting the writing right, let's look instead at how Anna Nicole Smith might influence your characters. I never thought about it until I read the news on Yahoo last night, but there's a little bit of Anna Nicole in one of the goddesses in Choices Meant for Gods. If you listen to the story the lesser goddess Mia tells of Katarina Fair, you'll hear it. (Of course, you have to wait until March when the fantasy novel is released, but it'll be worth the wait!)

But think of what a provocative individual Anne Nicole Smith was. From her days as a model to her intriguing marriage to her sad and tragic loss of her dear son so recently. Now her death leaves an infant daughter motherless. As bizarre as this may sound so soon after a person's death (but let's face it, celebrities are out there where we see them objectified far too easily), how can you place elements of Anna Nicole Smith's life or lifestyle in one of your characters? I guarantee the Anna Nicole treatment will give that character a little sparkle.

"Some days, you just want the dragon to win."

Writer’s Guide
Character Sketches Part I

In addition to Word of the Day and Grammar Guide, this site for writers should include items that relate to the artistic side of the craft of writing. And I apologize to anyone who takes offense at the implication that grammar can’t be artsy; I just don’t see it unless we figure out a way to diagram sentences in Blogger.

Sketching out your characters is as important, if not moreso, than sketching out the plot of your story (and, yes, I’ve got an article on storyboarding already in the works). These people carry your plot, after all. If you don’t know them better than you know your best friends, you may have some not-so-pleasant surprises in store when your book gets cookin’. Whether you’re one of those writers who puts all the plot developments down on nice, neat, 3 by 5 notecards, or you write by the seat of your pants, a character with flaws you didn’t know about or some hidden neurosis you didn’t realize was in his or her past will bring production to a halt in a hurry.

The sketching device we’re going to cover in this article is what I like to call “My Top Ten Stressful Moments”. To gear you up for it, practice it on yourself. (It helps.) Get yourself a piece of paper, a pen, and a clock or stopwatch. Give yourself ten minutes to write down on this piece of paper as many life-altering or just plain momentous events that you can think of that have happened in your life. Let me give you a hint: being born is one of them. Ya kinda hafta start with that one. But from there, who knows what’s affected you throughout your life? Maybe some kid beat you up on the playground in first grade and it taught you how to avoid conflict or it taught you how to stand up for yourself. Either way, the “got beat up in first grade” is a momentous event. Have you traveled overseas? Have you graduated from college? Have you witnessed a death? Just write these things down as fast as your fingers will let the pen scribble them down as fast as they come to your mind.

At the end of your ten minutes, re-set the clock or stopwatch for another ten minutes so you can select the top ten of these items. Which ten of these momentous events were really the cream of the crop? Which ones have shaped, molded, formed you into the person you are with the life views (ooh, that phrase is going to be verrrrry important in the next character sketch article) and opinions and values you have? Use these ten minutes to pull those top ten items out and rank them from most important/most influential to least influential.

It’ll be an interesting exercise.

When you’re done (and your brain hurts), get out another sheet of paper. Write your first main character’s name at the top of the page. Now do this exercise for him or her. Ooh, won’t you get to know this character better now? And if you get stuck or you start daydreaming about one of these events, stop the exercise. Grab another piece of paper or open up a file on the computer and explore that event a little more. You can always come back to the “My Top Ten Stressful Moments” for this character later. Do what you need to do to hammer out the momentous events in this character’s past.

“Some days, you just want the dragon to win.”