Articles and Links
Make Your Characters Real
When I debated the wisdom of agreeing to present a workshop recently I was totally stymied as to what to present it about. But then, after much thought, I decided on characters because without them we have very little to say in a romance novel. With generous help from some fellow authors and readers I tried to define what makes a character real and how do we project our reality to our readers.
How many times have you looked in the mirror before going out somewhere and felt you looked pretty all right? Then later, you see a photo of yourself, taken that same day, and you’re left asking yourself “OMG, I don’t look like that do I?”
Often, what we ‘see’ as a writer, is not what we project to our readers, so it’s important to think about and work out what makes your characters as real to your readers as they are to you. One author (Nalini Singh, Silhouette Desire and Berkley author) said: "I like having a back story that explains why the character is acting as they are so I can sympathize with them. It's also important to me that they be an individual with flaws as well as good points, not cookie-cutter types."
Okay, so back story. What has gone before in your character’s life? Everything about how they’ve lived their lives up to the point of change that starts your story is important about how they’ve been crafted as a person. And yes, they are a person. A real living, breathing person in your story. The trick is to impart just how real and living they are without making it sound like a shopping list.
Another reader told me that for her: "…it's almost always internal dialogue, followed by how that character treats others. It's part of why I love Nora Roberts' writing so much - I know she doesn't follow the ‘POV rules’ but I absolutely love, love, love knowing what each character is thinking in a given scene. For me it makes for a much richer story as opposed to something that detracts."
Internal dialogue - this often helps to make your story flow. You’re talking but using your character’s voice, speech patterns and deepest thoughts to make that section of narrative in your book sound and feel as though you’re privy to that character’s deepest and most private thoughts. Almost like eavesdropping in a way.
I loved what this reader had to say: "I guess to me it's deep characterization, which includes little flaws and quirks. Things that make a character go beyond ‘call central casting for Mr. Right.’ It can come across in dialogue, gesture, deep POV, etc, but it’s those little things that make the character unique, like a real person."
Deep characterisation
What does that make you think of? how do everyday things affect your characters, how does their back story affect how they react to specific things?
Some time ago, I bought a particularly large and, to most people, very ugly belt buckle. When I saw it in a haberdashery shop, in a remainder basket, it immediately intrigued me. I had dreams and visions of a man whose father had been a rodeo star but had hit the bottle, lost all his winnings and drove himself into an early grave while his family were put out on the street and forced to eke out a living. His mother, totally disenchanted with her lot, threw all the father’s belt buckles, his trophies, in the trash. But the hero pulled this one out. The first belt buckle his father won as a boy. The one that made him realise he could be anything he wanted and reach for his dreams. And now, even though the hero isn’t a rodeo rider, the hero keeps that buckle on his belt to remind him of the importance of holding on to dreams and of striving to reach your goals and not letting anyone or anything stand in your way.
Anyway, that was my split second of recognition with the buckle. When I picked it out of the basket, the woman at the counter didn’t hesitate to say “Oh, that ugly thing. Yeah, they were popular when line dancing came out. We can’t get rid of them fast enough.” All right, so maybe she wasn’t into boot scooting and denim topped off with a ten gallon hat. The woman in question was tall, much taller than me, very thin and probably a good ten or fifteen years older than me. I know how difficult it was to be a tall female growing up, but in general there were enough other tall people around me while I was an insecure teenager that it didn’t really matter (much). Now roll back the clock ten or fifteen years and think about how much more difficult it would have been for that woman to simply ‘fit in’. She was head and shoulders taller than her peers (which possibly accounts for her posture today), she has very strongly defined, even unusual, features, which would have made it even more difficult to live the kind of life that perhaps many of her girlfriends did. Nothing she could have bought for herself would have come off the rack, and if it did it simply would never have been long enough, or fit properly if it were long enough. Now imagine a group of happy boot scooting line dancers… all pretty much of a size, all pretty well co-ordinated and throw into that equation an overly-tall, very thin and gangly woman and see how she feels about herself in that situation.
See how using deep characterisation can make a difference to how your character will react to a given situation? The important thing, too, is not to imbue the situation with your reactions. As the writer you have to remain true to your character’s reactions, your character’s voice and how the situation makes them react (unless of course you are using yourself as the basis for your character in which case you should be able to make them so real they leap of the page and grab the reader by the throat to say “Look at me - understand me!” Don’t let yourself interfere with your characters’ story.
I’d like to close with some sage words from other authors who shared their thoughts with me. This one from Emilie Rose, Silhouette Desire author: "Internal dialog does a lot to bond the reader to the character. I guess I see that as the delivery method for the following:
- having identifiable problems, worries, etc. also helps us bond with a character. e.g. problems we either share or know someone who has the same one. Perfect people who never struggle with anything are hard to like.
- an understandable goal is critical, and whatever the character wants the reader has to understand why it's important for him/her to attain it, and to believe it's worth the risk to pursue it... that means believable motivation.
- a likeable personality. If a character is an ass or bitch throughout the book (and it's not well motivated or the character is not redeemable) then the reader just won’t care what happens to him/ her and probably won't finish the book.
All these lump together to make a sympathetic character. A gesture is good if it's a telling one...e.g. she picks her nails when she's nervous. It can become a silent communication with the reader when you're not in that character's POV."
All of those things mentioned help to layer your character and develop them into the kind of person you want to read more about, cry with, laugh with and reach a happy ever after ending with.
This comment from Jan Colley, Silhouette Desire author, sums it up: "… warmth, honesty and courage, even if they're not all apparent at the same time. You can find the warmth if you scratch the surface, bring it out. The honesty must be there to show they are worthy of the love that your h or H wants to bless them with. And the courage to consider the change that this momentous love affair will have on them - and not to shy away from it in the end."
If you think you don’t know your characters well enough - you’re probably right. How do you get to know them better? Well, sometimes just writing through the book helps divulge reactions or behaviours that you didn’t realize were sitting below the surface of their psyche. Things they hadn’t shared with you yet. It’s a simple enough process when you go back and polish your manuscript, with the firm knowledge of how the characters have developed through the book, to thread those mannerisms, thoughts and reactions into the beginning to help round out your character into a real enough person for your reader to forget everything else but what it’s going to take to see the character happy at the end of the book.
Bronwyn Jameson, Silhouette Desire author, says that for her, "...Real characters come through voice: I need to feel that I'm hearing the character, that I'm walking through the story in his/her shoes, that I'm living the adventure, the action, the romance with them. That's the epitome of ‘real’ to me and I get it through deep point of view writing - the kind of introspection and observation and visceral description that comes from the uniqueness of the character(s). Also, the little things help: the quirks and the flaws and the everyday titbits to which I can relate. So does identifiable conflict/issues, whether as a woman who's felt the same or knows she would feel the same in that situation OR because she's dealing with the very male traits that drive me crazy on a daily basis.”
If you still don’t think you know your character enough by the end, maybe you’ve been inconsistent with their behaviour or their dialogue, or forced them to do something they really wouldn’t do - something ‘out of character’. You have to be ruthless about being true to your character’s voice, true to their reactions. If you’re having trouble, it might pay to flick through a magazine, find a picture and write about it from one protagonist’s point of view, and then from your other protagonist’s points of view. Find out how the thing in the picture affects them - more importantly, find out WHY. Poke them, prod them, delve deeper into their life and background until you know them as well as you know yourself.
Then, you’re taking the steps to build and form real characters for your readers to love and want to read, as much as you love and want to write them.
________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
Love Your Heroine - if you don't why would your hero?
For years I struggled to create a ‘sympathetic’ heroine. It was my total bug bear.
I grew up the youngest, by six years, of two children. My brother was an academic, I was a book worm (funnily enough that hasn’t changed for either of us.) In many ways we both grew up as only children - which meant I didn’t have to share. This possessiveness extended in later years to my heroes. I had a huge problem with sharing my gorgeous dream men with another woman. Eventually I learned that I had to create a heroine I could like - or better yet, that I could love - and be happy to see set for the future with one of my guys.
So it was off to the drawing board. She couldn’t be too beautiful, or too accomplished. She definitely couldn’t be too thin. Somehow, somewhere she had to be flawed. And aren’t we all in some way or ways. Those are the flaws or idiosyncrasies that make us human, and in our characters make them appear real to our readers. Accessible, likeable, and most importantly, to our heroes, loveable.
So what are these characteristics that we need to imbue in our heroines. A love of small animals? Yes, maybe. But what if she has a deep terror of lap dogs (or handbag charms as they seem to be these days)? What if she likes spiders but can’t handle slicing raw meat for a stir fry to save herself from starvation? What if she loves children but knows she can’t have any?
You need to create, in your heroine, flaws or characteristics that will work in the course of your romance novel to make her appealing to your hero and to your readers.
When I started with my heroine Holly Christmas in THE BOSS’S CHRISTMAS SEDUCTION (Silhouette Desire, Nov 2006), I thought about all the things in my life I’m truly thankful for. Family, friends, a sense of belonging, the knowledge that no matter what I do (within reason) there’s always someone in my corner. Then I thought about what it would be like for a woman who had none of that. Who never knew the constant love or guidance of a parent or parents who were always there for them, a closeness with friends that acted as a buffer in those times that things weren’t right with the parents. Bit by bit, Holly Christmas was born. I made her a child, abandoned at the age of three who’d travelled through the foster system with a variety of social issues affecting her upbringing. I took the clichéd orphan child and twisted it a little to get my Holly. She was a woman who had nothing, and she loved a man - her boss, Connor Knight - who had it all. Wealth, prestige and above all, family. Their differences were what pulled them together yet constantly threatened to drive them apart, especially when Holly decided to take a slice of what he had and seduced him on the night of the staff Christmas party. The differences in their lives, the essentials that made them the people they were, governed their reactions when Holly discovered she was pregnant.
Excerpt:
If Holly Christmas received one more tartan-beribboned poinsettia she would scream.
So what if her birthday fell on Christmas Eve? She was used to that. After all, it was the same day every year. She blinked back the unbidden rush of tears that pricked her eyes, and gave herself a mental shake. Toughen up, she growled silently. Self-pity was so not her style. Survival - whatever it took - that was her key. Then why did she feel different this year? Empty. Alone.
* * *
From the above we can learn that Holly Christmas is tough - she’ll do whatever it takes to survive. She’s used to being alone on her birthday - every year - and in a more subtle way it shows how little people know her. Everyone has given her a poinsettia for her birthday. Not exactly a personal touch, right? But this year, for Holly, it’s just too much and the above gives some motivation as to why she chooses what she does later on that night. She just doesn’t want to be empty or alone on her birthday again - and who can’t identify with that?
When I created Gwen Jones in THE CEO’S CONTRACT BRIDE (Silhouette Desire, February 2007) I had in mind a woman who played everything safe, from her choice of clothing to the man she decided to marry. She’d had one totally out of character crazy fling in her life, with the fiancé of her dead best friend, and come what may she wasn’t going to make a mistake of that magnitude again. That one mistake influenced every one of her decisions, forcing her to always lead with her head and not with her heart. When she’s forced into a marriage of convenience with the man she had her fling with (Declan Knight) she has to throw caution to the wind and risk her hard won cool independence to retain what she believes is the symbol of stability in her life - her family home - and to honour her promise to her best friend.
Excerpt:
With Declan’s aura of success, devilish smile, long hair and cover-model body, he was a must on every society matron’s guest list and came complete with a different woman for every day of the week.
Quite a different guy to the one Renata had so excitedly introduced her to just over eight years ago. Quite a different guy to the one who, blinded by grief, had reached for her in the awful dark days after Renata’s death, and then, with the lingering scent of their passion still in the air, had accused her of seducing him. He had cut her as effectively from his life as a surgeon removes a cancerous growth.
Her mouth flooded with bitterness at the memory. She swallowed against the sour taste and resolutely pushed the past aside. Their actions had been a complete betrayal of Renata’s memory. Thinking about it sure wouldn’t help now. The only thing she could do was fulfill the promise she’d made as Renata sliced through the rope that threatened to pull them both to their deaths - to look out for Declan where she’d failed to do so for her dead friend.
* * *
Gwen’s guilt is huge. She promised Renata, her best friend and who died to save Gwen in a rock climbing incident, she would look out for Declan. Then, days later, she slept with him. He rejected her cruelly the next day, but still her promise to look out for Declan is there. She has to honour this promise even more so given that she feels she betrayed her dead friend’s memory by sleeping with Renata’s fiancé. And she’s determined to do so by pushing the past deep into the past, because she owes Renata her life.
Helena Davies, in THE TYCOON’S HIDDEN HEIR (Silhouette Desire, April 2007) was a whole new entity. She was the only child of older parents who sacrificed everything to put her through university. She was determined to make it up to them, financially, when their security was threatened by her father losing his job. Her sense of obligation led her to the type of work a ‘nice, well brought up’ kind of girl would never normally have considered, which in turn led to marriage to a much older man who’d solve all her financial problems. When she’s involved in a near death experience the night before her wedding she grabs what life has to offer, in the shape of Mason Knight.
Excerpt:
Black, ice-cold water swirled around her, sapping the last of the heat from her body, the last of her will to survive. A tinge of irony touched her mind that she should die this way. Helena Milton, full of life, colour and crazy dreams, and powered by a get-go attitude to life that had alternately amazed and dismayed her quieter elderly parents.
Her parents - would they ever understand why she’d left? Why she’d agreed to marry Patrick Davies and settle for less than love? Deep in her heart she knew she was doing the right thing - for herself, sure, but most of all for them and for the sacrifices they’d made for her.
But she’d failed. An uncontrollable skid on the ice and snow-strewn road had plunged her car through the bridge barrier and into the swollen river below. The river which now flumed with chilled water from the melting snow that came straight off New Zealand’s central plateau mountains.
Helena lifted numbed frozen fingers to try the switch for the electric windows again. Futile. Not even her ever-weakened attempts to break the glass had any effect. With the doors jammed and the car’s electrics out of commission she remained trapped. Helena closed her eyes again. What was the point in keeping them open when all around her was nothing but blackness.
A spark of anger lit briefly in her chest that she could die like this - alone and with her goals unfulfilled, no chance to earn her father’s pride instead of being the object of his quiet disappointment. Defeat had an ugly bitter taste.
* * *
In the above you get a picture of someone who wants a lot but is prepared to make sacrifice for what she believes is right - even sacrifice love - in return for what she believes she owes. You also learn she’ll do just about anything to gain her father’s respect and pride. Later in the book, when her son’s future is threatened you already know she’s going to fight tooth and nail to preserve what is his. You know she is a fighter.
Each of my heroines had a different upbringing. Each of them was influenced differently.
Each of my heroes had the same upbringing within the same family, yet each of them was drawn to their heroine for different reasons.
What you as a writer have to decide is what those influences and reasons are, and how your heroine reacts to them. What makes her think that way, talk that way, react that way? What kind of upbringing has she had and how has that affected who she is now. And more importantly, how does that affect her reaction to your hero? What is it about her that draws him to her? Why? Is he attracted by her intelligence? Her beauty? Her vulnerability? The fact she can change a tyre in three minutes without breaking a nail or a sweat?
She’s more than just a pretty face, a hair colour, an eye colour, a build. What’s happened in her life has moulded her, made her into the person she either shows to the world, or the person she doesn’t. But whether she’s shown her true self to the world or not, your readers have to know. Your hero may be completely in the dark but you have to show your readers through your heroine’s thoughts and actions, why she acts or speaks the way she does. It could be bravado that she’s showing to the hero, while in your heroine’s internal dialogue the readers know she’s quaking in her shoes. If your readers can identify with, or understand how and why, your heroine’s feeling what she feels you’re going to have that reader onside for her, and that’s really important. The last thing you need is your reader to dislike, or feel uncomfortable about, your heroine.
I remember some years ago attending one of the early RWNZ conferences at which Emma Darcy was a guest speaker. Emma stood in front of the assembly of eager romance writers and began to talk about her heroine in her most recent book. Every single thing Emma told us about her heroine was backstory, but it set up exactly what motivated her and why. Honestly, there was barely a dry eye in the house because we all believed so passionately in this heroine’s trials and tribulations. We wanted her to succeed. We wanted her life to be fabulous and happy. She was real and we loved her.
As an author we don’t have the luxury of regaling our readers with our heroine’s backstory before they get to read the book, so it’s vital that we show in actions, words and deeds what our heroine is prepared to do to reach her goal, and why.
Know your heroine. Love your heroine, faults and all, because if you don’t, why would your hero?
