scenes. Call it muse or divine inspiration, but freewriting, like journaling, can draw from a deep well of experience and emotion. Things float to the surface of the mind when you do this, and I will guarantee that some of your best ideas for your character will come through this exercise. You are delving into the mystery of your character, and this exercise will bring out their secrets.
One variation of this exercise is to write in first person and let the character talk to you, emote, rant, go off anywhere she likes. You may want to do this for an hour or a number of times over days. When I wrote Intended for Harm I decided I would give each character one full day of my attention, and so as I went through my day, not just while sitting and freewriting and ideating but also while making dinner and vacuuming the house, I conversed and meditated on my character and let him or her grow organically. I think that’s a great word to use because I don’t believe you can force a character to appear in all her fullness in a few minutes. Like a good stew, she needs time to simmer so the flavors can come out. (Okay, that’s a weird simile, but, oh well.)
Interestingly (and what I love best about writing fiction!), at some point the characters become real to you. As your personality and needs and fears and passions start infiltrating into your characters, you start to care about them. If you are starting your novel and you don’t care at all for all your main characters (including your antagonist), you haven’t done enough homework. I can’t stress how important this is. Doing or not doing this work might mean the difference between an okay novel and an amazing one. And who wants just an okay novel? Not me, no way.
Reduce It Down
Of course you aren’t going to use all the material in those fifty pages you wrote. Go through and highlight the best lines that work great in characterizing your character, and pick the bits of history that make her the unique person she is. You may only use a small bit in your novel, and maybe almost none of all that history you wrote. So why do it? Because knowing your character’s history will show even if you don’t write about it. Trust me, it’s true.
You can tell when someone truly knows their character inside and out, even if they tell you almost nothing of their past. You need to know all that because it will shape how you write her in every scene—her speech, thoughts, movements, choices, etc. At some point you will feel you are ready to tell her story.
I always know when that moment is. And if I’ve done my work and planned out my novel (which involves those cool charts and index cards), I’m good to go. Do I ever get writer’s block? Never. Really. I never have. And it’s not because I’m so amazing, because I’m not. It’s because by the time I’m ready to start, I am so bursting with story and theme and character that the story just spills out. I believe you can be the same if you do your prep work and resist beginning until the pieces are in place. Think about it for your next novel.
Think about . . . taking one character who you don’t feel is very complex or deep and do some freewriting—either in first or third person. Let yourself write about not just what you already know about her but all kinds of other things from her past and what she feels. See if anything you write is good enough to merit a place in your novel.
Chapter 17: Bad Guys Aren’t All That Bad
(or at least they shouldn’t be)
“Things were easier for the old novelists who saw people all of a piece. Speaking generally, their heroes were good through and through, their villains wholly bad.”
~W. Somerset Maugham
I want to take a little bit of time talking about bad guys. Most novels have an antagonist. Not all, but somewhere along in your novel writing career you will probably have one bad guy (or gal) show up. Writers really have a tendency to lean toward the
One variation of this exercise is to write in first person and let the character talk to you, emote, rant, go off anywhere she likes. You may want to do this for an hour or a number of times over days. When I wrote Intended for Harm I decided I would give each character one full day of my attention, and so as I went through my day, not just while sitting and freewriting and ideating but also while making dinner and vacuuming the house, I conversed and meditated on my character and let him or her grow organically. I think that’s a great word to use because I don’t believe you can force a character to appear in all her fullness in a few minutes. Like a good stew, she needs time to simmer so the flavors can come out. (Okay, that’s a weird simile, but, oh well.)
Interestingly (and what I love best about writing fiction!), at some point the characters become real to you. As your personality and needs and fears and passions start infiltrating into your characters, you start to care about them. If you are starting your novel and you don’t care at all for all your main characters (including your antagonist), you haven’t done enough homework. I can’t stress how important this is. Doing or not doing this work might mean the difference between an okay novel and an amazing one. And who wants just an okay novel? Not me, no way.
Reduce It Down
Of course you aren’t going to use all the material in those fifty pages you wrote. Go through and highlight the best lines that work great in characterizing your character, and pick the bits of history that make her the unique person she is. You may only use a small bit in your novel, and maybe almost none of all that history you wrote. So why do it? Because knowing your character’s history will show even if you don’t write about it. Trust me, it’s true.
You can tell when someone truly knows their character inside and out, even if they tell you almost nothing of their past. You need to know all that because it will shape how you write her in every scene—her speech, thoughts, movements, choices, etc. At some point you will feel you are ready to tell her story.
I always know when that moment is. And if I’ve done my work and planned out my novel (which involves those cool charts and index cards), I’m good to go. Do I ever get writer’s block? Never. Really. I never have. And it’s not because I’m so amazing, because I’m not. It’s because by the time I’m ready to start, I am so bursting with story and theme and character that the story just spills out. I believe you can be the same if you do your prep work and resist beginning until the pieces are in place. Think about it for your next novel.
Think about . . . taking one character who you don’t feel is very complex or deep and do some freewriting—either in first or third person. Let yourself write about not just what you already know about her but all kinds of other things from her past and what she feels. See if anything you write is good enough to merit a place in your novel.
Chapter 17: Bad Guys Aren’t All That Bad
(or at least they shouldn’t be)
“Things were easier for the old novelists who saw people all of a piece. Speaking generally, their heroes were good through and through, their villains wholly bad.”
~W. Somerset Maugham
I want to take a little bit of time talking about bad guys. Most novels have an antagonist. Not all, but somewhere along in your novel writing career you will probably have one bad guy (or gal) show up. Writers really have a tendency to lean toward the
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