How not to write a story; all the traps of the trade

By Blaxcell

Introducing your characters

Well I suppose I'll introduce myself first; my name's Dorothy and I wrote this essay/report/rant not because I'm a gifted writer but because I'm a gifted critic. At sixteen I've seen my fill of shotty action, repetitive romance and more Mary Sues then I could poke a stick at. I've seen a lot of writers stunt themselves because they fall into the same traps over and over again. If this essay can help just one person or even create fuel for thought then I'll feel very accomplished so let's dive right in.

When introducing a character there are five things the reader wants; 1) name, 2) personality, 3) their comfort zone, 4) description (optional), and 5) justification for being there.

Each of these, except for maybe number four (more on that in plot, style and themes) is needed to create the foundation; a catch of information for the reader to grab on to and add as the plot unravels. If a decent foundation isn't readily available the reader finds the story hard to understand and less enjoyable because they are trying to gather every bit of information possible, something usually unconsciously or secondary to the primary enjoyment.

Think about it, it wont matter how deep your work is if not one reader can go past the third page, even highly stylised work conforms to these rules (Ex Shakespeare's Richard the Third opened with Richard giving a monologue telling us who he was, what he thought about himself, what he wanted to be and who he would be ready to kill to be king).

The two main trouble shooting areas when making a character are the name and description.

Don't use long and exotic names. Why? They don't make your character any more interesting and it makes it harder to make an emotional connection with them. Just think of Harry Potter, the most popular fictional person of our generation. Remember Mighty Mouse or Nancy Drew? We remember these names because it's easy to remember them.
I form an attachment (meaning I've stopped browsing and am willing to dedicate my time to see read to the end of the chapter before I make my next evaluation) in the first one to two minutes. If you make me hiccup and back track just because of a name that's points against you. If you have five individuals with 3.5 names a piece and hyphens, apostrophes or 'unique' spellings you've torn me right out of the story because I can't tell if you're writing Shakespearean if I'm too busy trying to figure out who's who.

An example ofusing lots of simple namesat once:

Who was she? Just a girl crying in the corner like the world owed her more she'd already wasted? No, Dave knew as certainly as he knew Tom was down to his last ciggie, that she was going to make Sarah Letterman mean something more. The two men smiled at her and to themselves; Tom spoke "Springer's going to pay if it takes us and the whole Point gang babe."

Believe me it wouldn't sound quite the same if Gabriella Foxworth wanted to make her name mean something; you have to make the character grow out of the name, you have leave your readers with the impression that any titles you give them later are deserved; not that she's some pompous little git who's name is compensating for their personality.

The same goes for personality; why does she have to b so beautiful? Why does her hairstyle have to be described? Why are her eyes orbs? Do I care what she's wearing, will her black t-shirt with the tear in the bottom that says 'people suck' help her save the world?

When describing a character it's best to limit their physical features to about two or three sentences otherwise it makes your character sound cartoonish-like my Dominic Punchinello character who is a pompous idiot and only has a personality later in the plot (the plot being that he gets a personality). It may seem harsh limiting your wonderful character's beauty to only two-four lines but this helps the reader; if you give them a base they'll form their own ideas about what your character looks like, making it their character too, which makes the story an awful lot more entertaining.

Example:

Tom was unshaven and motley and to top it off he had a beer gut tucked into his old woolly jumper with shaky hands. He was a tall bear of a human being, like a hunkering shadow with bad breath and a big nose; he was constantly taking some drug out of one of the overflowing pockets of his trench coat and somehow ingesting it into his body.

Hey I didn't say they had to be short but how much of that was physical description and personality description? Do you know more about Tom then about this character?

Her name was Jackelinn (sic) M V-C T (sic left blank for privacy)She had moonlight pale skin that was falwess, (sic) besides a tiny crescent shaped scar near the outer corner of her riht (sic) eye. Her hair was long and spilled across her back and shoulders in shiney (sic) waves of sparking midnight black. Her eyes were hidden behind her long chunky bangs, but He (sic) later found ouht (sic) they were bright ceruealean (sic) blue.

Yes I did lift this off another person's story, without asking them and yes I am being mean by showing her work in a negative light but on the flip side I'm not. She honestly sounds beautiful and if the author had run it through a spell check I probably wouldn't have picked on her. But after a while you get tired of beauty and we still don't know what she's like. With Tom a least we can reckon he's a bit of a loner if he has such bad hygiene and defiantly a multiple drug addict.

The person's comfort zone is important, it's what makes them real, it's also what makes the story all the more dramatic when they're torn away from it. The character doesn't necessarily have to be totally happy with their comfort zone but they need a footing, a place to want to get back to or a memory to comfort them in their darkest hours.
And lastly justification, an important point for plot apart from romance; if you as the author can't give me a good reason for a fifteen year old girl enrolled in the army or getting the power of water, chances are there isn't one.

If you have problems describing your characters because you don't know how to set it and you don't want to use the mirror technique (the character looks into the mirror and tells us what they see) you can use the 'bounce' technique (which works really well if you're using 'Gatsby style-more on that in Style).

Just get two main characters in a room and let them tell you what they think of each other (works just as well one sided) or if you're trying to show that the character's out of their element tell us what the character thinks other people will think.

Example 1#:

She'd been watching him for a while now. He excited her; even catching a whiff of his cologne on another man thrilled her. He was tall, Irish and provocative, with a voice like Guinness and soft leather.

But she didn't know he'd been watching her with as much rapture, that he followed the bounce of her brown hair, the curve of her hip and the flow of her dress with almost religious dedication. She didn't know how high she made him feel with those pretty blue eyes locked with his green ones.

Example 2#:

The man in front of him was squat to the point of dwarfness while he himself would never be a basket ball player. But Jason's mum always told him not to judge on differences. There wasn't really much the same about them, Jason being dark and broody and the dwarf was fair with his chin permanently turned up like he was ready for a fight every second of his life. That was something, they both knew how to take a hit and they had the bumps and bruises to prove it.

Example 3#:

Jamie looked around the room. She'd always thought she was kinda pretty even if she did have braces and a slight 'second chin.' But they were all staring at her, all the girls were so skinny and had so much make-up on and she thought it would be okay to walk out of the house in a shirt and jeans! Her sneakers were scuffed and she had a big pimple on her cheek that… And she couldn't even open her mouth after that boy had snickered at her accent.

So what can we conclude from example 3#? (My best example yet!) Jamie's a shy girl who is self-conscious about her weight and her clothes. She has braces and since she has an ascent she's probably not from around there and since she's in the spotlight in front of strangers she's probably starting her first day at a new high school. There's going to be peer pressure and bullying which will be part of a plot even if it's not the main one and the reason she's here is that her family's moved. Of course there'll need to be more so it's not all guess work but that's a darn good introductory paragraph.

And a girl with a lot of my problems (because let's face it, that was me on my first day at my current high school) will interest me when she saves the world instead of some secret double agent with years of training in martial arts, guns and one liners and perfect hair.

But more on Jamie and her world saving adventures in 'Plot'.

Next Style or Plot (which ever I finish first)