Alright. I’m not going to say that thing I’m not supposed to say, but I might as well give up on calling Ali Hale a guest poster. She’s more like a Featured Blogger ’round here at the Pen Men Palace. (Can we have disco music and flashing lights?)

Well, she would have been, except she called copywriters vanilla. Now I’m offended. I’m hurt. And I need to talk about my feelings with her. So while I do that, you read this post, mmkay?

Writers come in different flavors. There are copywriters, bloggers, academic writers (the vanilla of the writing world?), technical writers and…

Fiction writers.

Your local bookstore draws a clear divide between fiction and non-fiction novels, but we writers can’t be divided into two neat camps the same way, even if you tried.

When you’re standing in the non-fiction camp, it’s easy to dismiss fiction.

• Writing fiction is self-indulgence.
• Fiction doesn’t pay.
• Getting published is difficult.
• Most likely, no one’s going to read it.
• It’s hard to write good fiction.

I’d love to say there’s no grain of truth in that list. Sadly, there is. If you want to make money writing, you’re far more likely to achieve the goal through non-fiction. It’s not that hard to get good enough at non-fiction for people to buy your words.

Fiction is (if you’ll pardon the pun) a very different story.

But fiction matters, even though you’re not making money from it. Even though writing a short story takes a week of hard graft. Even though only your mom and your writers’ group will ever read your fiction.

Fiction is great training to become a good writer.

Let me tell you a quick story. When I was seventeen, I took classes in math and physics, and we studied mechanics in physics. I do not have a good mechanical head. I mix up left and right. I steer well clear of DIY.

So I found physics lessons hard. I thought I’d never get it.

Then we started doing mechanics in math, and that was even harder. (This was, incidentally, the point where I decided to pledge my troth to words and ditch my love affair with numbers…) The math lessons never became easy.

But the physics classes did.

I’ve noticed this happens with non-fiction writing. When I started blogging and writing articles, it felt damn hard. I struggled along. But once I’d acquired a ton of fiction experience under my belt, I found writing non-fiction became easier. I didn’t need to do much redrafting.

The words came out right the first time.

Fiction is really hard to write well .You might never reach world-class standard. You might never have your work published. But by writing fiction, you’re pushing those writing muscles hard. Once you’ve written a few short stories, those daily blog posts that once were hard to write are going to get a lot easier.

It’s no accident that several great bloggers also write fiction.
Naomi Dunford wants to write a romance novel (see #4 here). Hunter Nuttall posted his NaNoWriMo novel. And your very own James participates in creative fiction challenges and even runs Escaping Reality. (Or did. He’s currently on hiatus, but he still writes fiction daily.)

Of course, fiction isn’t just a good training ground to being a better writer.

Fiction is important because stories are powerful.

How often do you remember a blog post or a magazine article you read? How often do you skim the words, remember them for a little bit and then forget them?

Now answer this: How often do you remember a story?

We’re hardwired for story. (Get a copy of Chip and Dan Heath’s book Made to Stick if you want the authoritative take on this.) Stories, from simple fables to powerful novels, tend to stick.

Want an example? Go and read Tim Brownson’s post Imagine This.

As a fiction writer, you create stories. You invent characters who engage readers’ hearts and minds. You draw the reader into an invented world that makes the real one fade away like mist.

We still read novels that were written in the 18th century. We still watch plays that were written in the 16th century – or even earlier. And often, these ancient stories were based on earlier ones.

If you want your writing to outlive you, fiction is the ultimate evergreen content. Technology changes, trends come and go, scientific theories don’t last – but human nature, the subject matter of fiction, always stays the same.

Stories aren’t just powerful for readers, either.

Writing fiction can be an incredible escape for you.

This might be where the myth that fiction is an indulgence began. Writing fiction is hugely absorbing and engaging and joyful.

I love blogging, but there’s something special about writing fiction that just isn’t there in non-fiction gigs. When I write a novel, anything goes. I make up the world and I decide the plot twists. I create the characters get to write about snarky people and crazy people and amazing people. I can write witty comebacks that I’d never say aloud in real life.

I can fling words onto the page with abandon, knowing that I can always redraft, that no one ever needs to see my work but me. It’s my playground. It’s my secret world.

When something in real life is bugging me, I can escape in the fiction I’m writing. That’s not just a way of putting my head in the sand – it’s a great way to work through emotions or issues. I can channel anger or sadness or frustration into the words. I can invent characters that are kinder, braver and more patient than I am.

If you’ve ever written fiction, you’ve probably discovered the same. For some folks, fiction is literally a lifesaver. For many others, it’s a way to deal with the ups and downs and dark comedy of life. It’s an outlet, a way to take the little hurts and upsets of life and create something unique and wonderful.

Don’t ever let anyone tell you that writing fiction is self-indulgent or unimportant.

And don’t look for permission to write fiction either. You don’t need qualifications. You sure as hell don’t need to start out perfect. You don’t need to be the best fiction writer ever.

You just need to find a story – one of your stories – and start writing it.

Ali Hale changes lives and reaches readers through her powerful words. You’ll find more great advice (and stories worth reading) from Ali over at her blog,Aliventures, a place for thinking people who aren’t satisfied with easy, glib answers.

The Secret to Writing Powerful Words Another rockin' post from the Men With Pens! Copyright 2006 - 2010 30 Sous Zero Inc - All Rights Reserved

If you’ve missed the first posts in this special fiction writing series, you can read them here:

Day One: How to create a believable character
Day Two: How to create a setting for your story.
Day Three: How to create plot
Day Four: How to get serious and make money from fiction writing
Day Five: How to create character flaws

Today, for our last post in the series, we’re going to discuss a topic no one really talks about much: prejudice in fantasy worlds.

Fantasy Has Prejudice?

Yeah, I’m afraid so. Pick a fantasy trope – werewolves, vampires, goblins, dwarves, elves, races from lands that don’t exist – and you’ll find there’s a lot of emotional strife bound up in those worlds.

If you think that all these folks should get along just fine, I invite you to look at race relations worldwide here on Earth. We’re pretty strife-ridden. And we’re all PEOPLE, all the same. Imagine if you had whole other SPECIES to be prejudiced against.

It would be insane.

In the real world, poor people feel certain ways about rich people who feel certain ways about middle-class people who feel certain ways about everyone else. Black people and white people and yellow people and brown people from various backgrounds feel certain ways about all the other races. French people and English people and Chinese people and Icelandic people feel certain ways about each other too.

It has to do with background. It has to do with how people are raised and what they believe.

It has to do, in short, with history.

You, my friend, are writing a fantasy world. The history that you know just ain’t a part of that reality. You not only have to invent a character, but you have to invent a whole series of emotions around how this character feels about all of the interactions going on around in this fantasy world.

Here’s a news flash for you: It’s simply not realistic to think that your character, along with every character your character interacts with, is just going to throw open his arms and say, “Can’t we all just get along?”

No. There’s going to be a lot of emotional turmoil. You should embrace that fact. It’s going to be a big part of this world.

Don’t Overdo It, Though

Once you’ve embraced the fact that your character is going to have some emotions regarding the other species and races in the world he lives in, it’s tempting to over-do it.

It’s tempting to think that since your character is a vampire, and all vampires in your world hate werewolves, therefore your vampire character wants to tear the skin off every werewolf he encounters, inch by inch.

That makes for some vivid storytelling. But it isn’t necessarily accurate.

Let’s go back to the real-world race relations. There are some seriously screwy people in the world who really do want to do physical harm to other races. That’s terrifying. But the great majority of prejudice doesn’t go that far. It’s more in the NIMBY realm (and NIMBY, for those of you who don’t know, is the acronym for Not In My Back Yard).

Prejudice usually manifests in one simple way: “You’re not like us. Go away.”

That’s it. If people have to make someone different than them go away by being physically violent about it, they will. But most people don’t wander around with a secret desire to maim people of other races, even if they did grow up prejudiced against them.

So how deep does your character’s prejudice for other species and races run? Where did he learn this prejudice? And before you rely on the old, “Someone of that species killed my father” trope, consider the following question:

If a white guy killed your father, would you automatically think all white guys were EVIL? What if it was a black guy? Are all black guys now evil?

Yeah, I didn’t think so. That’s really not how our brains work.

It’s an easy way to let your character act hateful to another species, but even in a fantasy world, it doesn’t really work. It’s not realistic. If your character really does HATE another species, give him a good reason why he should.

Don’t Underdo It Either

The reverse of overdoing it is also tempting. Being as your character is naturally intelligent and super-cool and generally a joy to be around, it’s pretty hard to decide that your character is uneasy around, say, dwarves.

For no good reason. Dwarves just make your character edgy. Why? Well, he’s heard stories . . .

Hearing stories is how most prejudice is created, and it’s a mistake to not allow your character to feel any of the emotions regarding stories he hears. Almost every place, especially a place with this many species who are so very different from one another, has violent and uncertain histories.

I’d like you to think about the following scenario to prove my point:

Back in the olden days of all of these species growing up, the very first time they encounter one another, they’re likely going to attack. Not because either of them is bad. Not because either of them particularly wants to fight.

They fight because neither side has the ability to communicate this sentiment: “No, dude, I don’t want to fight you or steal your resources or kill your young.” There would be no way for these species to communicate until enough time has gone by for a common language to be established.

And until that point, there are going to be miscommunications and misunderstandings between the groups that lead to violent bloodbaths for generations.

In our own human history, we completely wiped out our brethren when we encountered them, because we thought they might be a threat for resources. Those we wiped out were other humans. Imagine if we had encountered big scary semi-humanoid creatures who looked nothing like us and looked very much like they could kill us.

We would definitely have attacked them.

That means that even if these violent encounters have long been forgotten by the time your character shows up on the scene, there will be lingering resentments.

Many characters won’t have very solid reasons for that resentment, either. Too much time has passed. It’s just that this one village really doesn’t do business with Halflings, okay? And this other village is totally cool with dwarves, but centaurs give them the heebie-jeebies. And this other village has heard that all elves want to seduce their women so that they can gradually breed out the human race altogether.

Need proof? Have you SEEN all the half-elves?

Pretending that your character never encountered any of these kinds of comments and stories is absurd. Maybe the character happens to have a background that isn’t that prejudiced, and that’s great. But he’s going to hear stories from other people, and he’s not going to be able to avoid being influenced by those stories.

Your character is not immune to species/racial prejudice. Period. Even if he’s generally a really decent dude. Even if he doesn’t want to be prejudiced, even if he works really hard at not showing it, he’s still going to have feelings about it.

And just like in the real world, the sooner your character acknowledges those feelings, the sooner he can move past them and get onto being that awesome, fully-rounded, all-species-encompassing dude you want him to be.

By the time he does, though, you’ll have created a character whose emotions and personality you know inside and out. And that’s great for you.

One Last Pitch for the Win

Guys, this is the last day you can get in on the Men with Pens exclusive offer to sign up for the Gamer Lifestyle Course. If you’ve been reading our posts this last week and just itching to pick up a pen and create a world all your own, we really encourage you to check the course out.

Because writing a story, gaming away and earning a living from it? We just can’t think of anything sweeter than that.

It’s a huge, handholding course with experts who are extremely well known in the RPG world. You’ll receive their one-on-one advice, hours upon hours’ worth of modules and guides, and a forum full of your peers.

If all that’s holding you back from making a living as a fantasy writer instead of whatever it is you do now is fear, then there’s really no reason to hold back anymore. And you have today left to break free.

Go for it. We believe in you. Send us your first published clips. We’ll be so proud.

Special Fiction Writing Week: Creating Prejudice in Fantasy Another rockin' post from the Men With Pens! Copyright 2006 - 2010 30 Sous Zero Inc - All Rights Reserved

If you’re one of those people who writes copy for a living in order to make enough money to support your fiction writing endeavors, then this series is for you.

This week, Men with Pens offers a full six days of posts, each on writing fiction and boosting your potential to create a kick-ass novel. We’ll also have an exclusive Men with Pens offer for readers this week – stay tuned for tomorrow’s post, where you’ll discover how to earn money from fiction writing.

The series began with tips on how to create a believable character, and the next installment discussed how to create a setting for your fiction novel.

Now we’ll discuss something everyone gets fired up about: plot

Plot is the nitty-gritty that gives your characters something to do. You’d be shocked at how many people leave this step out of their story. They’ll invent a great, well-developed character with a personality anyone could sympathize with, they’ll come up with a kick-ass backstory, and they’ll place the story in a beautifully described, poignant setting.

Then nothing happens.

Well, stuff will happen. The character probably interacts with other characters, has conversations, and does things in this exquisitely described location.

But there won’t be any conflict. There won’t be one driving element that propels the story forward.

In essence, there won’t be a plot.

Why a Plot is Often Absent

Many writers mistake dramatic action for a plot. For example, if they put their character through tons of traumatic experiences in their book, they’ll point to those action-packed experiences and say, “Look! Plot!”

That’s not plot. That’s action. They are two very different things.

The plot of your story is what other people would say your story is about. No book reviewer would sum up your novel as, “This is a story about a woman who gets the crap kicked out of her. A lot.” That’s not a legitimate summary of the story because it isn’t the story.

That’s something that happens within the story. That’s action driving the overall plot.

So What Is Plot, Then?

The plot of any story can more or less be summed up thusly:

• Your protagonist wants something.
• He or she is unable to achieve it, for whatever reason.
• He or she achieves what was desired or fails to achieve it at all.

That’s it. This is the plot of almost every story. Allow me to demonstrate:

Moby Dick: Captain Ahab wants to catch the white whale. The white whale, understandably, does not want to be caught, which gets in the way of the Captain’s goal. Ahab fails; the white whale kills him. Sucks to be you, Ahab.

The Da Vinci Code: Robert wants to solve a puzzle about the origins of Christianity. Robert is impeded by a crazy albino. Robert achieves his goal anyway. Good job, dude.

Bridget Jones’ Diary: Bridget wants a nice, attentive boyfriend, specifically her shagedelic boss. Shagadelic boss is a jerk, which means he fails at being said boyfriend. Bridget fails to get shagedelic boss but succeeds at getting another nice, attentive boyfriend, mangling standard sentence structure in the bargain. Decent job, Bridget.

Lord of the Rings: Frodo wants to get the One Ring to Mordor. He can’t because of all the evil critters in his way (Orcs, Ringwraiths, etc.) He achieves his goal by chucking the Ring into the Cracks of Doom. Well bloody played, Frodo.

Take a look at your story. What do your characters want?

The Critical Missing Element in Most Plots

Once you’ve established what your characters want, you need to establish why they want it. These things go hand-in-hand.

Captain Ahab wants to kill the white whale because the white whale cut off his leg (he’s got a point). Da Vinci Robert wants to solve the mystery because someone was murdered (initially) but also because he is a professor of these matters and he must know. Bridget wants a boyfriend because, well, she’s a pretty shallow chick, so let’s say status. Frodo wants to destroy the One Ring because the world will be cast into chaos and ugliness if he doesn’t.

This helps readers know what’s propelling characters’ actions throughout your story. Either characters support your protagonist in their quest for whatever, or they get in the way somehow.

Dude, My Plot Is Way More Complicated Than That

Think your plot is more complex than that? I hate to break it to you, but it really isn’t. Even the most convoluted plot structures break down to this point.

The only exception (and it’s not really an exception) are plots where there is more than one protagonist, in which case each of the protagonists may have a separate goal.

Of course, if your protagonists’ goals do not interrelate in any way, then you have two separate stories. Usually two parallel plotlines coincide in that a single character wants a certain goal and the other character does not. Or, conversely, the characters want the same goal, but for different reasons. It’s up to us as readers to determine who has a better reason.

Either way, it’s still the same plot: Want, inability to achieve, then achievement or lack thereof.

Here’s a quick example of a plot that seems convoluted but isn’t:

In the book Pride and Prejudice, the reader has to cope with five sisters, a mother, and a friend of the family. The mother wants all her girls married because it will make her super-cool in her social circles. The eldest wants to be happily married to a specific dude. Tthe second eldest wants to be intellectually satisfied for the rest of her life and doesn’t much care if it’s with a husband or not. The third wants to be left alone. The fourth wants to get laid. The fifth wants to be the fourth. The friend wants to be financially comfortable and doesn’t care if she even likes her husband, so long as she can achieve this goal of wealth.

That’s SEVEN different people in one story – and I haven’t even brought in the other characters yet.

Seems like a really complicated plotline, right? It’s not.

Elizabeth is our main character. Her basic goal is to be intellectually happy, and she wouldn’t mind finding a good man with whom that was possible. We’re following her in her quest for that situation.

All other characters in the book, every single one of them, are only there to contribute to Elizabeth’s quest for that situation in some way. Every single sister and friend who gets into some romantic entanglement somehow feeds Elizabeth’s understanding of what she desires in a mate, bringing her a step closer to finding him.

This doesn’t mean that each of the other characters are actively trying to help or hinder Elizabeth. It just means that, from an author’s perspective, they contribute to Elizabeth’s goal. The fact that they contribute to Elizabeth’s goal unwittingly while pursuing their own goals is beside the point.

Elizabeth is our protagonist. Everything mentioned in the book must contribute to her goal in some way.

What should you take away from this? If there is a character or a situation that does not serve your central character’s goal, it does not belong in the story.

So go ask yourself those questions, and see how much clearer your story becomes:

• What is my main character’s goal?
• What are my minor characters’ goals?
• How are my minor characters’ pursuits of their goals contributing to my main character’s pursuit of his/her goal?

If you can’t answer these questions easily, then you don’t have characters. You have stick figures. What’s worse, you don’t have a plot.

Special Fiction Writing Week: Creating a Plot Another rockin' post from the Men With Pens! Copyright 2006 - 2010 30 Sous Zero Inc - All Rights Reserved

If you’re one of those people who writes articles or ebooks or website copy for a living in order to make enough money to do the other kind of writing – yes, fiction – then this series is for you.

We’re offering a full week (yes, six posts) all about writing fiction and improving your skills. We’ll also have an exclusive offer for Men with Pens readers later on this week; you’ll be able to put your fiction to work for you and earn money off its originality.

Yesterday’s post began the series with tips and tricks on how to create a believable character. We also established that it’s easier to create a setting than it is to create a good character.

For one thing, often your setting has been created for you. Many books have stories that take place in real cities, on streets that you can drive down today, with characters that walk in and out of stores and restaurants that you yourself shopped or ate or got sick in.

Even if you’re creating your own setting, which includes making up a whole new world like Ursula K. LeGuin does in nearly every book she writes, building that setting is still a pretty straightforward task. It’s not particularly easy to create all the little bits and pieces that make up a world, but creating a setting is straightforward because no one can argue with you about it.

If you decide that everything in your world is blue, for whatever reason, no one can argue it’s not “realistic”. Readers realize they’re within a sci-fi or fantasy world and move on.

Not so with characters. If your character does something completely unbelievable, no reader is going to go along with it, even if your character lives on the blue planet that they accept.

So creating a setting is a breeze, right? Nothing to see here.

Nuh-uh. Creating a setting is easier than creating a character. That doesn’t mean it doesn’t require some serious thought and attention.

Working in a Real Setting

For the purposes of this article, “real” means “exists in the world in which you and I walk.” That means the setting is in the present time or thereabouts (it can be a few years ago, but not 100 years ago), it’s in a city you can point to on a map, and the buildings, streets, and storefronts are all more or less as they stand today.

This is perhaps the simplest kind of setting in terms of being able to describe where everything is and what the weather’s like. It’ll trip you up if you’re not careful.

For one thing, your readers are going to know this setting too. That means when you write about the impression of the place – it’s “bustling”, or it’s “weary”, or it’s “dirty” – you’re going to have contend with the opinions of people who have actually been to these locations.

If you decide that New York is a clean, cheerful city, for example, you had damned well better be prepared to back that up with some weird quirk of your character’s personality, such as how he sees only the good in everything.

The handy part about writing a setting that actually exists is that it’s completely unnecessary to make up anything. London is still there, and so is Iraq. The religions are established, the history is set. You can just sink into what you already know and begin from there – though if your setting is crucial to your plot, as in a historically based investigation, you’re going to want to be sure you have your facts straight. But it’s pretty smooth sailing insofar as creation goes.

That’s not to say you can just decide you’re good to hit the keyboard and start writing.

If you’re going to write about a place that actually exists, make sure you really do know that place. It’s best if you’ve lived there, at least for a little while. Make sure that your idea of the setting is a valid idea before you go writing it on paper as though it were fact.

Your perception is valid – but if you’ve never actually been to the city you’re writing about or only stayed there on a short visit, your perception won’t matter so much as your gross inaccuracy.

Working in a Made-Up Setting in a Real World

This is a pretty common tactic used by authors who write novels set in small towns. The setting is essentially in a country that actually exists on a map, but you’ve completely fabricated a town within that country.

Your town may be – and should be – similar to towns in that region, for believability’s sake, but creating your own town setting means you have more freedom about the general impression of the place. You can say that everyone in town feels like the place is dead, and no reader can refute you, because this town does not actually exist.

This strategy also works if you’re creating locations that don’t exist within a place that does. For example, if your characters have an underground money-laundering scheme and they need a bar to meet in, make up a bar. Just try not to put it where an actual bar exists or you’ll have blown your cover.

Made-up settings in the real world are also great for fantastical realities. The current vampire craze works like this; so did the Harry Potter books. It works very well to use the real world to disguise a secret, made-up underground that you have free rein to manipulate.

Just don’t forget that the real world is out there. Youre accountable to it. If you decide that your vampires just blew up the town, you have to remember that the National Guard is going to come investigate that, no matter how cool your vampires look smoking cigarettes on the rubble.

Working in a Made-Up World

A make-believe world is the stuff of fantasy and sci-fi novels, and the epitome of doing it well has been (and will probably always be) J.R.R. Tolkien.

That is, until someone else actually invents several different languages, grammar and all, for the various races of the characters created, not to mention writing thousands of years of documented history for said made-up world. Tolkien was a devoted historian and linguist with a lot of time on his hands, people.

In short, you will probably not wind up creating another Middle-Earth.

However, you will wind up creating a history. History is essential for a made-up world, and it possibly one of the biggest drawbacks of using this type of setting.

In a real-world setting, history is more or less as it always was. Your reader knows the history of the real world and has easy reference to it. In a made-up world, there’s a good chance that presumably the Middle Ages never happened, presumably the Greeks never sat around and discussed philosophy, presumably medical advances weren’t discovered at the same time or in the same way.

When you work in a made-up world, it’s not just about writing down how your setting looks and feels. It’s about how your setting got to be that way. Your readers need to know that, in order to accept the setting you’ve put before them.

This is one of the reasons made-up settings frequently resemble our own world quite closely. There’s a hilarious xkcd comic describing why you shouldn’t bother coming up with new names for everything in your world. It’s mostly because then your story becomes all about describing this new world instead of about describing what’s happening within it.

You can definitely name creatures and objects that don’t exist in the real world (everyone’s cool with J.K. Rowling making up Horcruxes and Patronuses), but deciding you have to scrap everything you know and start fresh isn’t going to do you – or your story – any favors.

So which would you choose for your story’s setting? Where are your characters going to live and interact? What does that place look like? What does it feel like to be there?

Special Fiction Writing Week: Creating a Setting Another rockin' post from the Men With Pens! Copyright 2006 - 2010 30 Sous Zero Inc - All Rights Reserved

That’s right. For six consecutive days this week, we’ll be talking fiction. How to write it. How to be better at it. How to make your stories feel real to your readers. How to help your characters leap right off the pages and into people’s hearts. And later on in the week, we have an exclusive offer just for Men with Pens readers.

You see, we know that many of you who come hang here with us at Men with Pens are closet fiction writers. (We’re fiction writers ourselves.) You may do business writing as a job, but you might also write short stories, participate in NaNaWriMo every year, or have a novel that you’d like to polish into a publishable manuscript.

That’s fantastic. Being a professional writer doesn’t mean you can’t be an amazing fiction writer.

Some great writers have done the very same. John Scalzi (Old Man’s War, Zoe’s Tale), Don Delillo (Underworld, White Noise), Augusten Burroughs (Dry, Running with Scissors), and Salman Rushdie (Midnight’s Children, The Satanic Verses) all worked as copywriters until their fiction writing careers took off enough to support them.

We hope you become famous enough that you’ll be listed alongside F. Scott Fitzgerald and Dashiell Hammett (yeah, they did this too) as former copywriters who became great fiction writers.

Creating a Character

It’s a habit of many a lifelong fiction lover to sit down and create a world before creating even a single concept of a character who’s going to live within that world.

The reason is that mostly, creating a world is more a matter of logistics than reality. If you can make it work logically, then you can have anything you want in your fiction world. You can have dragons, or flying spaceships, or (in more traditional fiction) a tiny town in the middle of Arkansas where no town currently exists on the map.

Oh, but characters. Ahh. Characters are fickle. They won’t do what you tell them to do. They have strange personality quirks. They don’t seem real enough until they’re a little inconsistent, and if they’re too inconsistent, then they’re not real either.

Characters are difficult to contain and control, which is often why you notice some of the more mediocre fiction having an amazing setting and truly unbelievable characters.

These authors have made a classic mistake. They’ve tried to shoehorn their character into the setting, instead of creating a real person and asking themselves what the world around this person looks like.

Without at least one character, you simply don’t have a story. J.R.R. Tolkien created one of the most extensive fantasy worlds ever known – but you don’t give a damn about Middle-Earth if there is no Bilbo Baggins, no Gandalf, no Aragorn, no Tom Bombadil.

Your characters are the souls of your stories. So how do you go about creating believable characters for yours?

Start With Clichés

When you first start writing your character, your impulse might be to create a person unlike any other out person out there. A completely unique individual, with a background that’s new and different, or a person with a weird way of looking at the world, an unconventional mind.

You’ll fail.

At our core, every human being – and that includes each one of us – is a cliché. You’ll have a very hard time creating a character who meets absolutely none of the standard tropes, whether you’re writing conventional literature or fantasy or a mystery novel. As the saying goes, every story has been told a thousand times before.

So has every character.

Pretending your character is somehow going to transcend every single fictional trope that ever existed is absurd. Heck, YOU, a real live breathing walking talking reading blogging human being, fit into at least half a dozen standard tropes.

The housewife who aspires to be a writer. The quiet but strong man who lives alone by choice. The stressed-out college student who just wants to get away from everything.

They’re tropes because they come up again and again in real life. Don’t try to work against the grain on that one.

So go ahead. Create your character and let this person fit into a cliché. Give him or her a background and a basic outline for the person’s life. She’s a middle-aged woman struggling to balance her work and her family, and she has issues with her mother.

It’s okay. She’s not going to stay a cliché for long.

Imbuing a Personality

Once you have your character’s basic circumstances sorted out, you need to give her a personality (your character may very well be a he, but we began with a female example so we’re going to stick with it).

Imbuing a personality is much, much harder than it might seem.

Think about your best friend, someone that you know very well. Think about whether she fits any clichés. She probably does; she probably fits half a dozen clichés. But until we asked you that question, you probably have never thought of your friend as a cliché. She could be the most stereotyped person in the world, she could have shown up in literature since the dawn of the written word, but you would never have thought of your best friend as a cliché.

Why? Well, because she’s your best friend. She’s not a cliché. There’s a reason for where she is in her life and why she feels that way.

And she’s, well, her. She’s your friend. She makes you laugh and she has a funny way of sticking her finger out from her coffee mug as though she’s always having tea with the queen. She remembers you like daffodils, but she can’t be relied upon to remember a birthday. You like the way she thinks, the things she says, and the way she sits next to you at a movie.

Her circumstances, the clichéd part of her, are secondary, tertiary, even farther back. They are not who she is; they are simply what has happened to her. Who she is, is the person who reacts to those circumstances in a particular way.

To give your character a personality, you need to figure out what sort of person your character is. You need to give that person a handful of quirks that are hers and hers alone. It’s rather like creating a recipe – many dishes require flour or eggs or cinnamon, but in differing amounts and in combination with different other ingredients, they’ll result in different final dishes.

So it goes with personality creation. Your character won’t have any personality quirks that don’t show up in other people – impossible. What your character will have are those qualities in different amounts and in unique combinations.

A Little Exercise For You

Write out a full conversation between yourself and this character. Pretend you’re stuck in an elevator together and have nothing else to talk about but one another.

See what kind of humor develops, how quickly this person trusts you with new information, the way her mind works in a time of minor stress, what she’s worried about, who she’s concerned about knowing.

Don’t assume that all people react the same way, and don’t assume your character spills everything about herself at the drop of a hat. The point isn’t to get the entire character history on paper; the point is to see what other people see when they meet this person on the page.

What sort of person is this? How would you describe your character to a friend later on, when you’ve gotten out of this elevator? What would you remember?

Special Fiction Writing Week: Creating a Character Another rockin' post from the Men With Pens! Copyright 2006 - 2010 30 Sous Zero Inc - All Rights Reserved