busy, busy day at the Devoti household, but also from now on when I am going to TRY to post a writing article or thought each week. I thought we’d start with Donald Maass’ Writing the Breakout Novel Workbook. I’m part of a Yahoo group called Plotspot. We try to have a discussion topic every week and this is the book we’re going to start going through. (If you’d like to join Plotspot, go to my web site and send me an email. I’ll get you an invite.)
Maass starts the Workbook with characters. I agree with him that characters are very important. What I’m not sure of is if you can use techniques to build really great characters. Character building seems harder to nail down to me than say plotting, but maybe that’s just because I have no real technique for it myself. It is one of the things I do organically. My characters just are. How’s that for a tip? Guess that’s why we’re going through Maass’ book.
Turning your protagonist into hero. Maass says as a literary agent one of the many problems he sees in submissions are manuscripts where you don’t care about the protagonist from page one. Yeah, we all know you are going to show “change” and “growth”, etc. But I think his point is very valid. No matter how flawed a character you want to have (and flaws are necessary) he/she has to give us some little reason for us to care. And this needs to be there from our very first introduction to that character.
To find a quality such as this for your protagonist, Maass suggests you think of people you admire and make a list of why. What makes them heroic? This doesn’t have to be something grand. It can be simple like a sense of humor or a love of small animals. Just give us something.
Then show us in some small way this trait in the very beginning of your book. Make sure you show not tell. So, if he loves small animals don’t tell us “Even though Hansel loved to shove toddlers into his granny’s oven, he also saved baby squirrels from the cold of winter.” Show us Hansel leaving his favorite hobby to pick up a baby squirrel wrap it in his latest victim’s blankey and cuddle the creature to his chest. :)
Oh, then keep showing this trait throughout the book. Maass suggests adding six more instances, but I doubt this is a magic number. Do what feels good.
Next week Multidimensional Characters. Should be interesting, although I think our litte hero Hansel is plenty multidimensional - or is that multi-dementable?
