A Character's Course Through a Story

A Character's Course

Through a Story

Summer is often about going light and airy--shorts and a breezy blouse, a salad or a slice of watermelon, a book on the beach with your toes in the sand, so let's take that route through character development.  Better yet, let's approach it with another summer pass time in mind, golf-- a character course in nine holes.

We'll take this course one hole at a time, adding a new hole a day!

Hole One: The Clubs You Bring Onto the Course AKA Backstory
In golf, you're swinging to hit the ball into the hole in as few shots as possible using different clubs, judging the lay of land, and doing the legwork to get that ball to the flag. Characters can work much the same way. You to create them in as few strokes as possible using the best tools and covering the distance from first page to last by judging the lay of the land in the fictional world that unfolds as you write it.

For your first tee shot, it's all about the clubs you bring onto the course and the metaphor is apt in more ways than one. In creating a character with compelling backstory, you have to remember that much of that character's story remains "under the rim" of the bag and the surface of the story until you pull a club out to take a swing. And each part of that story as a different purpose in your story like a driver is much different than a putter. With emotional situations that are raw and real and lead your character rash action, they are swung hard and fast like a driver. Emotional issues that are delicate and require diplomacy, you swing slow and easy with great care and aim like a putter.

For me, I come to the course with my bag of clubs aka backstory, but I allow my subconscious to choose the clubs.  I just pick the bag--the point when everything that changes, the incident that shapes who the character is at the beginning of the story--the storm that leads to a farming accident that takes away the use of a boy's leg (Worth), the end of slavery that frees a young boy to go find the mother who was sold away from him (Walking Home to Rosie Lee), and the adoptee who is terrified of water has to go live on a lake for the summer (Water Steps).  From there, I let the backstory unfold as the events do, asking myself "What would my character do now? Why?"

An understanding of character motivation and life-shaping events is essential here--study it in the books you read, the movies you watch, the people you meet, and consider a course in psychology via a book or an actual class. All of these things will be instrumental in helping you shape your character's past and remember--give everyone a past or the secondary and tertiary characters won't seem real.

Keep in mind, everyone plays golf differently, so everyone creates their character backstory differently. Find the way that works for you!

Here's an article from Rachel Ballon to offer you another perspective on developing backstory:
"How to Weave in Backstory to Reveal Character"

How do you incorporate backstory?

Hole 2: Swing with Distinction

Making your character unique is an essential of character development. You want your character to be someone your readers can relate to, but that can be as simple as making them a golfer--allowing them to have a hobby, need, or desire that readers in your target audience share.

Stake is an essential for your readers as well. That's the need/want that drives your character through the story aka keeps them on the golf course plugging away that little round ball. It could be a hole in one they're looking for here, but whatever it is, it should be internal and external. The hole in one is an external goal. Internally, the character may be trying to control their temper so they don't wrap their golf club around a tree when they miss a shot.

My dad frequently came home with bent clubs claiming that he was attacked by a heard of buffalo that he had to fight off with his club or get trampled.  Let's just say, I came by my ability to spin a tale naturally and my dad was a definitely a distinct character!

You also want your character to have a distinct voice. To speak in a way others do not.  Does your character constantly use shopping metaphors? Do they speak in as few words as possible? Run off at the mouth? Use a catch phrase like, "As long as no one swallowed a bug, we're good" is that because he swallowed a bee as a child and discovered he was allergic?

As I said, backstory is important and should be woven in.  You can also distinguish characters through the pasts you create, the clothes they wear, the pets who follow them, the things they do every Tuesday at 9:15 AM.

Let your character walk off the page by being a unique individual with layers, voice, and motivations!

But don't just take my word for it, here's
an article on giving your character a distinctive voice by fiction editor, Beth Hill
Variety in Character Voices

How do you make your characters distinctive?

"Book Addiction": 

The Reads That Shaped This Writer

by Guest Blogger Laurie J. Edwards

A Reader Gets Hooked

Asking me to choose the book that had the greatest impact on me is liking asking me to choose my favorite child – it can’t be done. My mother’s favorite story is that, when I was eight months old, I would sit in my playpen and “read” Reader’s Digest from cover to cover, turning one page at a time and looking over one side and then the other, before turning to the next page. I may have been imitating my parents, who were voracious readers, but my love affair with books began then and continued throughout my life.

When I truly learned to read, I holed up in my room, ignoring my mother’s plea that I needed fresh air and exercise. My reading addiction led to flashlights under the covers and books hidden inside my school desk. I read an average of 20 to 30 books a week throughout my elementary, teen, and young adult years. I read my way through library after library, and my greatest joy was becoming a librarian with access to free ILLs (interlibrary loans) and no fines.

All of this makes it difficult to pinpoint one special book that turned me into a writer. The book I reread from cover to cover until it was tattered was A Little Princess by Frances Hodgson Burnett. That book influenced my philosophy of life: I wanted to be Sara Crewe, to always be cheerful in spite of life’s hardships, to always look for the best in people, and to use my imagination to brighten any situation. If I had to give one book credit for inspiring my outlook on life and stirring my creativity, A Little Princess would win the award.

From Reading to Writing

The author that I most wanted to imitate, though, was Madeleine L’Engle. When I read A Wrinkle in Time, I dreamed of writing a book that affected readers so powerfully, that immersed them so deeply in a fantasy that they lost track of time and space, and that made them sigh in contentment when they closed the cover, knowing that the ending was not only inevitable, but perfect.

When I began writing, I took Madeleine L’Engle’s quote to heart: “You have to write the book that wants to be written. And if the book will be too difficult for grown-ups, then you write it for children.” I strongly believe children have an open-mindedness and a deep, innate understanding of what’s important in life, a knowledge that adults lose as they rush through their days worrying about to-do lists and other people’s opinions. Young readers are storing up knowledge and information they’ll use as adults, so children’s books have the power to influence their life choices.

I still remember the impact Madeleine L’Engle’s quote of Francis Thompson made on my young impressionable mind: “Thou canst not stir a flower / Without troubling a star.” Reading those words made me appreciate the vastness of the universe and the interconnectedness of all life. I realized the ripple effect even tiny acts of kindness can have on the world around me, and to this day, I can’t pull weeds without feeling a vast sadness. I’d rather have an overgrown garden than remove a plant, any plant – even a weed. To touch readers’ lives so deeply that my words positively influence decisions made decades later would be my greatest dream.

I may never approach Madeleine L’Engle’s greatness, but when a teen boy comments on Wattpad about my YA novel Grace and the Guiltless, “I've never been so moved by a book. You honestly made me cry…”  or a young teen girl says, “Reading this makes me stick up for myself and teaches me to boost my confidence,” I feel I’m heading in the right direction. Someday I hope to influence readers the way Frances Hodgson Burnett and Madeleine L’Engle affected me. These writers have taught me many things, but the most important is:

 "Thou canst not stir a reader

Without troubling a heart.”*

*an adaptation of poetic lines by Frances Thompson "The Mistress of Vision"

A Little More About This Book Loving Author

Laurie J. Edwards is the author of more than 2200 articles and 30 books in print or forthcoming. A student in the Hollins University MFA program in Children’s Writing and Illustrating, she also juggles editing and illustration careers, while writing fiction and nonfiction for children and adults under several pen names. As Erin Johnson, she writes the YA Western series, WANTED, in which her heroine, Grace, has been called “the Katniss of the West.” As Rachel J. Good, she writes the SISTERS & FRIENDS Amish series. Visit her at www.lauriejedwards.com and www.racheljgood.com.

Thank you so much for this lovely homage to the books that shaped you, Laurie.

Readers, 

What books shaped your life?

Wandering and Seizing

amazingdata.com

                As the name of this blog reflects, I'm a bit of a wanderer, and this month, I wandered over to Molly Blaisdell's blog Seize the Day and offered a few ideas about blending realism and fantasy and frosting cakes (which I know surprisingly little about. Come check it out: 

Bloom (in Frosting): Mixing Magic and Realism, Guest Blogger - Alexandria LaFaye!

Image-In This! Or Not

We've all heard the rules of imagery before--be concrete, be unique, be sensory, be partial, be specific and I've posted blogs on this before both here and on my Goodreads Restop blog: Wordy Wanderings Rest Stop, So, to cover new territory, I'm going to offer my final poems for National Poetry Month  a. In May and b. without a focus on imagery.

Because I'm a fan of looking at things from various angles and "showing the other side of things" knowing that few things have only two sides, here is an article from the American Academy of Poets that suggests we should move beyond concrete imagery: "In Praise of Abstraction".  

But to keep concrete imagery in the mix, I'll also share an article on imagery.  Here's an article that looks at imagery in the work of the poet and playwright Garcia Lorca:  The Imagery of Garcia Lorca

Now back to other forms of poetry. As we see in the work of ee cummings who famously brought the issue of sound, visuals, and abstractions to the forefront in modern poetry, imagery is not a requirement for poetry that could rely on experiential elements of abstraction vs. imagery.

To look at how this can work, I'll approach a subject in terms of imagery, then in terms of abstraction. Let me know which you prefer and why? Keep in mind, they will both be initial drafts that may lead to very different poems in the end.

(28 of 30)

A Desk

Images of an office supply store

 exploding 

come to mind

Yet that would not account

 for the books, piled spine in

spine out, 

genre graphic

to text book graphite

the gray dust

words bound

inspiration 

for discussion

sticky note pocked

question mark riddled

pile of unfilled papers

advising,

accumulating,

unpaid bill 

that I cannot account for

Coffee cup ringed with pen marks

but hosting only highlighters

a pair of scissors

and memories of the pens 

that marked it

Where are my notes 

for the lecture

I have to give

in an hour?

And now once more in abstraction!!

(29 of 30)

words withering waiting for a station in line

a memory of location a unleashing from the page

dogeared, shuffled, marked, stickied

read, reshuffled recalled

bound by glue by eyes that scan

follow the dotted lines of allusions

highlighters unused

pens off to parts on known

woodgrain printed on plastic 

glued beneath the weight of days

weeks semesters of appointments

lectures advising lunches with a half-life

computers with letters worn to memory

drafts written revisioned repeated

submitted rejected

waiting

for me

to find

them beneath the pile

Better 2 days late then never, right?

wry

tinge

challenge

a dozen doubled days plus five

a poem in a shell 

each nested

in advice

wrapped in articles

linked

letters

lines

images

ideas

set not in time

nor place

nor rhyme

but in flux

flexibility

fermenting

waiting for the 

aging process

to proclaim it

a heady bouquet

or vinegar fit

for naught

Weeding My Poetic Garden

     Last night, I had the distinct pleasure of working Kathleen Merz, Managing Editor at Eerdmans and Jodell Sadler to offer a webinar through Kidlit College on creating reading that hooks readers on the first page and pulls them along to the last page with Kidlit College. It was a fantastic experience that has inspired the topic for today's blog--poetic weed.  It's a term I coined for applying the fundamentals of editing poetry to revising and tightening writing of any genre. All me to demonstrate one element of the poetic weed to get you started:

Here's my poem for today:

(27 of 30)

Growth Spurt

"Mom, what's a growth spurt?"

she asks from the comfort of the backseat of our minivan

Is it going from learning the lyrics of "Jesus Loves Me"

to changing them to say, "Jesus send my grandpa back to me"

two days after he died?

Or is it learning about the sacrifices of lent while sliding your chicken off your

plate onto the restaurant floor,

then announcing, "I gave the chicken up for lent."

Maybe it's raising your hand at children's church

when the minister asks, "What is heaven like?" 

and saying, "It's where you go and get a new body and never feel any pain anymore"

But what I tell you is that it's when

you're body craves all the nutrients you need and 

allows you to grow in one big overnight push

Yet I can't help but think that there's so much 

more than two rows of seats between me

and the little girl I can still see in the

rear view mirror

Pull All the Prepositions

Here, we have a narrative "poem" about a girl growing up too fast in a writing style that is more prose than poetry and even at that it's more told than shown, so the first step of a poetic week is to go back through and see if there are any words that are not essential to the manuscript. The best way to get started is to look at conjunctions, articles, prepositions, adverbs, and adjectives and see if perhaps you can't winnow down the language.

But remember this rule: Only remove words if by their removal you make the writing more active, dramatic,and organic. If removing the word makes it awkward or stiff, you want to leave the word where it is. 

  Let's give it a try:

"Mom, what's a growth spurt?"

she asks from her car seat perch

Is it learning the lyrics of "Jesus Loves Me"

and converting them to, "Jesus send my grandpa back to me"

two days after he died?

Or learning about lent while sliding your 

chicken onto the restaurant floor,

then announcing, "I gave it up for lent."

Maybe it's responding, "What is heaven like?" 

with "It's where you go and get a new pain-free body"

But what I say is, "Your body stories all the good food

you eat, then zoom you grow double quick."

Yet, I'm thinking,

there's so much more than two rows of seats 

between me

and the little girl 

I can still see in the

rear view mirror

The events and images are a lot tighter and clearer now, the pace smoother.

But this is only one step of a poetic weed and it's important to remember that writing is like gardening. You don't just pull one batch of weeds and walk away until harvest time. You plant, you water, you fertilize, then you weed, and weed, and weed, then after you've dealt with the birds and the bugs and little bare footed invaders, you harvest what could be a beautiful tomato of a poem or it could be a lovely red fruit a piece that looks good but tastes/reads like dirt.

Give Strength to Your Tomatoes 

Or at least the opening and closing of each line.  Just as we put our tomatoes in a cages to give them something to grow on, the scaffolding of a poem can be your opening and closing words for each line.

A poetic weed also asks you to look at where you end and begin your lines. You should go for strength, clarity, and narrative gap here. You want strong, concrete words that can open up a sense of suspense for what's coming in the next line.

Let's put up our tomato towers in the poem I'm working on:

"Mom, what's a growth spurt?"
she asks from her car seat perch
Learning the lyrics of "Jesus Loves Me"?
Converting them to, "Jesus send my grandpa back to me"
two days after he died?
Or
Learning about lent while sliding
chicken onto the restaurant floor,
announcing, "I gave it up for lent."
Maybe
It's responding to "What is heaven like?"
with "It's where you go and get a new
pain-free body."
But
I tell you, "Your body stories all the good food
then zoom,
 you grow double quick."
Yet, I'm thinking,
there's so much more
 than two rows of seats
between me
and the little girl
I can still see in the
rear view mirror

We're getting closer one bloom at a time. I hope. Here, by turning the answer into separated questions, I was able to lead with "learning" and "converting" and remove "your" and "then" and I worked on the line breaks to set up the possibilities of the answers with "or," "maybe," and "but" they're not powerful words, but I'm hoping the single words work like the base in a fulcrum, balancing the ideas on either side.

I hope this gives you a little helpful advice.  I know that with this particular poem, I'm just getting started and I'm eager to keep going/growing!

How about you?

Weed away my friend!  You'll never know what may grow from it.

Poetry in Brief

“Poetry is a necessity of life. It is a function of poetry to locate those zones inside us that would be free, and declare them so. ”                                   —C. D. Wright, Academy of American Poets Chancellor (2013–2016)

There is an urban legend that Hemingway took a challenge to write a short story in one sentemce and wrote. "For sale, Baby shoes, Never worn." (See More Here) While we now know that this tale is not only untrue, but this sentence story is one that has origins back to the turn of the last century.  While it may nto have been Hemingway who originally wrote it, the power of this breif "tale" atests to the power of writing in brief and it's clear from this blog on brief poems that peotry in brief has been around for a very long time: Brief Poems

For today's poetry month post, I'm going to share a few very brief poems to explore the power of brevity.  

(23 of 30)

Night Mothering

The cry of night that defies coyote,

and coon,

to bring you breathless into a room,

to comfort the child.

(24 of 30)

Night Filing

Thunder wakes you moments before

bare foot falls, blanket dragging tails,

and bright eyes ask, "Can we sleep with you?"

You open the file, check to verify the correct procedure,

reply, "Go back to bed, girls. You'll be fine."

Report filed, you roll over and go back to bed.

Your wife slips into the shoes of night, 

shuffles out to tuck them in,

stubbing her toe on your filing cabinet as she 

returns to bed.

(Hmmm. That gender-mirror exercise didn't fit into the form--how ironic considering the theme)

Celebratory Aside:

 I'M CAUGHT UP.  It's the 25th and I'm writing my 25th poem of the month.  My apologies, but I had to celebrate a little!

(25 of 30)

Commitment

Signing on the proverbial dotted line which I've towed to this point.

(26 of 30)

Gimcrack, gewgaw, bauble, all babble about nothing, rippling on sound.

Stanza Sprints:

The Benefits of High Speed Poetry

(Are There Any?)

      According to Read. Write. Think., writing at high speeds

•  Helps to overcome the “blank page” problem 
• Warms up the brain for higher-level functioning
•  Can increase fluency if done regularly 
• Strengthens the right brain 
• Can help increase motivation 

    Or it can simply help you get caught up on your poem a day commitment for the month of April. Let's give it a go and see, but I have to add that for me the "blank page" problem is solved by 

a. never writing until you don't know what happens next. Always leave enough in reserve so that your subconscious can be working on your story while you're doing more important things like grading papers, caring for your children, hiring a new colleague in your department, teaching, and fighting bronchitis--or maybe that's just my to do list that never got fully done this week.

b. realizing that creativity is the recombination of known facts in unusual order, so to write new things you have to learn new things and ask questions of them.  Keep your mind open and asking --what exactly does "Truth will out" mean and where did that phrase become famous? How could you describe the texture of a wasp's nest?

Now on to the stanza sprints.  I'll attempt to write one stanza poems at high speeds.  Let's try 120 seconds.  Here comes the rubbish!!

(18 of 30)

Wind carries rumors of storms

aloft

lurking

languishing over mountains

shaking houses

liking the rattle of windows

reminders 

of the days when only 

centurion trees 

held sway over the prairies

no one feared 

thunder then

1:26 (86 seconds)

But this speed stanza screams for commas!

Dare I ask, can I top that? 

(19 of 30)

ball

banoing

bouncing 

rebounding

catching up to the laughter

chasing it 'round the

rumor that 

children's laughter 

fuels the soul

(59 seconds) Phew!

Ha! And again. Wow, this is nerve wracking!

(20 of 30)

snoring

not the echo

of greek goods

but the refrain 

rumbling

right now

dog by the door

child on the edge of the bed

husband defying

CPAP

asking

if I have the power 

to stop it*

but my godly skills faded

sixty sleepless nights ago

(1:52  or 112 seconds )

I made it to the * by 59, but that didn't complete the stanza/poem. Who am I kidding, the poems I've been doing this month are mere wisps of drafts, not poems. But a poem can start anywhere.

(21 of 30)

Starting 

With a bead of 

water on a newly stained

deck

the crooked neck

hang of a leaf

the way a swing 

growns as a child launches

for the ground

the emptiness

of energy released

to be captured in a line

an image

a stanza stretched

to show 

us

the poem

that begins

like this

(1.28 or 78 sec)

Last chance to beat the clock-- 59 seconds!!

The pound 

of dog eyes pinning

your heart

touch my head

scratch here

can I come home now?

(36 seconds)

 But is it a poem? Why don't you tell me.