character – Page 2 – WRITE TIME AND AGAIN

Character Reactions within a Story

Posted on May 8, 2023 by L. M. Montes

When throwing the unexpected at your characters, it’s important for those characters to react in a way that’s realistic to the situation. If you don’t, the reader is going to end up rolling their eyes or pause in their reading and scratch their head in wonder, which you don’t want. You want your readers to be into your story and to keep going with it. Worse, they could put the story down and never finish reading it.

If you aren’t sure if your characters’ reactions aren’t what they should be, have someone else, like a test/beta reader, read it first before publishing it to the world. Get their feedback. It’s important.

Examples:

Unrealistic: A couple of your characters, let’s say to John and Kevin, are out hunting Big Foot, a.k.a. Sasquatch. They are walking through the forest at night then hear the snap of twigs. They stop and look around. Sasquatch jumps out in front of them and they start laughing.

Realistic: The same characters scream, when Sasquatch jumps out at them, and they run. (Be more creative with their terror besides screaming and running. But you get the idea.)

Unrealistic: One of your characters teleports for the first time in their life and they react as though they’ve been doing it all their life. (Trust me, that’s not a realistic reaction.)

Realistic: The same character teleports for the first time in their life and feels feint afterwards. (Here again, get creative with this.)

Overall, you want your readers to enjoy and take in the story you took so much time and care to write. You want them to experience it and feel it. So don’t ruin that experience for them by causing them to roll their eyes or put the book down.

Prompts

Character from Book or Film

Posted on April 10, 2023 by L. M. Montes

If you could be a character from a book or film, who would you be? Why?

Mallory Blackwell from a series of books by Steven F. Freeman. I like her fighting style and how she works with every obstacle thrown at her.

Plot/Story

Creating Empathy

Posted on February 23, 2023 by L. M. Montes

On October 6, 2021 I wrote a blog post entitled Connections. Toward the end of the article I talked about a character, Mary, who was in a heated argument with her boyfriend as they were walking along. They had come to an area or clearing where the sunset could be seen much better in all of its glory. The boyfriend didn’t notice it. He could’ve cared less, but Mary noticed it and enjoyed it so much that for a moment she forgot about the argument. In this post I said that the sunset itself had nothing to do with the issue at hand, which was the argument. It was a random occurrence. But it had everything to do with creating empathy for the character of Mary. Add to this the dialogue between the two. Maybe Mary’s boyfriend said something nasty to her. The reader will be affected by these words to in that they will feel for her/have empathy for her. Mary may not be hurt by his words, but the reader will feel for her anyway. Well, most readers anyway.

Creating empathy for your characters is what draws your readers further into your story. Feelings, as we all know, have a strong connection to empathy. The two go hand in hand. As a side note, not everyone feels empathy, so don’t worry if your characters don’t connect with some readers. It’s just the nature of the beast.

Empathy, or even lack thereof, also gives incite into your character’s personality. In the above scenario we come to understand that Mary loves the beauty of sunsets even in the face of angst. It also hints towards her sensitivity. In addition, deep down she doesn’t let something like an argument with her boyfriend get to her. This indicates strength to get through it and not dwell on it. It could also indicate she feels as though the situation between her and her boyfriend will get resolved. The point being, in the ugly face of an argument, she saw beauty.

What drives the feelings within your characters? The situations they are thrust up against. Let’s say we have a character named Jack. He’s 31 years old, a successful corporate lawyer, and married with one child. He finds out his wife is cheating on him. Over the eight years they’ve been married, he has given his wife everything. He supports her in all that she enjoys doing. There isn’t anything that indicated to him that she had been unfaithful. Until he walks in on his wife and her lover when he comes home to surprise her (I know. This is a typical scenario, but it works for the point I’m trying to make). Already the reader feels empathy for him, and we haven’t gotten to how he is feeling yet. Although, his feelings will be interspersed throughout the scenario anyway.

Everything, the feelings and situations, even the words characters say to one another can create empathy within your readers. They will be pulled into your story. You want this. Of course, there are other ways besides creating empathy that can pull a reader in as well. Here again, that’s another blog post.

Writing

Life Long Learning

Posted on February 22, 2023February 22, 2023 by L. M. Montes

The years spent writing my first novel weren’t just spent writing. What I discovered early on was that I didn’t understand how to put a book length story together. To be specific, I needed to learn story structure. Thus, great care was taken to spend time learning about the craft of writing a book. Much trial and error occurred, and through all of that I discovered what worked and what didn’t work for me.

Other story elements I had to brush up more on were story flow, word flow, grammar, plot, character development, dialogue, character emotions, the list goes on and on. This all takes time, yes, but it is well worth it. While I was learning and brushing up on these skills, I wrote as well. There were times of frustration, when I had to delete part of my story and start over. But the more I wrote and learned, the easier the whole process became.

The Moment of Meditation by Louis Surugue is licensed under CC-CC0 1.0

You won’t be the best straight out of the gate. No one ever is. But the more you learn and learn continuously, and practice what you learned, the better and easier it will become. So where do you start? Start with your weakness. What areas of writing and grammar are you weak in? Start there and move forward.

Now, two books later, the ride has become more fluent. The words flow more, and I know way more about story structure than I did years ago when I first started. This doesn’t mean there isn’t anything else to learn. I still continue to learn. Learning is what keeps us going and maturing and moving to the next level.

Plot/Story

Developing Story Ideas

Posted on November 10, 2022February 23, 2023 by L. M. Montes

Steps to developing your story ideas don’t have to be difficult. Here are some ways to do this.

Create a Character

Describe his/her physical attributes, personality, their likes and dislikes. You can include their race and ethnicity. What is their job? What other details about them are there?

Identify Your Character’s Desire

What is it specifically that drives your character into action?

Choose a Resistance

What or who will stand in your character’s way?

The Change

Decide on how your character will grow throughout the story.

Captivating Settings

What is going on in and around your character’s world?

Putting it all together

When you first start your story idea, the above will work as a guideline. Jot down some ideas in a journal or notebook for each of the above areas to get yourself started. Then go back and develop each area in more detail. Continue this process until you have enough details written in each of the above areas to bein your story. However, when you begin writing, your story will be up to you. Everybody is different. You may not need many details to start, but others will.

Characterization

The Villain Makes the Story

Posted on May 4, 2022 by L. M. Montes

Have you ever wondered what a story/movie would be like if there were no clashing forces going against the main character? It would be boring to the point there would be no story. Not really anyway. Believe it or not villains create that extra zing of emotion for the reader/viewer to the point we sometimes feel as though we’re in the story/movie.

I finished reading a book a few days ago that had me talking back to the characters, and I mean saying things like, “Really? Don’t you see it has nothing to do with terrorism?” At one point I said, “Oh my gosh, this author.” My husband asked, “What?” To which I responded with, “The author drug this out way to much.” Actually, the author did his job, and he did it well. The villains were smug, very smug, and they thought they had everything going the way they wanted it to. Well, they did. The reader (this reader) wanted them to get what was coming to them (and they did eventually). That folks is story, suspense, emotion building writing.

So remember….when you are creating your villains, make sure to give them lots of tender loving care. You want them to connect with the reader too.

The book I spoke of above is linked below just in case you might want to read it. It’s book 5 in the Alton Blackwell Files series by Steven F. Freeman.

Characterization

Character Names

Posted on May 3, 2022April 30, 2022 by L. M. Montes

How do you choose names for your characters? Do you merely assign them a name without giving much thought to it? Do you use a process? There are quite a few things one can do to assign names to their characters. I’ve used a baby names book. Looking names lists online works too. If your character is of another culture or country whose names are different than those used in your own, some baby names books have lists of common names used in different countries.

In one of my pieces of writing I used characters of 4 real life people. I asked them permission first. Please, if you are ever going to do this, ask that person or persons permission to use them in your book/story. When I was renaming these 4 people for my story, I tried to choose names that fit their personalities. Trust me, this wasn’t as easy as it may have appeared to be. One gentleman helped me with that, so that one was easy enough to put a name to. The other three took some thinking. I got my baby names book out and browsed male names. I thought of each person individually and then tried out a name on them. I went through several before settling on some that worked well and matched each of their personalities. There was only one problem. One of the guys I couldn’t think of a name for. At all. So I, for the time being, left his name alone and used his real name until I could think of one that suited him. FINALLY, after writing 25 chapters, I thought of the perfect name for him. Of course, I had to go back and change his name throughout the manuscript, but it was worth the wait.

Most often you’re not going to use real people. But the same thing still rings true. The people you make up will have personalities and you will have to choose a name that fits that personality. Also, if you are going to assign a name to a character that sounds funny or out of place, you might want to explain why they were given that name by making that part of your story. For example, if you give one of your female characters the name of Spunky Dickson (a funny name for a female anyway), have the character tell why her parents named her that. Maybe the whole story centers around that. Maybe Spunky is a nickname.

Have fun choosing names for your characters. Don’t make it a chore. Work with it and mold it into your story.

Fiction

A-HA

Posted on February 22, 2022 by L. M. Montes

That moment when you’re writing. You stop to think about your main character and brainstorm ideas about what you can do to make him/her a more in depth person. You wonder also about what the major issue will be that he/she must struggle with and in the end will allow him/her to grow.

Scenes

Reaction

Posted on December 30, 2021March 29, 2023 by L. M. Montes

You’re writing a scene with an event that should strike your main character as surprising or distressing. BUT instead your character reacts in a way that makes no sense at all. Maybe you had your character have to shoot an intruder and it was the first time they had to shoot anyone. How would a person normally react in a situation like that, if it was their first time having to shoot someone?

Make sure your character who is going through that for the first time reacts the right way. If, for example, they walked away from the above situation behaving as though it was no big deal, then there better be a logical reason for them doing so. I say this because I know I would freak out if I had to shoot someone. Or I’d panic. Maybe others would become despondent or go into shock.

If your characters’ reactions don’t match the situation, the readers will know, and they’ll get distracted from the story. You don’t want that. It could even cause them to put it down, and you definitely don’t want that.