Writing Characters Who'll Keep Readers Captivated: Nail Your Novel

by Roz Morris

Overview

How do you create characters who keep readers hooked? How do you write the opposite sex? Teenagers? Believable relationships? Historical characters? Enigmatic characters? Plausible antagonists and chilling villains? How do you understand a character whose life is totally unlike your own? How do you write characters for dystopias? How do you make dialogue sing? When can you let the reader intuit what the characters are feeling and when should you spell it out?

Roz Morris is a bestselling ghostwriter and book doctor, and a literary author in her own right. Her titles have sold more than 4 million copies worldwide. She has mined 20 years' worth of writing, editing and critiquing experience to create this book. It contains all the pitfalls and sticky points for writers, laid out as a set of discussions that are easy to dip into. And it wouldn't be a Nail Your Novel book without a good dose of games, exercises and questionnaires to help you populate a novel from scratch.

Whether you write a straightforward story-based genre or literary fiction, this book will show you how to create people who enthrall readers - and make you want to tell stories.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781909905962
Publisher:	Spark Furnace Books
Publication date:	01/25/2016
Series:	Nail Your Novel , #2
Pages:	204
Product dimensions:	5.00(w) x 8.00(h) x 0.47(d)

About the Author

Roz Morris published nearly a dozen novels and achieved sales of more than 4 million copies - and nobody saw her name because she was a ghostwriter. She is now proudly publishing as herself and her work draws comparisons with Margaret Atwood, Ray Bradbury, Penelope Fitzgerald and Doris Lessing. Her novel Lifeform Three was longlisted for the World Fantasy Award. Her memoir Not Quite Lost was featured on 6 local BBC radio stations. She has also been a writing coach, editor and mentor for more than 20 years with award-winning authors among her clients. She has a book series for writers, Nail Your Novel (and a blog nailyournovel.com), and teaches creative writing masterclasses at venues throughout Europe and for The Guardian newspaper in London.

Table of Contents

Introduction

1 Most commonly repeated advice: show not tell
Remind yourself to switch to showing
Resist the urge to steer the reader

2 Why plots happen − motivation, need and conflict
Dramatic need
Conflict
Don't forget supporting characters

3 Fictional people are individuals
What the writer intended and what came out on the page
Character's dramatic need is glossed over in generalisations
No internal life − empty or enigmatic?
Writer feels out of their depth with that character or situation
Males, females and culture
Characters have no life outside the plot
Too much trivial detail
Describing characters − too much physical detail
Please, not like a famous person
Looking in the mirror: awkward reasons for characters to ponder their appearance
A carnival of odd misfits − tics and physical characteristics are not character
Teenagers
What do they hide, even if they are 'normal'? Rounded characters and the double life of Isobel
Narrator has stranglehold so characters never come alive on their own
Characters too similar to each other
Should you change to a new viewpoint character once the novel is well under way?
Who should your viewpoint character be?
Characters who are only symbols
Dystopia problem: characters are dummies to show off the world
Too many characters − problems with a huge cast
Send in the clowns − comic characters are jarringly obvious
Passive central characters
First-person narrator has no character of their own
Likability − and what makes characters interesting
Recognition and the universal − keep asking 'why'

4 Change
Catalyst characters
Characters who resist change

5 Villains and antagonists: what goes wrong with wrong 'uns
Writer puts the bad character in solitary confinement
Narrator intrudes to tell us who will turn nasty: foreshadowing the bad deeds
Bad to the bone − only negatives
Weak motivation for villainy
The nebulous enemy: the trouble with battling 'society'

6 It's all relationships: romances and significant others
Rules of attraction: relationships that fail to grab the reader
Don't forget to show the moment it started
Romantic dialogue and discomfort with moments of intense emotion
Leaning on strong words instead of engaging with the characters
Where characters splurge their feelings
Startling confessions erupt out of nowhere
Sexual tension for bashful writers
Too coy about seductions
Lexicon of love: how to describe sex
Special friendships need glue
Special friendships must come to life
Relationships have their own landscape and language
Happy families
Relationships that end their journey too soon

7 Supporting characters and walk-ons
What secondary characters talk about
Secondary characters need less screen time: use summary
Supporting or peripheral characters must contribute to the story
Walk-on characters in too much detail

8 Dialogue: more than a transcript of speech
No dialogue
Beyond talking
Remember we see dialogue as well as hear it
Internal reactions too vague
Characters talk about distressing things without getting upset
Author interrupts too much and slows the pace
Look for inequalities
What else might be happening under the words? Subtext
Long speeches instead of conversations
Be informal
Dialogue used as information dump: exposition
Desperately avoiding the info-dump
Characters talk about events the reader has already seen
Most of the plot presented in dialogue
Thinking out loud, in quotes
Too may social niceties and nothing interesting
What vocabulary does your character use?
Going yokel
Characters all sound the same − funny voices part 2
All characters have the same sense of humour
Bossy dialogue tags

9 Character design: questionnaires and other development games

Appendix: Top 10 novice mistakes with characters

Index

Editorial Reviews

'Really meaty advice. Am not usually a fan of character questionnaires but the questionnaires in this book ask the kind of searching questions that really help you get to know your character. Packed with interesting advice and suggestions.' M Louise Kelly 'Roz Morris follows up her bravura Nail Your Novel with this insightful guide into crafting memorable characters. She walks authors through the basics of protagonists, antagonists, and supporting characters. She touches on dialogue, showing vs. telling, motive and conflict, and character relationships. My favorite sections were those on the ever-popular "character interview/questionnaire" (in which Morris offers some unique suggestions for probing the character's mind) and the appendix (in which she addresses the "Top 10 Novice Mistakes With Characters). This is a great foundational tool for any writer wanting to deepen his presentation of character.' KM Weiland, tutor at Writer's Digest 'Inspiring and brilliant for any author. It made me rethink my approach to characters and helped me turn a scene I'd written into a much sharper piece. Roz is the first person to help me understand 'show, not tell' in a way that doesn't leave me scratching my head in puzzlement. I finally feel like that concept is sinking in and I haven't even finished the book yet. I love the way she writes. Thank you, Roz, for this little gem. I hope she continues the series.' Jenny Grey 'I'd heard about Roz's book so decided to invest. I'm so glad I did. In concise language she explains all aspects of building a character. I can now see which parts I'm getting right and how to fix the parts I'm getting wrong. I read it through quickly the first time. It's a page turner! Now I'm going through it section by section to help the info sink in. After that, I have no doubt I'll be dipping into it on a regular basis. I highly recommend it.' Miss A Huskisson 'A new book by Roz Morris is always an event to be celebrated. Whether you're a novice or you've been writing all your life, there's always something to be gleaned from her gentle, humorous, yet razor-sharp tutorship. If you want to up your game, writing-wise, buy it now!' Miss Chinaski 'Learning from masterworks such as Fahrenheit 451, Jane Eyre, Lolita, and the more recently celebrated Twilight and Hunger Games series, you'll be shown how to craft powerful protagonists, vivid villains and memorable minor characters. It covers all the essentials, such as viewpoint, narrative voice, catalyst characters (think James Bond, Sherlock Holmes and Doctor Who) and those trouble-makers: antagonists. Morris's colloquial style frees the writer from being tangled up in technicalities.' Trevor Veale 'Another gem of a book from Roz. Easy to read and broken down into manageable sections, it helps you to create believable characters who won't just be names on the paper. She shows you how to create believable dialogue and provides a highly useful toolbox to equip you with all you need to know to engage your readers and make them eager to read on. She also helps you to think about the secondary characters. A fabulous book, written in an easy to understand language that doesn't make you clutch your forehead and reconsider the crochet. An essential reference for the would-be writer, I would recommend it without hesitation. Make sure you get the first book, too.' Sharon Booth 'I'm reading it for the second time now, and it only gets better.' Mars Dorian 'I have read many books on writing and I would say this contains some of the best advice. Every aspect of characterisation is covered, supported with examples. There is an excellent chapter on the mistakes that novice writers make. The book concludes with writing exercises, some of which are original in the extreme. I certainly intend to try many of them out. If you want to lift your characters out of the humdrum and give your novel zing and tension, this is the book for you.' Wen

From the Publisher