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More Hot Tips from the Philly Writer’s Conf: On Character

By Donna Galanti

Still lots of good stuff to report on from the Philadelphia Writer’s Conference June 3-5!

More notes on character – presented by Gregory Frost, Author of ShadowBridge and many more works.

Grab readers in your first para with the MC’s voice. Create image of MC in our mind from the get-go.

Don’t rely heavy on character description. We need their voice to build character in our mind.

Don’t give reader everything in building character.

Don’t stop the “movie” to explain. Avoid all urges to explain. STOP. Repeat. Again. Avoid all urges to explain!

Present events and let them pass before reader’s eyes so they can judge what is going on.

Characters must show reactions to situations, not reactions by the author.

Don’t lead reader by the hand. Let them find out.

TIP: Write first draft of few pages to explore characters. Start out intuitively to write these first pages of your novel. Stop so far in (20+ pages). If it seems to be working then stop and outline entire book.

Element to characters:
Desire. All that happens in the novel occurs because of desire.
MC wants something bad enough and will do anything to get it. Your MC must yearn for something. Show us early on in the book what your MC wants, yearns for.
Not sure who’s story it is? Pick the person who suffers the most, hurts the most. Make it that person.
Decide who tells the story best.

Exercise to do to create a detailed character:
Choose a container, wallet, jewelry box, laundry basket, any etc. and make a list of what your character(s) keeps in this place. Choose the right items that ring true for each character.  Make it detailed to create a unique an identity from this list. Can you find elements for narrative thread from the list?  (ie. Theater stubs, what happened before/during or after). If so, add them in to book.

NOTE: Get Janet Burroway’s Writing Fiction (book). Used as textbook across campuses. Expensive. Try locating on EBay.

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Filed Under: Characters, Writing Conferences, Writing Techniques Tagged With: Character, Draft, Gregory Frost, Novel, Philadelphia Writer's Conference, Voice, Writing

Comments

  1. Randi says

    June 13, 2011 at 12:41 pm

    Here I thought you just wrote the hottest guy you come up with, and then made him even better. I guess, writing the main character to a novel, they must be appealing to everyone, not just you.

    • donnagalanti says

      June 14, 2011 at 11:12 am

      Randi, that is too funny! You are right – need to make appealing to my readers, even if he is “bad”

  2. Paul Greci says

    June 14, 2011 at 10:29 am

    Great tips here. I especially liked the idea of writing 20 or so pages and then outlining from there.

Trackbacks

  1. Top Picks Thursday 6-9-2011 « The Author Chronicles says:
    January 20, 2012 at 10:17 pm

    […] exciting; some Hot Writing Tips from the Philadelphia Writers’ Conference on Character and Plot; how to revise while keeping true to the sacred core of your story; and tips on how to […]

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