6 Key Things to Consider When Developing Characters

By Jody Hedlund, @JodyHedlund

I have to admit, I don’t write (or often read) character driven stories. My books are full of action and drama and are primarily plot-driven. But, that doesn’t mean I neglect my characters.

In fact, I'm currently in the pre-planning stage for a couple different books. And one of the most important parts of my pre-writing process is developing my characters. I literally spend hours and hours thinking about them and shaping them BEFORE I type one word.

I find this time of getting to know my characters one of the most delightful aspects of the entire writing process. I relish the idea of playing "god" and breathing life into people. I get to make my characters exactly how I want to. And while it's daunting to have so much power, it's also euphoric.

I thought I'd share a few of the things I consider when I'm developing my characters in the pre-writing stage. By no means is the following list comprehensive. It's simply a breakdown of some key things to think about while playing "god."

1. Make them distinct.

Obviously I consider their physical appearance. I have to visualize every physical detail about my character before they come alive. In addition to hair, eyes, and body type, I consider distinguishing physical traits (usually two or three unique things). Often I find a picture of an actress or actor that serves as the basis of my character.

But I always go much deeper than physical appearance. I pick an action tag (something they do like nail biting or head scratching). I also choose a verbal tag (something they say like "My, my" or "heaven have mercy"). And finally I narrow down a characteristic tag (something like timidity, arrogance, or boldness). I also analyze if they have any quirks or eccentricities.

2. Flesh out their personalities.

Not only do I try to understand their skills, abilities, and talents, but I also attempt to determine their personality type (are they dominant, passive, loyal, outgoing, etc.). I go deeper with these kinds of questions: What makes them angry and how do they handle their anger? What embarrasses them and how do they handle embarrassment? What makes them afraid and how do they handle their fears? What are their prejudices? What is their sense of humor? What's their philosophy of life?

3. Understand their past.

I may not need to know when they had their first scraped knee or lost tooth. But I do try to look for those defining incidents in their past that have shaped them into the characters they are in the present. These are usually the painful, life-shaping events (big or little) that provide the impetus behind their motivations in the story. I usually answer the question: What are the most painful experiences in the character's past to prove why they act the way they do?

4. Define their strengths.

I try to narrow down the qualities that will help my readers care about the characters. Some refer to these as the “heroic” qualities. I brainstorm a list, then try to pull out a top strength. This is the one I show my character doing in my first chapter, to get my readers caring right away. I also pick out a few others that form the backbone of the character.

5. Define their weaknesses.

I carefully decide a main inner struggle or conflict that my character will need to work through. This is sometimes called the internal plot which is separate from but woven together with the external plot (and the relationship plot in a romance). The weakness needs to arise organically in the story out of those past motivations that we know but won’t divulge until later to our readers.

6. Understand their goals.

As chapter one opens, I want my characters' story goals to become clear right away. But that means I have to know what they want first. Their wants often stem out of the past hurts and pains. I ask myself three questions: What's my character's biggest dream? Why do they want that goal (or dream)? And then what's keeping them from that goal?

For me, the KEY is that I don’t start writing the story until my characters are already alive. After spending days, sometimes even weeks getting to know my characters, I finally reach a point when they’re living and breathing in my mind. In some ways, I’ve become that person—I’m playing his or her part with my body, heart, and soul. It’s at that point I know I’m ready to start the actual writing.

Yes, I realize I won’t know everything about my characters, that I’ll understand them even better as the story unfolds. But it’s like a marriage relationship. Before marriage we take time to get to know our partner—all their secrets, their past, their strengths and weaknesses. The growing doesn’t stop when we say “I do.” We change and always give our partners new things to discover about us. The same is true of our fiction characters and perhaps even more so.

When we take the time to stoke the passion with our characters and understand them intimately before committing them to paper, then we have a much greater chance of deepening that once we start the story itself.

What about you? Are there some other things you try to learn about your characters before you start writing?

A Quick 5-Point Checklist for Writing a Scene

By Jody Hedlund, @JodyHedlund

Not everyone is a planner—I completely understand that. But . . . there’s something to be said about being intentional with the blank page that sits directly in front of us. Maybe we won’t map out our entire book, but when we carefully make decisions about a scene before writing it, we have the potential to make it richer, fuller, and accomplish more.

I've also realized having a written checklist for each of my book's scenes also comes in handy during the editing phase. I'm able to go back to my checklist and use it as a brief outline of the book. If I've forgotten the timeline in a certain spot, if I need to add a scene somewhere, or if I simply need to review what's in the scene without re-reading it, my scene-by-scene checklist becomes incredibly helpful.

Here are the things I plan out before writing a scene:

1. Time and Date:

I always put the time and date of the scene at the top of each checklist. It helps me keep track of the pacing of the story while I'm writing it so that I don't have half the book happening on one day and then rushing the rest of it.

It also helps me keep the timing of events realistic. Usually falling in love, character growth, and other plot events take time. From a glance at my checklists, I'm able to see that only two days have passed rather than two weeks (even though a lot has happened), and that my characters still need more time to get to know each other before falling in love or having their personal epiphanies.

2. POV (point of view):

The next thing I write down under time and date is whose POV I'm writing the scene in. I always ask myself these kinds of questions: Whose POV would have the greatest impact for the scene? Whose POV haven’t I used lately? Whose POV can best move the plot along?

By keeping track of POV, I can easily see at a glance that I've had four scenes in a row in the heroine's POV and that I've been neglecting the hero's POV. Or if I don't have enough reason to switch POV's, then I have to start asking myself, why? Am I not giving each of my main character's internal thoughts and character growth equal weight? Is one of their arc's weaker? If so, what can I do to balance that out better?

3. Setting:

After POV, I jot down where the setting of the scene takes place, sometimes with a brief description. Like POV, I try to alternate where I'm placing my characters as the scene unfolds.

While I often compare scene-writing to the a play unfolding on a stage, a theater production has a decided disadvantage in that it can't constantly change scenes. Even with the recent Sound of Music theatrical production starring Carrie Underwood, the stage settings were limited to four or five main places.

In our stories, however, we're not bound by financial or artistic constraints when deciding where to have our characters act out the scene. We can put them anywhere. We can add as much variety that we want. Rather than having half our scenes in the dining room or bedroom (yawn!), we can move them all over the place and make things interesting for our characters (and thus our readers).

4. Sensory Details:

Once I figure out my POV character along with the setting, then I try to think about what sights, smells, tastes, textures, and sounds can bring the scene alive? What other details can help set the mood of the scene? I try to make those things unique to the particular setting as well as to the POV character who is acting out the scene.

5. Scene Goals:

Finally, once I've established the scene basics, I move on to jotting a list of what story goals I hope to achieve in the scene.

We should be aiming to incorporate only those things into our stories that have a purpose, whether to move the plot along (related to the external, internal or romance plot), enhance our theme, build our characters, or foreshadow what’s to come.

As I sit down to do the actual writing, things often change, but the goals keep me on target. Whatever I don’t end up including in the scene, I circle so that I can try to remember to include those items later.

My Summary: The other advantage of writing by scenes is that it's an easy way to keep from being overwhelmed by the enormity of writing a book. I take each scene one at a time. And each scene is built on the previous so that slowly the book takes form. (See my recent Writes of Passage blog post: Working in Small Steps but Keeping Sight of the Big Picture.) In the end, one of my books is comprised of 50-60 scenes. But hopefully to a reader the book feels seamless.

How about you? Do you have any other tips for writing by scenes? Would you add anything to my above checklist?

Becoming an Olympic Quality Writer

By Jody Hedlund, @JodyHedlund

Like the rest of the world, I've been watching the 2014 Winter Olympics in Sochi, Russia. Since I have three daughters, it's inevitable that women's figure skating is the event we watch the most often.

Aside from the beauty, athleticism, and talent, I'm always fascinated by the behind-the-scenes glimpses we get every once in a while of certain athletes. I like hearing the stories of how they trained and became the top of their sport, because it's so inspiring.

As I've read and heard about various Olympic figure skaters, I realized a lot of the traits they employed to become great athletes are some of the qualities that we writers can employ to become great authors.

1. Master the basic elements.

Over and over on both TV and in news articles, I've seen evidence that the skaters had to master the elements specific to their sport including jumps, spins, footwork, etc. They had to spend countless hours learning the basics before they could move on to the more difficult techniques and jumps.

The same is true in writing. There are basics elements a writer needs to learn for setting, dialog, POV, pacing, plotting, etc. We can't expect to become smoother, more succinct, and riveting without first mastering the basics.

2. Allow competition to serve as motivation.

In a New York Times article, Tara Lipinski, gold medal winner of 1998 Olympics, said: "I think a rivalry is always needed. I had one with Michelle Kwan, and I didn’t slack off one day because I knew she was practicing hard somewhere . . . [skaters] know someone could take their place in an instant and so they have to be better ."

American skater Ashley Wagner doesn't deny her competitive nature. She's quoted in NBC news as saying: "I love to win, honestly. ... If you love to win, you should say it. And honestly, I'm hooked on it."

In the publishing industry, there are thousands upon thousands of writers vying for a limited number of readers' pocketbooks and attention. The competition is fierce. But we don't have to let that scare us from trying. Instead we can let it motivate us to keep writing more and better.

3. Use mistakes as momentum for improvement.

In November, the 15 year old Russian skater, Julia Lipnitskaia beat the world champion, Carolina Kostner of Italy. Afterward, Lipnitskaia was distraught, because even though she'd won, she still had botched two jumps in her win. Now several months later, Lipnitskaia is skating nearly flawlessly, having two mesmerizing performances in the team competition.

Those striving to be the best, whether skaters or writers, don't let loss weigh them down or make them quit; rather, setbacks drive them to work harder.

4. Work INCREDIBLY hard for every step forward.

Ashley Wagner also said: "Nothing has been easy for me. ... I've always had to work for everything I've gotten and everything I've accomplished."

To become Olympic quality, most skaters started young and had strict practice schedules involving hours and hours per day on the rink along with ballet and off-ice conditioning. They had to be self-disciplined, determined, and driven, often giving up other pursuits and interests in order to have the time to devote to skating.

Even then, after so much training, the majority of skaters fight to attract notice at the junior level, and only the very best break through at a senior level.

Writers, too, must have strict writing regimens and expect to practice long hours, often sacrificing free time and hobbies to fit in daily writing workouts. If we want Olympic quality success and stardom then we have to put in Olympic style effort and training.

And yet all too often writers expect to have high sales, hit best seller lists, and rise to fame without having put in the hours, days, and years of writing. Too many hope to gain notice at the junior level when really they're still amateurs.

My Summary: Of course there are lots of other factors that go into becoming an Olympic athlete, too many to mention in one post (including having the right coach). And there are many other factors that go into becoming a successful writer.

But for now, I'll keep watching and learning from the Olympians about what it takes to make dreams come true. And I'll do my best to follow in their footsteps!

How about you? Have you been watching the Olympics? What are some lessons you've taken away?

The Value of Clocking In Time and Words

By Jody Hedlund, @JodyHedlund

I'm currently editing a book I wrote six years ago. It's actually the first time in ALL those six years that I've given the book more than a passing glance.

As much as I love the book, to be honest, I dreaded having to revisit it. It's a manuscript that took TONS of research. I spent weeks reading biographies, time period books, and piecing together hordes of information on the middle ages.

And now after writing at least ten other books since then and doing research on a plethora of other eras, the details I'd once absorbed and knew so intimately about the middle ages are no longer prominent. So not only do I need to edit my book, but I also need to refresh myself on all the research I'd done long ago.

As a side note, this is a book that my current publisher declined to publish because the subject matter and setting don't fit with their market or needs. Nothing was done with the book for many years even though I was anxious to pursue other options. But now that I have a new agent, we're moving forward and garnering some initial interest in the book.

I was really pleased that my new agent read the book and sent me a detailed letter expounding on some changes she thought it needed before sending out a proposal. She didn't mince any words, which I appreciated. Nevertheless, I knew once I delved in, I was going to find even more changes to make.

After finally gathering the courage to peel back the pages of the manuscript, I read it and brutally marked it up. Through the whole process, I learned several lessons.

1. After so many years away, I could see my work as though I was a stranger to it. I could read it completely objectively, almost as if I were reading the work of a critique partner, (except I could be truly honest without hurting anyone's feelings!).

I felt as though I was finally standing above my book looking down on it. I could see all of the problems with a clarity that I couldn't when I was living between the pages after I'd first written it. I could pick out the weaknesses in my earlier style: lack of setting details, lack of depth of character emotions, unlikeable characters, indistinct cardboard minor characters, and other issues.

2. I realized that I'd learned a lot about how to edit over the past six years. After working with professional editors with my current publisher on numerous books and after partnering with many different critique partners, I've learned how to spot things that wouldn't have been on my radar if not for having learned from those more experienced than myself.

3. Most importantly, I learned that after writing so many additional books, I'd matured as a writer. After gaining the writing experience, I can finally see how far I've come, how I've honed my voice, how I've gained confidence in my writing abilities.

Six years ago I thought I was mature already. I'd studied lots of writing craft books. I'd written a number of "practice" books. I'd worked hard at consciously improving my writing. In fact this book underwent numerous edits (including a paid edit). It even finaled in a national contest for unpublished writers.

It was solid. And at the time, it was my very best. I'd done the absolute best for where I was at. No matter how many more times I would have edited it, I just wasn't capable of doing any better.

The truth is, nothing thing can mature us like time AND lots of writing. After six year and writing thousands upon thousands of additional words, my writing muscles are so much stronger. I have more clarity, vision, and depth.

All the clocking in of time and words has changed my writing in a way that editing alone never could.

After six years, I can finally begin to see the difference between then and now. I hope in another six years I'll see even more maturity.

My advice: Don't get stuck editing a book to death. Move on to writing new books. Keep learning about the craft of writing. And allow time and lots of writing to mature you.

What about you? Have you pulled out old manuscripts and been able to spot mistakes? In hindsight have you seen your growth?

Character Motivations: The Key to Gaining Reader Empathy

By Jody Hedlund, @JodyHedlund

I'm currently reading a number of books, not only for personal pleasure, but also because I'm a judge in the national Romance Writers of America RITA contest. With so many books on my night table, I find myself in major analyzing mode.

Truth be told, I tend to analyze most books I read anyway. But now I'm hyper-critiquing not only the books I'm judging, but even the ones I'm reading for personal pleasure.

With all the comparing and critiquing, I've realized that there's one common factor among the books whose characters I like and empathize with: I understand their MOTIVATIONS.

What is motivation?

Motivation is an important element in developing our characters. Essentially motivation is everything from the past that DRIVES or INFLUENCES our characters' actions and reactions within the current story.

What shapes character motivation?

Motivation needs to have its root in backstory which is the all of the history and baggage our characters have developed BEFORE our story starts. The characters' past lives contain pivotal events, problems, and usually hardships that contribute to their flaw. All that past stuff influences how they live in the present.

Why is motivation so important?

If readers don't understand why our characters do stupid things, or are afraid and angry, they'll likely experience frustration or annoyance at our characters. But if we hint at what's influenced the character (whether a traumatic event or many little things over time), then our readers will be able to empathize. They'll be more forgiving of our character's mistakes, because they'll understand why our characters are making them.

For example, in A Noble Groom, the hero is opposed to arranged marriages because he saw his own mother suffer in an arranged loveless marriage to his father. She eventually committed suicide because she was so unhappy with her life. As a little boy watching his depressed mother, he vowed never to marry anyone he doesn't love. So when he meets the heroine who is waiting to marry her mail-order-groom, a man she's never met, he can't understand or accept her willingness to marry a complete stranger.

My readers can empathize with Carl's hesitancy and stubbornness regarding getting married because they know the hurts of his past. They're cheering for him to overcome his flaws and work through those childhood pains.

On the other hand, if I'd made Carl stubborn about getting married just because he doesn't like farming or thinks there are too many social class barriers between him and the heroine, then I lose out on gaining reader empathy. While those other factors may also be true, having additional deeper past motivations always make the character more three dimensional.

How and where do we add motivation?

I often see writers falling into two groups. The first group dumps in too much backstory right away, sharing all the characters' problems and history as the book begins. The second group has a perverse fear of the backstory and so withholds too much information or waits too long before revealing it.

Yes, there's something to be said delving right into the action and waiting to share backstory until the plot is under way. But we also have to be careful that our characters aren't acting in a vacuum of motivation. Our readers long to know what is driving our characters' behaviors and emotions. If we leave our readers in the dark, then we must at least hint that we'll reveal those details later.

We don't want to take readers out of the story when we share about our characters' history. But we don't want to leave our readers dangling without any sense of the past.

The trick is weaving in those golden threads of motivation so seamlessly, that they show up without our reader realizing it. We're subtle. We drop hints. We tease, entice, and raise questions that give our readers just enough to empathize, to know that there's more under the surface that's driving our characters.

In other words, we as writers will know everything there is to know about our characters' pasts. But we'll carefully and strategically place tidbits in our story, just enough to make motivations clear and to make our readers care about our characters.

How well do you lay the ground work for your character's motivations? How do you keep the balance of sharing enough backstory so that reader's can empathize with your characters? But how do you keep from going overboard and sharing too much?

Attack Your Story so That Your Readers Don't Have To

 By Jody Hedlund, @JodyHedlund

The past month I've been drowning in edits. I've been working on substantial edits on Love Unexpected, the first of my lighthouse books that will release in December. The edits are due back to my publisher by the end of January.

And then in the midst of the big rewrites on Love Unexpected, I also got the Galleys for my July release, Captured by Love. And those are also due at the end of January.

Once I turn in the two books, I'll need to start editing a book for my new agent, getting it ready for her to send out on submission. And then I have the first draft of another book I have to self-edit before turning it in for the first time to my publisher.

Whew!

I've been breathing, eating, and sleeping edits with no end in sight. As the pin says, "Writer: Not Crazy; Just in Rewrites."

Any time I get into editing mode, I realize that I'm really more of a first draft girl. I absolutely adore the process of writing the first version of a book. I could write all day and all night and never tire of it.

But editing is another matter altogether. Compared to the free-spirited, creative writing process, editing requires an entirely different mind-set. And for me, editing is laborious, pain-staking, and incredibly time-consuming.

It's like taking a fine-toothed comb through every page, every paragraph, every line of an entire novel. Such a task takes hours, days, even weeks of concentrated, focused energy. It's draining.

And quite frankly, it's also nerve-wracking. At the back of my mind I think, "I have to get everything right this time. No more fooling around. This is serious business."

Because the fact is, if we don't get things right during the editing phase, we risk disappointing our readers.

In some ways that fear is a good motivation.

It pushes us to keep going when we're tempted to cheat on our editing, to skimp, to gloss over details, or to disregard depth.

It motivates us to ruthlessly chop whole paragraphs, whole pages, even whole scenes that we once thought were brilliant.

It forces us to let go of words, to see them as just that–words.

It challenges us to exert painful effort to push, shove, and shape the story into something better, something that whispers with the breath of life.

In this current publishing climate that entices authors to produce more content, we're faced with the challenge of giving enough time and energy to quality editing. It's all too easy to focus on writing and publishing more books and to let the hard work of editing become the last thing on our to-do list, especially because editing tends to be tedious and difficult for many of us.

I only have to think of my readers, however, to quickly give editing the high priority it deserves. I don't want to disappoint anyone who picks up one of my books. I want to hand them my best every time.

If we as writers don't take the time to brutally and viciously attack our stories (during editing), readers will brutally attack the book later. But why give them reason to lash out? If we're brutal with our books, then our readers won't have to be.

Here are some of my favorite quotes on editing. These show just how seriously most successful authors take the editing process. (I love Shannon Hale's quote the most!)

“I'm writing a first draft and reminding myself that I'm simply shoveling sand into a box so that later I can build castles.” ~ Shannon Hale

“I've found the best way to revise your own work is to pretend that somebody else wrote it and then to rip the living [crap] out of it.” ~Don Roff

"Editing fiction is like using your fingers to untangle the hair of someone you love.” ~Stephanie Roberts

"Editing is like pruning the rose bush you thought was so perfect and beautiful until it overgrew the garden.” ~Larry Enright

"Your first draft is a petulant teenager, sure it knows best, adamant that its Mother is wrong. Your third draft has emerged from puberty, realizing that its Mother was right about everything.” ~Angeline Trevena

“It is perfectly okay to write garbage—as long as you edit brilliantly.”~C.J. Cherryh

"Put down everything that comes into your head and then you're a writer. But an author is one who can judge his own stuff's worth, without pity, and destroy most of it." ~Colette

Are you tempted in the current publishing climate to skimp on editing? Are you attacking your story during the editing phase or are you being too gentle on your work? 

5 Top Ways to Rivet a Reader

By Jody Hedlund, @JodyHedlund

How do we create books readers can't put down?

Occasionally I get comments from readers saying things like:"Your book was one of the best page turners ever" or "I loved & enjoyed every minute of this book, which took me just one day to read. I could not put it down."

I've learned over the years, that creating a page-turner doesn't happen automatically or magically. Rather it's something we must intentionally set out to do with calculated, careful planning.

I just finished reading The Lightning Thief by Rick Riordan, the first book in the Percy Jackson and the Olympians series. Yes, I'm a little late to the bandwagon. My older children read the series quite a number of years ago on their own.

But with the ease of audio books through Audible, I can download a book within seconds onto my iphone. And since I was studying ancient Greece with my youngest children, I used one of my monthly Audible credits to get The Lightning Thief.

The book absolutely riveted my two youngest children. They begged me several times daily to listen. And whenever we had to stop, they'd cry out in loud and frustrated protest. They always clamored, "Can we read just a little more. P-l-l-l-e-a-s-e?!!"

I'm also listening to another audio book, The Book Thief by Zusak. (Not quite sure why I've been drawn to books with Thief in the title, but I assure you it doesn't say anything about me personally!) Zusak's book, too, has a riveting quality but in a slightly different way. It's set during World War II involving a German family who is hiding a Jewish boxer

So what made each of the above books riveting?

As I thought about the various elements that go into creating a compelling, can't-put-down book, here are five top qualities:

1. Unique presentation of the plot

Let's face it, myths about the Greek gods have been around for thousands of years. There's nothing new about stories centered around gods, Centaurs, Satyrs, and other mythical creatures (the whole Chronicles of Narnia series brims with them).

And there's nothing unique about a book set during the holocaust. I can't tell you how many novels/memoirs I've read set during World War II.

Riordan and Zusak both took fairly common plots and story lines, but they made them completely unique and fresh. They looked for ways to bring the ordinary to life in an extraordinary way.

2. Heroic Characters

I was struck in both Thief books by how immensely flawed and human the main characters were. But by creating imperfect characters who are dealing with every day struggles, we as the reader are able to relate.

At the same time, the characters rise above the mundane. They're kinder, more heroic, stronger, and more daring than a real person could ever be. But that's what makes us LOVE them. Because they represent the kind of person we all aspire to be, not who we really are.

3. Constant Tension

The Thief books had entirely different kinds of tension. Riordan is the master at creating one adrenaline-pumping monster-battle after another. The tension was front and center in a major physical quest that spanned the length of the book along with numerous mini-battles that always came down to the wire.

On the other hand, Zusak excelled at a more subtle tension with the use of unanswered questions, foreshadowing, and a general sense of foreboding. The invisible tension was no less powerful because it wove around the reader, pulling tighter like a net, holding the reader captive without her even knowing it.

4. Rabid Cliffhangers

The books were full of cliffhangers at the end of every scene, every chapter, sometimes even at the end of paragraphs. Both authors left the reader rabid with the need to know what would happen next.

They avoided wrapping things up neatly with pretty bows on top. When one situation was resolved there was always some other danger lurking ahead. And the author made sure that the reader knew it.

5. Brilliant Voice

While we were reading The Lightning Thief, my youngest daughter said, "Mom, this is the first book we've read that I've understood from the beginning." (And we read a lot of books so that's really saying something!)

Riordan has a way of laying out his story that's completely understandable for children, which is a feat considering the myriad of Greek myths he used and the plethora of Greek gods he needed to introduce. Somehow he managed to pull it off in a way that wasn't confusing or overwhelming for even the youngest child.

And Zusak's voice . . . I'm speechless. I don't know how to describe his voice and do it justice. All I can say is that his book is worth a read just to study his voice alone. (Although beware the book does contain a fair amount of swearing in German!).

What about you? When you're reading, what are the TOP qualities that make a book a page-turner? Are you working at putting those qualities into your writing?