Kurt Vonnegut famously said: Every character should want something, even if it’s a glass of water.
It’s a simple concept: Give your character a desire. That advice has been largely translated to goal. Give your character a goal.
This classic writing advice gets lost in translation when it gets associated only with book-level goals. For example: My character is broke, trapped in a loveless marriage in a foreign country and just wants to make it home.
Goal: Get Home. A good, noble, goal! But this is a book-level goal. This is what the character wants to achieve by the end of the book. Catch the killer. Solve the mystery. Get the guy.
Book-level goals are essential, but not the only “goal” a successful character needs.
Read more...Fully dimensional characters have history! They have a unique perspective on the world that they developed from past experiences.
Few modern stories begin with a character’s birth—Barbara Kingsolver’s Demon Copperhead a recent notable exception. Of course, Kingsolver had clear thematic and structural reasons why to begin at birth, but that’s a post for another time :)
The vast majority of books follow Matt Bird’s advice: Your story isn’t about your character’s life, it’s about their problem.
Plot and story drive focus on a present problem. The point of view (POV) character makes sense of present story circumstances (their developing problem) based on their unique history of past events.
Compelling story characters make things worse for themselves based on a false or self-protective belief they’ve developed because of past events—often referred to as the “lie,” stemming from the “wound.”
Modern books tend not to start with the development of the character’s wound(s) and subsequent lie, but with the effect the lie has on the character as the story opens.
As the story progresses, backstory that pertains to a character's lie develops.
The question of how to incorporate past events into a present timeline is a question that confounds most writers—at first.
Read more...Q: What is narrative technique?
A: Different writing techniques that combine to create a narrative.
Some of the most common narrative techniques in novels and memoirs are:
- Scene
- Narrative Exposition (Narration)
- Summary
- Reflection
