• About Me
  • Writer’s Corner

Elizabeth Fais

~ Where awesome begins…

Elizabeth Fais

Tag Archives: Character traits

Creativity kickstart for writers ~ 5 super fun steps!

26 Friday Jan 2018

Posted by Elizabeth Fais in Creativity, Writing

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

Character Arc, character relationships, Character traits, Creativity, Elizabeth Fais, Harry Potter, Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix, Inspiration, International Creativity Month, JK Rowling, Setting, The Art of Doing Nothing, Veronique Vienne, world building

January is International Creativity Month, a great time to remember where the magic happens in the creative process. If we’re honest, there’s two drastically different sides to writing fiction:

  • OC (obsessive compulsive)—the linear, orderly mindset required for tracking the details that make a novel rich and believable
  • Happy place—where stories start and creativity takes flight

Imaginative rocket made of school supplies

Getting lost in the necessary details

We have to think linearly, assess the plausible, and be orderly and organized in execution to write good fiction. As Mark Twain so adeptly explained, “Fiction, after all, has to make sense.”

Writing a novel requires tracking story structure, character traits and arcs, setting and world building details. And maybe more! JK Rowling created an overall spreadsheet for the Harry Potter series, as well as spreadsheets for each individual book. The following image is of Rowling’s hand drawn spreadsheet for Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix.

JK Rowling's outline for Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix

Rowling’s grid outlines the chapter, month, chapter title, with an explanation of how that chapter relates to the over-arching plot of the book. There are columns for each of the book’s six subplots (prophecies, Harry’s romantic interests, Dumbledore’s Army, Order of the Phoenix, Snape and crew, and Hagrid) as well.

Remembering all the necessary details across hundreds of pages can bog down the heartiest of writers, especially when under deadline. Luckily, there’s a cure!

Creative rejuvenation

Creativity is innate to everyone. Much of what is perceived as “writer’s block” is temporary amnesia, we’ve forgotten the pure joy of having fun. When your creative fuel tank sputters on empty, try the following steps to blast your creativity into orbit:

  1. Do something silly, like running up the Down escalator, jumping on the bed, or having a food fight. Breaking up your routine with something random and unexpected, opens a creative doorway.
  2. Make a creative mess. A BIG one! Nothing breaks the bonds of orderly stuckness quicker than doing something that’s the total opposite.
  3. Skip. Everywhere. For an entire day! We stop skipping around the age of 10 or 12, but no one knows why. Scientifically that is. I think it’s because that’s the age we start forgetting how to naturally have fun. Skipping for an entire day will force you to remember what it was like to be naturally happy. Instant creativity is the result.
  4. Do something your 12 year-old self loved to do. For me it was rollerblading, but do whatever made you happy at that age. Again, it’s about tricking yourself into remembering what it’s like to be naturally happy. Then, the creative faucet turns on with firehose force.
  5. Give yourself permission to do NOTHING for an entire day. This is harder than it sounds. In our overachiever society, we’ve forgotten how to slow down and live in the moment. For more about this creativity enhancing practice, check out The Art of Doing Nothing, by Veronique Vienne.

Tranquil spa setting


The Quirky Quotient ~ The Secret Ingredient of Memorable Characters

07 Saturday Feb 2015

Posted by Elizabeth Fais in Story, Writing

≈ 11 Comments

Tags

Aidan Quinn, Benny & Joon, Buster Keaton, Character development, Character traits, Elizabeth Fais, I'm Gonna Be (500 Miles), Johnny Depp, Mary Stuart Masterson, Mediator series, Meg Cabot, Princess Diaries, Quirky Quotient, The Proclaimers, Vanished series

I’m in the “first-draft phase” of my current project, so I thought it would be a good idea to blog about the process. To create a log of reminders for myself when the next project rolls along, and hopefully benefit others who are blazing through their first-draft.

For me, the first draft of a novel is as much about discovering the characters as it is about formalizing the plot. Don’t get me wrong, before I write the first sentence I have a list of each character’s traits and flaws. But that’s only a two-dimensional view of the person. Their wholeness comes to life in the writing.

Quirky = interesting

BandJ1The discovering the wholeness of my characters is a process of revealing their quirks. Those little idiosyncrasies that make each character unique.

A person’s quirks are what endear us to them, and make them memorable. Quirks can show up in how they dress, unusual habits, and how they interact with others.

A character’s quirks can affect the choices they make, and indirectly the outcome of the story.

At the beginning of a project,  coming up with new and unique traits for each character can be a bit overwhelming. So I start with one simple rule:

Don’t be boring.

Quirks that Delight and Deepen Character and Story

For fictional characters to not be boring, they have to stretch beyond our every day patterns. To start the idea mill churning, it helps me to review stories where characters surprised and delighted me, and analyse what and how they created that affect.

If you’re looking for an author, Meg Cabot is the queen of quirky characters, secondary as well as main characters. Her Princess Diaries series is classic, as are her Vanished and Mediator series. But don’t stop with just books. Films are also a great resource for character studies.

BennyJoonCollage

One of my favorite films for quirky characters is the 90’s comedy/drama Benny & Joon. It’s a story about Benny, an older brother (Aidan Quinn) who cares for his mentally disturbed younger sister, Joon (Mary Stuart Masterson). Doesn’t sound like a good time, does it? But wait. Enter eccentric young Sam (Johnny Depp), who models himself after Buster Keaton, and the story lights with genius.

Sam dresses like Buster Keaton and imitates the comedian’s classic sketches, but his BandJ4quirks are much more than a “Keaton copy”.

Sam uses a steam iron to make grilled cheese sandwiches and a tennis racket to mashed potatoes (wish I’d thought of both of those quirks!).

His quirky habits endear him to Joon, helping her break out of her extreme dysfunction that often manifested in alarming ways.

The video below (featuring the song by the Proclaimers) includes some of the classic scenes from Benny & Joon. Johnny Depp’s physical comedy is hilarious.

Making It Fresh

Analyzing the successful quirkiness of characters in other stories is a jumping off point to brainstorming ideas for my own characters. The goal is to make my character’s quirkiness fresh and real. Here’s a few tricks:

  • Turn a trait on its head or switch it around. Do what’s least obvious. Johnny Depp’s impersonation of the pirate captain, Jack Sparrow, is a great example of turning typical pirate traits on their head.
  • Give a character a hobby that clashes with society’s view of their trade or line of work. For example, a welder who creates his own line of feminine bath products under an assumed name, or a concert musician who competes in monster truck rallies.
  • Combine unexpected character traits. Such as a Navy Seal who’s afraid of spiders, but wrestling with bears is a rollicking good time.
  • Cast against type. This comes from the film industry, and is shorthand for “give us something unexpected.” Such as a mail man who’ s actually a recruiter for an intergalactic assassin agency.
  • Get wacky. Have fun with it!

I’m Gonna Be (500 Miles) ~ The Proclaimers


What’s Your (Character’s) Line?

11 Friday May 2012

Posted by Elizabeth Fais in Characters, Elizabeth Fais, TV Shows

≈ 4 Comments

Tags

Character traits, Characters, Colonel Sanders, Groucho Marx, Walt Disney, What's My Line?

Revealing One Character Trait at a Time

At the writers retreat last weekend, the exercises we did on Building a Better Character reminded me of the (really) old TV show What’s My Line?

What’s My Line? (1950-1967) came from the time-before-color. Yes boys and girls, there was a time when the world was in Black and White. And worse … there were no laptops, iPods, or cell phones. And dinasaurs roamed the earth. Pretty much.

Anyway, way back then there was this game show where contestants with unusual occupations were interviewed using questions that had to be answered with a “yes” or “no” and from that the panelists had to guess the contestant’s occupation. There was usually one “mystery guest” round–with a famous person–where the panelists had to wear masks and the mystery guest disguised their voice.

So … are you up for a jaunt in the Wayback machine … blasting into the past for a few entertaining episodes of What’s My Line? Hang onto your bobby socks … 1950’s here we come!

What’s My Line? Mystery Guest ~ Walt Disney


What’s My Line? Colonel Sanders

There was a time when people didn’t recognize Colonel Sanders by sight? AMAZING!


What’s My Line? Female Wrestler


Do you have a favorite *REALLY OLD* TV show?

Building a Better Character…

08 Tuesday May 2012

Posted by Elizabeth Fais in Characters, Meg Cabot, SCBWI

≈ 7 Comments

Tags

Character traits, Characters, Craft, Elizabeth Fais, Meg Cabot, SCBWI, Writing

…From the inside out

I attended a Society of Children’s Book Writers and Illustrators (SCBWI) writers retreat this past weekend in Southern California. It was a working retreat, where aside from critiques and talking with editors one-on-one, the Young Adult (YA) and Middle Grade (MG) authors participated in hands-on workshops for developing richly layered characters. Something I need to work on, and I learned A LOT!

In the initial stages of defining a character, if you’re like me, you focus on the character’s strengths. What their good at, why people like them, how they affect the people around them in a positive way. That’s all good. But for a character to be fully developed and believable, you can’t gloss over their flaws. That’s because it’s the flaws that make a character likeable. Their faults are what we relate to, why we fall in love with the character. Take Mia Thermopolis‘ klutziness in the Princess Diaries, for example. Her dorkiness is what endears her to us, because we’ve ALL been there. At one time or another. One reason I love Meg Cabot’s books, is that she is a master at developing quirky, well-rounded characters.

But of course, to draw us in so we care about a character we can’t insert a bulleted list of good and bad traits. We have to layer in them so the traits are discovered through actions and reactions to other characters. Just like us, characters won’t interact with everyone in the same way. What a parent says will piss them off.

However, a friend can say the same thing and the character takes the advice to heart, or laughs it off. Defining a character through their interactions with the people around them — their circle of influence (COI) — is what makes them believable.

Another tool for building a character with greater emotional impact is to use traits that go against type.  For example, in one workshop at the retreat we wrote a scene with two characters that showed their flaws. I chose a paranoid, arrogant, and tad superstitious Jiminy Cricket pitted against a perfectionist Pinocchio who was theatrical and self-righteous. So not the Disney classics, but that’s the point.

Dare to be different. Breathe freshness and fun into your characters with unusual or conflicting traits. And it’s important to remember that in many cases …

…characters speak to conceal rather than to reveal.

That’s subtext … and a whole other topic … for another blog.

Implements of Construction

Here are some useful resources for building emotional impact into your characters:

  • Emotion thesaurus
  • Character flaws list
  • Writing for Emotional Impact, by Karl Iglesias

What character is most memorable for you (film or fiction) and why?

Inquiring minds want to know!

Calendar

February 2023
M T W T F S S
 12345
6789101112
13141516171819
20212223242526
2728  
« Jul    

Enter your email address to have new posts sent directly to your inbox.

Join 236 other subscribers

It's really me!

  • Elizabeth Fais

Life is Tweet

Follow @elizabethfais

Recent Posts

  • Wisdom of Richard Peck ~ Writing for young readers
  • The Writer and Rabbit Who Saved the Countryside
  • 3 TREE-rific Informational Picture Books
  • Musings from the Writing Cave
  • MG Review ~ HOW I BECAME A SPY
  • The “Creative High” is real!
  • MG Review: Louisiana’s Way Home by Kate DiCamillo

Past Posts

Officially SCBWI


Member of the Society of Children's Book Writers and Illustrators

Reading Fun

Advice for Writers

I Write for Apples

Author Photos


Categories

Adventure Amazing but true! Animals Animation Blake Snyder Book Reviews Books Cats Character Dancing Disneyland Elizabeth Fais Fiction Fun Facts Funny Videos Giveaway Giving Back Holiday Humor Inspiration Middle Grade Movies Music Mystery Nonfiction Paranormal Reading Romance SCBWI Shakespeare Story Supernatural Thriller Winner! Writing YA YAppiest Young Adult Zombies

Keeping It Real

wordpress analytics

Blog at WordPress.com.

  • Follow Following
    • Elizabeth Fais
    • Join 236 other followers
    • Already have a WordPress.com account? Log in now.
    • Elizabeth Fais
    • Customize
    • Follow Following
    • Sign up
    • Log in
    • Report this content
    • View site in Reader
    • Manage subscriptions
    • Collapse this bar
 

Loading Comments...