Developing characters, before or during

I think of what kind of person they’re going to be, but it isn’t until I start writing that I fully imagine what they’re like and begin to understand who they are. A lot is giving the a voice in dialogue as I begin to imagine the way people talk and quirks of their language and then quirks of the way they’re thinking, they begin to come to me, though I might have some notes before I started to write.

--Sue Miller

This description perfectly parallels my experience. I did some character sketches for my main characters before I started drafting in earnest, but for awhile they were little more than glass-eyed dolls that I moved around to act out the crude story I had at that point. And, like Miller describes, they started to make themselves real to me through their dialogue. I was writing dialogue to serve the plot, but over time the characters voices start to get more and more distinct.

At a certain point, for example, I noticed that one character was saying almost nothing active—just responding to what was around him in the most limited way he could get away with. And in that way I learned how wary and guarded he was. Which was something that was probably latent in the original character sketch but not so conscious for me until later.

That quirk of language told me about the quirks of thinking, which told me a lot more about who they really were, which then gave the story more depth so it became less and less crude as I went along.

I think I’ve referred in other posts to a previous attempt to write a novel, and back then I took the opposite approach—I filled notebooks full of character development exercises. I suppose they might have been useful for getting unstuck but as a planning tool, they just made me feel busy while I delayed the important work of adding sentences every day to my draft.

Old journal entries--Sept. 10, 2007--Back in the habit, whew!

Before I started posting to this blog, I kept some journal entries on paper--logs without the web. Some of those original pieces were never posted, and occasionally I circle back to post some of interest.

September 10, 2007—Back in the habit, whew!

Finally, I had a good day making progress on the book.

Essentially what I did today was to write a summary of my first chapter from memory, and I did it on note cards. Each “move” or episode or important chunk of background or important development in the present went on its own card. I tried to include only the pieces that were needed to move the story forward. Some cards were about an event, some were about a response to that event, some were scene setting.

The goal was to keep each piece on the front of one card—about three short declarative sentences. E.g. “There was a boy named _____ who lived in a town _____. The town had these characteristics: _______. His house had these characteristics _______.” Then to the next card. When I started to flip over the card to the back side, that was a signal that I was going into too much detail or that I was struggling to really understand what that section was about or what about it was essential to moving the story forward.

What I had after about an hour of writing this way was 14 cards—14 paragraphs—summarizing the 18 pages of my chapter one. I did this from memory for two reasons: One was that it felt like that would force me to concentrate on only the essentials of the story rather than trying to jam in everything that I had come up with in the first draft.

Two—the biggest benefit and the whole purpose of this exercise—was that I ended up writing things that were in my memory but NOT in my draft. It’s helping me find the gaps or helping me to emphasize and underline things that are only vaguely treated in the draft. For example, I didn’t really get until this morning when I was writing on the cards that my character has been living with a problem unconsciously up until now and that the story begins with his growing awareness of the problem. I’m now more aware that I haven’t shown in the story how this new awareness is triggered.

What I don’t know for sure now is if I continue with this exercise all through the book or if I stop here at Chapter One and do the necessary rewriting. I think the former, because I think that still so much is likely to change it would be hasty trying to improve the frame when certain walls may have to be moved entirely. So, I think I’m looking at about 15 days or so of the kind of work I did this morning. Here’s hoping it feels as good as it did today.

Rewriting vs revising vs editing

I'm learning something hard . . . The draft isn't there for me to fix. The draft is there to give hints about what I'm supposed to write next.

Let me share a little bit of my first draft to illustrate.

The children in sixth grade at Brookview sensed how fast they were growing up and that their lives were propelling forward into new territory. They had been cocooned together for seven years or—in the case of the new kids who had arrived in first grade—six years, and they were winding up their last weeks of elementary school. Next was coming the junior high school with all of its academic and social unknowns, with many more kids, including kids from some of the schools where they were all snobs, where there would be older kids who they didn’t know, where they would have to go to different rooms and corridors for each class, where they would have gym instead of P.E. and they would have to wear special gym clothes for that and have to shower afterward. It was the last soccer season and last baseball season when they just signed up for it—hereafter they would have to try out for school teams and only the kids who were fast and skilled would get to play. After this year there would be school dances and even parties they had heard about through an older brother where everyone drank J.D. and people made out.

I opened this chapter this morning to think about rewriting, and it was very discouraging, because I remember this intro being colorful and engaging. But it's obviously barf, and presumably there's a lot more of that in the rest of my first draft.

The first thing I wanted to do was to start editing. If you go through one sentence at a time, you'll see lots of opportunities to clean it up. The first sentence is awkward and clumsy, and I could easily rewrite it for more clarity and impact. The second sentence has that problem plus the problem of having extra detail that is probably unnecessary. I could make the tough choice to chop that out. The next three sentences each start with weak verbs and abstract subjects.

And so on, and before long what I'm actually doing is more like editing the book at the sentence level. But what this paragraph--and probably the whole chapter--really needs is a rewrite. And I don't mean a sentence-by-sentence rewrite.

I mean I need to look at it, decide what the real story buried underneath it is--the powerful metaphor, the meaningful plot points, the honest behaviors of the character--and pull those out and write the chapter again to emphasize all that. Instead of trying to make this paragraph flow better, I need to treat this paragraph as a big clue to what the story is really trying to say and then write that down.

That distinction is going to be tough to remember. The temptation as I'm reading through will be to just stop and fix each individual sentence trying to find the right word. But I'm not to the point yet where I should struggle to find the right word. I'm still trying to find out who my characters really are and what they want and what they're going to do to surprise one another.

So all those exercises I'm doing while I have the draft put away really serve two important purposes. One, they help me figure out more about my character and story. Two, I'm trying to get the important stuff established so well in my mind that the urge to tell the real story swamps any urge to line edit the draft on the page. I have to get something into my head more powerful and important than the words currently on the page.

To put it another way, the draft isn't there for me to fix. The draft is there to give hints about what I'm supposed to write next.

Cube exercise

Struggling against a cold today. Or allergies. At this point it's hard to tell anymore.

Through the fog I worked on something called the cube exercise. I found it in the Laurie Henry book but you can find other examples of it there. Basically, you pick any single aspect of your story--a character, a chapter, an event, a theme--and do some writing on each of these six questions representing six sides of an issue.

1. Describe: Think about your topic in terms of the five senses. What does it look like? What color is it? What does it smell, taste, sound, or feel like?
2. Compare: What is your topic similar to? What is its exact opposite?
3. Associate: What does your topic remind you of? When you close your eyes and think about your topic, what pops into your head?
4. Analyze: Think about the parts of your topic and how they work together. Tell what causes your topic, how it emerges/emerged, what causes or influences it, and how it can be categorized or grouped.
5. Apply: What can you do with your topic? How can your subject be used productively? What good does your subject do anyone?
6. Argue: Take a stand for or against your subject - or both! Think of as many reasons, logical or silly, that you might have for favoring or opposing your subject.

Depending on what kind of aspect you picked, some of these questions make more obvious sense than others. I was working on a character, so you can imagine that "applying" my character isn't immediate obvious. As an exercise, though, it can be worth trying to think in those terms.

Because I was feeling sick and slow moving, I decided to practice this by using a minor character this morning. Tomorrow I intend to try it with my main character.

Each day I feel like I understand things a little better. Hopefully soon I'll feel like I understand them well enough to switch on the creative impulse again and launch into the rewrite.

Freewriting

This morning is just did a plain old-fashioned freewrite on the question of "why should the reader care about my character." It helped some.

If you're not familiar with freewriting (if you haven't been in a high school or freshman comp class in the last few years), it's basically turning off every editing and censoring impulse and free associating for some set period of time. The idea is to push through the reluctance to write when you don't feel like you have anything more to say and to do it without stopping to think at all. In theory, you discover something you wouldn't have by just pondering the question. And you have to accept that it's only really successful sometimes. It's a game of percentages.

You can see a few other examples and definitions of it here, here, here and here.

Gut check . . . I guess I feel a little closer to being ready to start the rewrite. But not ready. I think I'll give it at least another week of exercises.

Alignment of character and plot

Today I was thinking mostly about something Jane Smiley says--that when you look back on a plot you should see an extended argument for the character credibly taking an action at the end what never would have seemed possible at the beginning.

It's like a magic trick--the reader gets two contradictory notions of the character at the beginning and the end and the plot makes the connection between them believable.

I'm realizing more and more that my first draft ending--really most of my plot--doesn't have my character doing enough. Too much observation and not enough response to what he observes.

So my exercise today was really just basic brainstorming of possible plot developments, particularly at the end. What wild things could my character do that seem unlikely for him to do?

The idea is that if I came up with something--say for example he self destructs in some way--then I would need to make sure during the rewrite that the plot is sneaking in a persuasive case that he would do that, even though it might seem very out of character at the beginning.

And the real idea--back to thinking about character--was to see if I provoke some insight about what my character is not like at all and what he might secretly be like that I haven't put my finger on yet.

I think it was productive. I got a lot of loopy ideas for the plot but also got myself more comfortable with a couple developments that I had been stewing on and seemed too loopy. Now they just seem like they need the right persuasive case to support them. I'm excited about trying to tell a more energetic story in the rewrite. And it got me more in touch with the humanity of my character.

That last point reminds of the famous comment by Richard Ford about stories ending like supernovas. I'll try to write about that next time.

Interviewing my character

This morning I did another exercise from, or inspired by, The Novelist's Notebook. The original exercise was a questionnaire--pet's name, car the character drives, etc. It was pretty basic and suitable for an exercise at the very beginning of dreaming up a story.

At the later stage where I am now, it might be a little helpful as a "gut check" to hunt around for some superficial things about a character that it might be worth thinking about.

But I re-imagined the exercise as an interview with my character--almost like a psych evaluation. The character is a child and I imagined him sitting in the chair in front of my writing chair while I asked him some of those questions (many were only appropriate to adults). It was like talking with my imaginary friend, and as he responded I made notes the way my shrink does when I have a session. The point was less about the factual information but more about HOW he would answer.

So, starting at the top of the questionnaire, asking his name, which I already know, I imagined how he would respond to me asking his name.

This did wonders to start to bring him to life for me in different ways. I started to notice his vulnerability and other personality traits in different ways.

No change from my goals yesterday--still hoping that steadily doing these exercises will give me the confidence and inspiration to launch into the rewrite stage.

Character exercises

I'll write some other time about where I get the writing exercises that I do and how they fit into my process for drafting or rewriting.

The one I did this morning is from a book called The Novelist's Notebook by Laurie Henry. It's structured a lot like a workbook that would accompany a pupil's textbook. It's probably the most helpful thing I've ever seen for just helping me get unstuck. The exercises are all very creative but very practical--more about craft than helping you imagine original scenarios.

This morning I did one that helps focus on character motivation. Make three columns labeled a.) the character; b.) their immediate goal; c.) their ultimate motivation.

I started with very minor characters and then antagonists and finally my protagonist and spent about an hour freewriting. I did help improve my clarity a little more.

I'm hoping that with a little dose like that every day before long I'll have the confidence to start the rewrite.

Sept. 24--Character sketches and other sketchiness

This morning I spent an hour in my writing chair and that feels like progress at this point.

I worked on basic character sketches, on the theory that I need to get more in touch with my characters and what makes them sympathetic and interesting before I try to tackle the rewrite. I got some good insight and ideas and right now my intention is to keep doing those exercises every morning for at least a few days. (I like to think in one week units, so I'm trying to imagine that this will get me ready for some other big step next Monday.)

I'm awfully nervous about how little progress I've been making and how disconnected I feel from the book. I'm trying to tell myself that that's OK. There's no deadline and the wisdom and experience of other writers suggests that some time away from the book at this stage is necessary. I had hoped to be an exception, but if I'm not, that's shouldn't be a serious problem.

And I do feel like most days I give the problems a little bit of thought and get a stronger sense of what the rewriting process will be like. It really the kind of "back burner" work that writing books advise.

So, this morning's renewed effort aside, I'm typically spending my mornings on work stuff and nothing has been going according to plan on the novel. Hopefully that's getting corrected now and I'm back in the saddle, but I've said that a few other times over the last several weeks.

Discipline and schedule—a review of how it went.

Today was the first day in a few months, with only a few exceptions, of not getting up to face the blank page. That was weird. Perfect timing, too; my wife had a doctor’s appointment that I had to drive her to and that totally killed the morning. I had managed to avoid anything like that all along. If her appointment had come last Friday, I would have been pretty frustrated with the interruption. There were a couple times when I needed to take her to the train station and I insisted on taking her so early that I was still waking up by the time I got back home and it was still my normal writing time.

I kept a log of how much I wrote each day and therefore of what days I wrote. Here’s some idea of how it went:

• April 19 is really my start date. Starting then, I had a few days writing some sketches that it turns out I’ll be using during which I was saying to myself, “What is this?” The a-ha moment came on April 22 when I realized it was the seed of a novel and started thinking of the work on those terms. The end date was August 13.
• In my log, I “worked” on it on 72 specific days.
• I “wrote”—meaning I added new sentences to the draft—on 64 specific days.
• The 8 missing days are interesting. I actually worked hard on those days but I had to compromise on my ideal scenario of adding sentences every day. There were two periods where I felt I need to review and grasp my material better before I could continue. Essentially I had caught up with my outline and I didn’t know what happened next. I still used the dedicated writing time every morning to review my manuscript and to do some exercises to prompt the rest of the plot.
• Those working days are almost all Monday to Friday with a handful of Saturdays thrown in.
• So figure about 12 working weeks when I actual wrote new sentences and about two additional working weeks where time spent getting in shape.
• That still leaves two missing weeks if you compare it to a calendar—that was when I didn’t work at all while we were on vacation. I had hoped to keep working then, but the disruption in routine was too much. I couldn’t make myself focus while we were on the road.
• A typical week produced about 10,000 words.
• My most productive week was 17,500 words. That happened pretty early on and I got my hopes up that I would continue that pace. I was often disappointed with myself the rest of the time that I was only writing 2,000-2,5000 words/day.
• I estimate my writing speed at 900-1,000 words/hour. So when I started I estimated 100 writing hours to get a draft done. My draft ended up being 135,000 words. (I hit 100,000 words around July 22.) So if you figure from the 64 actual writing days, typically around 2 to 2.5 hours per morning, my estimates were pretty close.
• So In theory it’s possible to write a first draft of a novel in 100 hours. The “real” time it takes is really a function of fragile egos, emotional resilience, vulnerability to distraction, family demands, how well thought out the story is, etc.