Category: characters

What I’ve Learned: Creating a Character Sketch

For the longest time, I have been a discovery writer. I’ll have a vague idea of a plot and a vague idea of a character, sometimes a name and sometimes not, and then I will discovery write. At least that’s how I used to write.

For several years, my writing process was that way. It has been that way for several projects as well, where the characters show me who they are as I write their story.

Back when I was in school for my Bachelor’s, I was asked to create a character sketch before I even wrote the work the character was going to be in. I’ve tried it a few more times since then, for a few new projects.

Here’s a few things I’ve learned from that experience:

A Character Sketch can show you a character’s past.

Part of the character sketch I had to make for the class I was in involved making up a past for the character. While the story was loosely based off an idea I had, I didn’t have a main character for a while, so I had no idea what her past would be. It was interesting to figure out the MC’s motives of why she became who she was and what led her down the path to being the main character.

A Character Sketch can help map out the plot.

Originally, the plot was way different for the short story. The main character was meaner, bribing people to make herself feel better, a little sweet and sour action. In the character sketch, I realized the turning point in the story would be when the main character faced something she had never faced before. That helped me both build the character and build the plot.

A Character Sketch can make a character feel more real

Usually about half of the sketch doesn’t really end up in the written work explicitly.

While most of the sketch doesn’t appear, it does help to know what makes your character tick and by extension, how they would react to the world around them. An example is in the piece I wrote for my short story class. My main character is in the job she’s in because her grandmother passed away and it affected her.

The whole character sketch may not be helpful for the reader, but it does help the writer get a more concrete feel for the people they create.

I’m not sure if I’ll keep the process of creating a character sketch first. I like to write my first drafts by discovery, with loose enough outlines so my characters can surprise me. Maybe in second drafts, or on a deadline for shorter works, I might, but we shall see.

Every project is different, but I do enjoy trying new things.

 

Bre Writes Book Reviews: February 2022

This month, I managed to read two vastly different books. One I really enjoyed and one that was not my cup of tea. As a writer, I try not to DNF any books, even though the second one I really wanted to do just that. In my opinion, even books that aren’t the best can be learning lessons, and the second book I read this month was full of them!

Without further ado, here’s what I read in February:

Spellmaker by Charlie N. Holmberg

Spellmaker is the second novel in the Spellbreaker duology. I received the first book in a Scribbler subscription box, and quite enjoyed it. I bought the second one from Amazon as soon as I finished the first book and took my time reading it.

First of all, I love the characters. I love that each of them had their own personality and their own goals and drive. It was refreshing to have a female protagonist and other female characters in the late 19th century that had agency and weren’t just rewards for the men in the novel. I enjoyed that the men in the novel were dynamic and not all cookie cutter as the hero trope.

The setting, I thought was interesting, but I feel needed a bit more explanation or a bit more use as a character. Set in England where magic is real and several different kinds of magic exist, I wish there had been a better explanation for the setting and a more in-depth view of some of the magics. There were times where I was reading and going “Man, I wish I had taken better notes,” but that might have just been me, since I do tend to read quickly.

The plot was surprisingly good for the book being a sequel. The first book had a better plot, simply because it was the first book and there was a lot of introduction and excitement in meeting the characters and watching them find and reach their goals. I’m glad this series is a duology, because there was enough plot for a second book and it was nice to see the characters grow and change from the first book. The book has one of my favorite tropes of fake relationship that’s built on the basis of a real relationship underneath, and it was done absolutely beautifully.

Rating: 4.75/5

Bonus:

Here’s how I saw some of the characters in my head. I always enjoy when I can see the characters in my mind and can hear them as they speak.

Bacchus:

Ogden:

Elsie:

The Phantom of the Bathtub by Eugenia Riley

The Phantom of the Bathtub was a book I either bought or got for free from kindle a few years ago during my Phantom of the Opera phase. Let me say it is nothing like Phantom of the Opera except they share the word Phantom in the title.

I honestly expected a lot more from this book. The back blurb mentioned werewolves, ghosts and haunted houses, but it was very watered down and skimmed over in place of the romance and kissing ass to fit in with high society. I expected a lot more from this book, and I kept reading hoping to find it, but sadly the ending didn’t sit right with me at all. It felt forced and over rushed.

The characters were mainly caricatures of people one would expect to find in the south during the late 19th century, overplayed and underdeveloped. The setting of Savannah, Georgia was never really truly explored and used as a character itself. The ghosts were not as prominent as I would have liked and barely enough of a plot point to make a difference. There were plenty of erotic scenes, but even those were lackluster and made the characters even more wishy-washy. The ending was forced for a “happy ending” with little explanation.

This book was not my cup of tea, and I was honestly glad to finish it, but in reading it I noticed things I can improve upon in my own works, so for that I am thankful.

Rating: 1/5

Bonus:

How I saw some of the characters.

Maxwell:

Aubrey:

Viveca:

Stay tuned for what I’m reading next!

Wednesday Works: What’s in a Name?

This is a game I’ve started playing with myself to get story ideas while I drive in the car. Using license plate letters, I come up with characters.

Urr is a caveman in the Neolithic times, one of the first to find fire.

Yeedle is a Jewish teen, growing up in the 1980’s during the AIDS pandemic and fearful for what love means in the future for him as a gay teen.

Mr. X is an internet hacker, like Robin Hood of old, hacking the banks in the 1990’s and covering his tracks with multiple other aliases.

Valez is a woman in 1830’s Texas fighting fiercely for her rights and her land despite the odds.

Ziya is a child model in the early 2000’s wishing to tell her parents she wants to quit modeling and be a normal child, but she knows her modeling is the only thing that pays the bills.

Wednesday Works: The Magic Of Trees and Strangers

After hiking the usual area for weeks and weeks, he found himself surprised when a new tree, fully grown just showed up.

Right in the middle of the path, a full grown tree had appeared, as if overnight. The leaves were full and bright and beautiful, flowing blossoms along the branches, huge apples, glossy and appetizing along the low hanging branches. He reached out and grabbed one, then promptly dropped it.

“EXCUSE YOU!” A voice seemed to come from within the tree. “Those apples are mine!”

He wondered if he was suffering from heat stroke. Trees didn’t talk.

“Hello?” He said, looking around. Someone was obviously playing a joke on him. “Is someone there?”

“I don’t know why I should even bother talking to you, Apple Stealer!” The same voice came from the tree. “I’m not sure what you can do for me!”

The tree definitely was talking. He was definitely suffering from heat stroke or something more serious.

“How are you talking right now?” He asked next. “Why is a tree talking to me?” Maybe he was simply dreaming.

The tree groaned. “I am not a tree!” It screeched. “Don’t you know a lady when you see one?”

He tried not to laugh, he really did. But the laugh came out anyway. “A lady?” He asked. “You’re a tree!”

She scoffed. “I wasn’t always a tree!” She said. “I was a lady yesterday!”

He almost couldn’t believe it.

“So what happened?”

The tree sighed and her leaves shuddered as if blown by a hard breeze. “I am never ever going on a night hike under the full moon again!” Her branches seemed to move like she was pointing a finger at him. “Never. Ever. Make a deal. With a good looking hiker.” Her branch struck him hard. “He will turn you into a tree with no way of returning!” Her leaves and branches shuddered once more then froze.

It wasn’t every day he met a woman in the form of a tree on the path. “Well how did you piss him off?” He asked. “That sounds like a faerie, and they only interfere like this when you piss them off.”

The tree groaned once more. “He asked me for my name,” she said next. “And I called him a creep and told him to leave me the hell alone.” She huffed and puffed. “Next thing I know, I’m a tree.”

He couldn’t help but laugh then. “Well, then you were asking for it.”

That only made the tree more furious, her leave shaking, her apples falling and rolling down the path.

“You are impossible!” She groaned at him. “How was I supposed to know?!”

He couldn’t stop laughing, but then he felt bad. “I suppose you wouldn’t.” He couldn’t help but wonder what she had looked like as a human.

She would probably just ignore him, like every other girl he had hoped would be remotely interested in him.

“Did he give you a riddle of how to reverse it?” He asked next. It was the least he could do to help her reverse it.

“No,” She said. “And if he did, I wasn’t paying attention once I was a tree.”

“Well,” he said, “Maybe it’s a good thing you’re a tree.”

At first she was offended.

“I mean, don’t get me wrong, you have nice apples, but I’m sure your face is just atrocious, like a total dog.”

Still, she was offended.

“And don’t get me started on your love handles.” He had a hunch, but he needed to make her laugh. “If your lower branches are any indication. Curvy tree there. Probably at least 250 if not more.” She was silent and he figured that was a bad thing. “You don’t have any human responsibilities anymore, no bills, no trashy Stacy stealing your man.”

The tree scoffed. “That bitch doesn’t deserve my man and if I could, I would chuck my apples so hard at her.”

He couldn’t stop laughing at her. Eventually, her rage quelled and she started laughing too. The more she laughed, the more her leaves shook, the more her apples fell down to the path, the more her laughter started to sound more human with every chuckle.

When the last leaf fell, in front of him stood a very human girl, her smile lighting up her whole face.

“Well,” he said as she stood before him. “Would you look at that? Not a dog at all.”

She moved her very human hands down her torso and then looked at her own human hands. “I’m me again!”

In the rush of excitement, she tackled him with a hug. Then she realized what she had done.

“Does this me have a name?” He asked next.

“Oh no!” She answered after that, the smile still on her face. “I’m not falling for that one again.”

Wednesday Works: If It Doesn’t Fit…

In her world, everything and everyone had a place. Each and every person, place or thing fit together like puzzle pieces.

As she built her world exactly the way she wanted it, placing the people carefully in the city and the forests, building dark creatures between the trees and damsels in distress in the high castle towers, there was one person that refused to fit in.

No matter how much she moved around the king and his consorts, or the priest and friar in the abbey, the dashing hero wouldn’t fit. The princess had loved him, sung his praises, but he simply would not fit.

For weeks and weeks, she fought the issue, searching for a place for her dashing hero. Then, in a fit of inspiration at 3AM from a dead sleep, the solution came.

“I have to kill him.”

Finally, her book had an ending she was happy with.

Your Love and Your Life

You wish things had ended differently. That she would have done more, that you could have done less. You just want things to have been different. 

You wouldn’t have said what you had said if you knew how things were going to go. Sure, you felt it, and she eventually said it back, but it wasn’t the same after that. 

To you, the words “I love You,” might as well be a knife to thé throat of your relationships. 

You kill all the beautiful things in your life and are left lost with the remains that no amount of resuscitation can breathe new life into. 

Maybe it’s better that way. 

Baggage

She hadn’t expected that she would feel so light after her trip. 

When he had called her after years of radio silence, begging to see her, she had expected the worst. What she had found when she had arrived back in New York was the best thing she could have hoped for. 

Her trip hadn’t been a round trip as she had planned. She smiled as she unpacked her suitcase, the clothes and the shoes, and placed them next to his things in the dresser. 

That was the last thing she expected. How easy it was to be close to him after years of nothing while they found themselves. 

“Babe,” his voice came from behind her as his hands wrapped around hers gently, the familiar scent of his cologne clouding her senses. “Unpacking can wait until tomorrow.” 

She couldn’t help but agree as his lips crashed against her neck, making her forget about their previous baggage entirely. 

Tuesday How To: Make the Conflict Match Your Characters

So you’re all set to start writing. You have your  favorite drink or snack on hand, you have the timer set for at least 10 minutes, ready to get down at least some words that sound semi smart in this writing session, and you have your characters all fleshed out and ready to go.

Or do you?

Part of being a writer is working with conflict and how it affects your characters. Every conflict should affect characters in some way, but certain conflicts will affect them more.

Take the difference between a trained fighter and a plumber. If you put the fighter into an MMA ring, he would have no problems understanding how to fight and possibly win against the other fighter. You put that plumber in the ring and now you have a conflict. Does the plumber know how to win against the other fighter or not?

There is your conflict. 

I like to think of conflict as “What is the worst possible thing that could happen to this character that they could possibly come out of and possibly be happy?” 

An example I’ll give you is from the series I am currently working on. The main character in book one, when his story starts, is a weakling who lets other people make most of his choices for him. In the relationship with his best friend, he is the weaker of the two, and he lets her run the show. When the shift happens, when his best friend can no longer make decisions, he has to step up and be the strong one in their relationship. This is part of his growth throughout the series, and it creates conflict later in the series when she starts to make choices for herself again.

The best way to make a conflict is to decide how far you want to push your characters. What they need to be pushed forward into their world and fight for what they need. 

A good rule of thumb is to use opposites. 

Let’s return to the plumber and the fighter for a few moments. Let’s say the plumber is a pacifist and is against fighting, but his wife and kids are kidnapped by someone. Pacifist plumber tries the nice route, going to where the villain is keeping his wife and kids, but he gets his ass handed to him by the hulk like bouncer. Now Mr. Plumber has a choice, which creates conflict.

Should he go against his ideals and train to kick the bouncer’s ass and save his family, or should he keep his ideals and try to deal with the villain another way?

Depending on what you, as the writer, choose, it could be two very different stories. 

How do you make your conflicts match your characters strengths and weaknesses?

Tuesday How To: Every Story Needs Conflict

We’ve all read stories where it seems like nothing is happening. Stories that are boring, or slow, or maybe the characters just aren’t working for us as readers. I find that most of the time when stories bore me, it’s because the conflict doesn’t resonate with me, or that there doesn’t seem to be a conflict, or high enough stakes for me to have an interest in the results. 

Every story needs to have some sort of conflict. 

Whether it’s the fact that your character can’t find the right shoes for their prom dress or the character has to diffuse a bomb before the timer goes off and he can’t tell what color word to cut because he’s colorblind. Your story needs a conflict, something to resolve for the story to feel complete. 

If you don’t have a conflict for your characters, it might as well be a story where everyone is happy and nothing bad ever happens. Even short stories need conflicts, something to move the plot forward and engage the reader and make them care about the characters and what happens to them. Even the simplest of things can become conflicts. 

The easiest way to come up with a conflict is to think of the word thing that could happen to your character and make it happen, but we will talk more about that next week. 

Tuesday How To: Female Characters

Over the past three weeks of How To Tuesdays concerning characters we have talked about how to find characters, how to name them, and how to develop characters. This week, is not necessarily a new How To, it is an addition to the rest of the information we have talked about.

This week, we are going to talk about female characters and how to write great female characters. For  a lot of people, this lesson will come as news, just because it’s one of those things that some writers do not realize until it is pointed out for you, and for others some of it might be obvious, but some of it might not be so obvious.

So without further ado: Writing Female Characters

Write Them as People

For as long as people have been writing characters, they have been writing women. The difference is the idea that women are people. Some writers write their female characters as stepping stones for their male characters or plot devices to move other characters forward. This is not the way to write female characters. They deserve to be people in your work and not just a plot device for your male characters. An example of what not to do is called the Sexy Lamp Test.

The Sexy Lamp Test is easy. If you can replace your female character with a lamp and the plot stays exactly the same with no changes, then you really should rewrite your female characters.

Another common theme is to write female characters as a plot advancement for your main character. The most common way that I have seen is to kill the female character, usually a mother or a lover that motivates the main male character to go after the villain or learn a new skill, etc.  This needs to stop in popular media, but it needs to be noticed by writers, readers and viewers first.

If you write your female characters as people, your work will shine, and you will avoid the usual cliches of female characters as cardboard cutouts.

Give Them Their Own Goals and Motivation

Just like any other character, your female characters need goals and motivation too. This will help a lot with making them feel like real people. Everyone has goals and motivation, whether it is something huge like to be a scientist, or a master shopper, or a small goal like wanting to wake up on time the next morning to not be late for work.

When you don’t give characters goals, whatever their gender, you create them as cardboard cutouts just revolving around a plot. However, there is an extra element to female characters if you leave out their goals and motivations. They become cardboard cutouts with sex appeal, and this is not necessarily what you want for your female characters.

Another issue about goals and motivations. Please don’t make your female characters only goal to get laid or be laid by the main character. Yes, it is a goal, but they should have more goals than to just be a sex object for the main character.

Give your characters goals and motivations and let them exist in your story not just for your main characters, but next to them.

Make Them Show Emotion and Change Throughout the Story

There is nothing worse than a character that does not react or change during the plot and action of a story. Whether they are male or female or anything in between, if they don’t change and react, then they might as well be a cardboard cutout or a lamp. This is especially important for female characters, because so often they are just there as plot devices and motivation for other characters.

Let your female characters react as people, let them show ugly emotions like anger and hate and let them react as real people would. Don’t keep them shiny and pretty, let them get dirty and downright ugly. Let them react and show them as you would a male character. Make them cry, or scream, or yell and be more than just sex appeal.

Make them change throughout their story, but make them change for the right reasons. If the only reason your character changes is because they get into a romantic relationship, then you need to examine your plot and try something new. This plot device is so overused, and so not the message we want to send to our young people. This is a common theme in teen romances that it needs to be corrected somehow. It starts with us, the next generation of writers and authors and creators.

Let your characters, whether male, female, or anything in between, be human and your writing will be the best it has ever been.

Happy Writing!