Creating Characters: How to Build Story People
Dwight V. Swain
Language: English
Pages: 208
ISBN: 0806139188
Format: PDF / Kindle (mobi) / ePub
A jargon-free manual on the basics of developing interesting fictional characters
Vibrant, believable characters help drive a fictional story. Along with a clever plot, well-drawn characters make us want to continue reading a novel or finish watching a movie. In Creating Characters, Dwight V. Swain shows how writers can invent interesting characters and improve them so that they move a story along.
“The core of character,” he says in chapter 1, “lies in each individual story person’s ability to care about something; to feel implicitly or explicitly, that something is important.” Building on that foundation—the capacity to care—Swain takes the would-be writer step-by-step through the fundamentals of finding and developing “characters who turn you on.” This basic but thought-provoking how-to is a valuable tool for both the novice and the seasoned writer.
afford that kind of thing. Your characters must appear to be individuals if you’re to succeed. What we’re concerned with here is how to build a character from scratch, not story construction and dynamics. So though there’s no such thing as a standard operating procedure or one right way where creating story people is concerned, it’s time we explored Chapter 2, “Searching Out Your Characters,” which gives a tentative mode of attack on the problem of creation that many writers have found useful.
long lists of sure-fire humor formulae and topics . . . argue at length as to whether drive to superiority ranks higher than embarrassment as a source of mirth. But in all honesty, intellectualization is not the answer. No approach, no system, no formulation can claim to stand as definitive; and that includes the things I’ve said here. Ever and always, humor is subjective. The secret in coaxing smiles lies less in study and methodology than it does in avoiding them. Once you understand the basic
“Like I mean ya know I doin’ skag like I ain’t not ready to wig out on no crystal” on your readers is something else.) How do learn to individualize with dialogue? The answer, of course, is that you listen, and that does mean listen, to people of all sorts talking in all sorts of situations insofar as you can manage it. Television and, in particular, the VCR are useful tools in this regard. By taping a program you can play chunks of dialogue that impress you over and over again until you get
your daughter’s murderer go free. What counts, then, is that you feel—and feeling makes you kin to all mankind. It also links you to your story people. It’s the core of character we talked about in Chapter 1. This fact was driven home to me by the experience a friend of mine had a few years ago. It involved a lady named Clarice. Clarice’s trade was pornography. She was a writer of what in the trade were known as “docs”—pseudo-sociological paperbacks that pretended to be scholarly and factual
character from the past, you first need to know the particular world through which Character moves, and the pluses and minuses that go with it. To that end, you must find out what’s different about it, beyond the beards, the armament, the funny-looking clothes. It’s not necessarily necessary that you be aware of who was king or what wars were fought or won or lost. Buy you must have an awareness of Character’s goals, attitudes, and feelings and how they fit into the patterns, beliefs, and