Making Your Characters Live
I attended a workshop with Clint Johnson at the League of Utah Writer’s
Roundup about a year ago. He had us write an incident from one character’s
point of view, and then he asked us to write the same scene from another
character’s point of view. In each exercise, the setting was seen from
different eyes. The smells and sounds were different. The voice of each carried
a unique view of the world. Internal and external dialogue differed according
to the person.
When I write my scenes, do I take time to get into each character’s head
to really know their world? Do I really let them have their own thoughts and
actions?
As I said last week, I’m writing a Family Councils Book for Familius.
When I was asked to do this at first, I didn’t even know what I was going to
write. But as I got going, I started having a lot of fun with it.
As you all know, I’m a retired Marriage and Family Therapist. I have
years of stories of people’s lives stuck in my head that I can write about. Of
course I have to change each incident up a bit and give the people new names.
(That’s not hard because I don’t remember a lot of the names.) I do remember
the people and their feelings and struggles. And the hope and strength they
found within themselves to continue their quest. They are very real to me
still.
Since I’ve been writing for several years now, I can make the characters
and incidents live much better than I could before. It’s fun to take a two page
story and make each family member live—with real feelings and quirks, etc. I
love that I can make them live.
Maybe when I get back to writing fiction again, I’ll be better for having
done this exercise in nonfiction. I don’t know. All I do know is that it’s fun
to make the characters come alive in each story.
How are your characters? Are they living or flat?
Happy writing, Christy
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