There is so much advice for writing novels that I sometimes wonder how working writers have time to write. Some of these tools are very useful. I can’t think of anyone who failed to learn a few tricks by Save The Cat Wrote A Novel or many of the other how-to books that have helped demystify novel-writing. Yes, it’s true that the three-act structure has three acts. Yes, free-writing, or writing off a prompt, is a useful way to start.
But want to know what I do? Every few days I get on the phone with writer friends and gossip wildly about people I made up. Want to know why? Read on…
Knowing and loving your characters, and having a friend that loves them, too, is incredibly powerful
Getting to know your characters is harder than you think. You believe you know them because you made them up. But if you really want to get to know them, start talking to someone else about them. This person can be a friend, writing buddy, mentor, coach. Just somebody who is there for you through this process, who knows you, cares about, and is invested in your novel. They’ve read the messy early draft, and maybe the improved second draft. They’re now talking to you about it again, before you unzip it all once more.
Chat with this friend about how your characters might behave in different situations, how they relate to one another, what worries them in the middle of the day, what scares them late at night, how they feel about every part of their own lives and the lives of other characters about them. It’s like you’re talking about live people (because they are live, at least on the page). The kind of conversation I mean will have sentences like, “I think she feels this way because of her mother fed her Slim Jims and called it dinner?”
And your friend is there, and she’s listening, and she says, “Not just Slim Jims because that she could deal with. It was the whether the house would be taken or the car would get repossessed. The stuff about the future.”
Deep, intimate conversation about your characters. I know it sounds crazy, but I’ve had great results doing this. Sometimes, I’m this the reader for novelist friends of mine. My pal, Susan, a screenwriter, does it for me. She reads my draft chapters and we talk about my characters are though they are family members, saying things like, “You know how it is with Annie, nobody ever thinks she does anything wrong…”
I can feel her rolling her eyes all the way from California. We are gossiping and it is good.
This won’t take the place of writing. If you’re a free-writer, you’re still going to freewrite. If you’re a plotter, you’re still going to outline. Every writer will still revise and revise until only commas are being moved around. But your book will benefit if you have a kind of reader therapist for your characters, someone you can go to and chat with specifically about your characters. You’ll come back to your pages freshly, flying through revisions that take place long before you’ve reached the end of the draft, that better reflect these people and their lives.
Why should you do this long before you’ve finished your first draft? Because story comes out of character. One doesn’t follow the other, but emerge simultaneously. Too much emphasis on story without character, and you’ll find your books lack the depth they could have. Too much emphasis on character without a story and your novel may choke on its own interiority. If you really know your characters you’ll want to put them in situations in which they have to act, revealing themselves at every turn. Grab yourself a friend who can play along with this, who will not only listen to you as you talk about your characters, but challenge you every once in awhile on them, too.
I teach writing and I swear it’s half my job to do just this for my “students” (often professional writers). And it may be the most fun part of the job.
Stuff I’m reading:
Heat Stroke by Hazel Barkworth, an alumna on the programme where I teach at the University of Oxford. Hazel stood out then and she stands out now, and the book is sizzling…
Orbital by Samantha Harvey, this is a gorgeous short novel, a study of detail, and is that is freakishly beautiful.
I just took this to a new level- I caught myself wandering around my apartment talking about my character out loud to myself! 😂 I’m trying to work out what really needs to happen in a late in the day chapter rewrite and apparently gossiping about my protagonist and her friend to myself was the way forward.