READING THE BIBLE-1st Kings Chapter 18

POP - The Most Powerful Weapon - the Power of Prayer

Reading the Bible-1st Kings 16

Join us as we Read the Bible

READING THE BIBLE - 1st Kings Chapter 14

Wondering What God Thinks? Read the Bible with Us

READING THE BIBLE-1st Kings Chapter 12

Demon Worship, Lust and Evil as we Read the Bible

Queen of Sheba - 1st Kings 10 - Reading the Bible

READING THE BIBLE-The Lord Appears - 1st Kings 9

Happy Easter - READING THE BIBLE - MATTHEW 28

Happy Easter- Talking about Jesus and Easter

Join us as we read through the Bible

Join Us As We Read The Bible

Spend 5 Minutes in the Bible Today

History Doesn't Repeat But it Rhymes with Elon

Spend 10-Minutes in the Bible Today

READING THE BIBLE-1st Kings Cptr. 2

King David's Successor: Solomon

The Legacy of Lust & Punishment of King David

Sticks & Stones May Break My Bones. . . Reading the Bible

The Christmas story - Luke Chapter 2 - in the Bible

PROPHESY OF JESUS BIRTH - 2nd Samuel

The Ark of the Covenant - Reading the Bible This Year

The Resurrection of Jesus is the Good News of the Bible

The Crucifixion of Jesus Christ - Mark Chapter 15

What does God Say about righteous Anger? Read Mark 11

Divorce - What Does God Say About it? Mark 10

The Transfiguration of Jesus Christ - Mark 9

Demons, Dogs & Deafness - Bible Discussion Today

Jesus Walks on Water - READING THE BIBLE - Mark 6

Demon-Possessed Man Gets Healed - Mark 5 - READING THE BIBLE

The Witch of Endor - READING THE BIBLE THIS YEAR

A Story About a Giant Battling a Boy - David & Goliath

Jesus and Beelzebub - READING THE BIBLE THIS YEAR

Mark Chapter 2 - Jesus Heals

Christ's Resurrection - READING THE BIBLE THIS YEAR

The Death of Jesus and Judas Hangs Himself

THE LAST SUPPER - Matthew 26 - Reading the Bible

DIVORCE-What does the Bible Say

The Supernatural Ark of the Covenant-READING THE BIBLE

The Ark of the Covenant-READING THE BIBLE

Jesus Walks on Water-Matthew 14

Curious about Demons? Join us as we Read the Bible

Forgiveness in the Bible

READING THE BIBLE - REV. 20 - SATAN'S DOOM

Hallelujah! - READING REVELATION 19

Curious What the Bible Says about Prophesy?

Reading the Bible - Revelation 17 - The Woman on the Beast

7 Angels & 7 Plagues - The Tribulation in the Bible

The Angel of the Lord at Bokim - Reading the Bible

666 - The Number of the Beast - READING THE BIBLE

Joshua's Farewell-Reading the Bible this Year

The Woman and The Dragon - READING THE BIBLE IN 1 YEAR

The Two Witnesses for God - Revelation 11

The Angel & The Little Scroll - Revelation 10

Misunderstandings Can Start Wars - Joshua Chapter 22

Cities of Refuge: Joshua Chapter 20

END of DAYS: DEMONS & DESTRUCTION

The 4 Horsemen of the Apocalypse in Revelation 5

Revelation Chapter 2 - Angels, Stars, & the Future

Tuesday, December 14, 2010

What a JERK

Or maybe He Isn't much of a character at all. Think about it. That might be the problem in your story. Your characters need to jump off the page and become living, breathing people--at least while we're reading your story or we won't care about them at all. Then, we'll put the book down to go do laundry, dishes, or...

Have you ever noticed why you love a good story? It's because you get involved in the journey the characters are taking, at least emotionally.

I can't put a book down when I care about the characters and what happens to them. But, to care about the characters, we have to get to know them really well.

It doesn't even matter if we love or hate the people in the stories we read. We simply have to feel so strongly about them that we can't wait to find out what's going to happen to them.

As writers, that's what we have to do to make our stories come alive: make the reader love or hate (and maybe both) our characters. To do that, the characters have to be multi-dimensional.

The best way to achieve that goal is to give your characters many facets to their personalities. We have to work hard, as writers, to chip and shape our characters into full-bodied individuals. Before you know it, those boring lumps will turn from mere words into brilliant diamonds.

One way to work on this goal is to use a Character wheel, which is similar to a color wheel. We want to make our characters so vivid they'll stand out in the crowd.

Worksheet:


Start by drawing a circle on a piece of blank paper for each of the main characters in your manuscript.



Now slice the circle into sections - like a pie



Put your character's name in the center of the page, above the blank circle or "character wheel" so you can come back and refer to your wheel time and time-again.

Character's Name

Label each section of your pie with one of the following topics and fill that piece of the pie in with character specific information:

1) Personality: Shy, timid, selfish, sneaky, conceited, impatient, sly, determined, impatient, cheap, etc.
2) Likes: Video games, tennis, running, t.v., reading
3) Dislikes: homework, dancing, playing the piano
4) Physical Appearance: Hair color, height, weight
5) Hobbies: rock collecting, ballet, soccer
6) Impressions: How others see your character

My critique group used this worksheet to develop character wheels last Saturday during our bi-monthly session. We all worked on one writer's main characters during that session, next time we will work on another member's characters.

We simply started throwing out characteristics that we thought fit the "people" we had read about during our critique sessions.

It was a lot of fun and we all came away knowing the characters much better.

If you have fun with this exercise, you can adapt the character wheel to make a story wheel. Simply label the pieces of the pie with:

1) Story setting,
2) genre,
3) major problems,
4) conflict,
5) action,
6) resolution

Now start filling in the pieces. Before you know it, you're going to have a multi-layered, rich pie ;)

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

Brilliant! I need to take time to do this more with my characters.

B.E.T. said...

This is a really interesting exercise. Thanks for sharing! :)

Rena Jones said...

Thanks for posting this, Kim.