My Top Book Coaching Advice: Create Compelling Characters
Today’s blog post comes to us from Author Accelerator certified book coach Janet Fox.
As an author, I begin every story I write with a series of exercises designed to help me dig deeper into my main character. And now as a book coach, my first set of exercises for clients also includes those around developing character. The reason? Character is the heart of story. This is especially true for readers of books in the niche I both write and coach, the young reader from middle grade through young adult.
Here’s why I believe that character is so important; then I’ll share two of my favorite exercises with you.
Story Is Character
When I began my writing career, I was sure that all I needed was a killer concept and a tension-filled plot. It took failure and rejection for me to dig deeper into craft and uncover the truth: we read to experience life through someone else’s eyes. Through character.
Delving deeper into craft, I studied brain science as relates to reading, and the interaction between reader and writer. The best stories offer the reader a sense of being not only in the moment, but also inside the character’s mind. The best writers give readers a feeling of being “co-creators”, that is, of being active participants in the development of the story. It’s that feeling of being transported that we all treasure, and it comes largely from our connection with the emotional journey of the main character.
As Lisa Cron says in her terrific craft book Story Genius, our brains are wired for that connection. People need other people; readers need characters.
In addition, the experiences of the character can serve as examples of behavior, both bad and good. Young readers in particular live through the experiences of characters. Readers observe failure and resolve to avoid it; we observe success and resolve to emulate it. Books for young readers, regardless of genre, take them through that “hero’s journey,” from failure to success.
Character Exercises
I’m frequently asking my clients as I edit their work, “What’s your character feeling in this moment?” And, “I need to know what your character is thinking here.”
And I often find myself asking, “Why does your character act that way/feel that way?”
These two things – how your character feels and why – are at the core of my most used exercises.
1. Understand how your character feels in every moment and put those emotions on the page.
One exercise that helps in this regard is to define your character’s “backstory wound”, something that drives their inability to act appropriately until they learn the story lesson. Your character had a life before they stepped onto page one of your book – make sure you know what that life was like, and what event or events wounded them. Your reader will have a backstory wound; we all have one or more. We attach to characters who are wounded, even when we readers don’t precisely know what that event was. But you, the author, must.
Exercise 1: Create a backstory scene with your character that is their wounding experience. That scene may or may not appear in your book, but you will be able to draw on the emotions it elicits, showing these emotions through gesture, internal monologue, and dialogue throughout the story.
2. Make sure your character’s actions drive the plot.
Every story plot has two arcs: internal, and external. As defined by Debra Dixon in her book GMC, every character has goals, motivations, and conflicts for each of those arcs.
The external arc is usually obvious once you’ve created your story, and your main character must be actively engaged in driving the external arc. In the first half of the story your character makes mistake after mistake, pushing against obstacles. Around the midpoint, your main character may have a revelation, which shows them the way forward, as they learn how to tackle those obstacles correctly. Your reader attaches to both the flaws/mistakes, and then to the successes of the character.
The internal arc is more subtle, and most often is something long present in the character’s subconscious, such as a search for family, the desire to be loved, or the longing to find a dream come true. The internal arc may also rise from the backstory wound. Every action of your character will be to react to this internal desire/dream/longing, and your story will be subject to this internal goal.
Exercise 2: Create a chart, and in simple, one-sentence terms define both the internal and external story arcs, with respect to urgent goals, what motivates the character to act, and what the character is up against (conflict within and without).
These Exercises for Writers are Only the Beginning
These two exercises are only a starting point, but they do help me and my clients create more compelling characters, and my hope is that they’ll guide you forward as well. A good book coach will give you a range of exercises like these, and by crafting rich characters, you’ll write better stories.