Tag Archives: Creating Characters

Tell Strong Stories – How to Write a Great Main Character

Storytelling, ,

Tell strong stories. That’s what every writer longs to do. What are strong stories anyway? To conquer an audience and make it your own you must tell a story that moves them. A story that moves them emotionally. Emotional Power is the impact your story must have.

The key to an emotionally moving storytelling is Character. The success of your story hangs on the strength of the main character you create and the way you employ that character as a storyteller. If your goal is to Tell Strong Stories your main character must move the narrative forward emotionally.

Why is your main character so important? Because your protagonist’s story is what connects you with the reader. You draw the reader in and make her care. That’s how you hook a reader. Mastering the art of the narrative hook is essential to writing a successful story.

You set that hook by creating a story in which the reader cannot help but become emotionally involved. First and foremost you do this by creating a character with whom the reader cannot help but become emotionally involved.

Which means that the reader must care about what happens to your character. The reader must begin to behave as if the Protagonist of your story were a real-life person they know personally. Your character’s defeats are the reader’s defeats. Your character’s triumphs are the reader’s triumphs.

When you make your readers feel this connection you have them hooked. And they will stay hooked from beginning to end.

[For example, I was hooked by both Rick and Ilsa in the film Casablanca and wanted both of them to triumph. The conclusion turned out to be more complicated than that, which hooked me deeper still. Those screenwriters knew how to Tell Strong Stories.]

Here’s how to begin creating characters as real as Rick and Ilsa.

#1. First, the character must hook you. You as author must be as emotionally involved with your character as you want the reader to be.

#2. Which requires that you as author must know your character intimately. You must know your characters – especially your main character heroine or hero – from the Inside Out. Which means you must understand as deeply as you possibly can what it’s like to be your protagonist.

Why do you need to know so much about your protagonist? In practical terms, you must know enough to keep your readers reading. You need to know a lot about a character to make her sufficiently complex to carry the weight of your story from the beginning to the end of a book.

You must know enough about this character to bring him to life on the page and make the reader care about him.

[For example, Charles Dickens brought Ebenezer Scrooge to life on the page in A Christmas Carol, and made us care what happened to him as well. Dickens knew Scrooge from the Inside Out.]

Here’s an exercise for getting to know your character from the Inside Out. Project yourself into your main character. Become your main character in your imagination. Then ask yourself the following five questions about that character.

#1. What does my main character want in this story? Is this desire significant enough to make a reader also want this thing for my character? Is this desire significant enough to make a reader want it for my character all the way through the length of an entire book? Or at some point does this desire pale into “Who cares?” territory for the reader?

#2. How much does my main character want this thing? Is this the most crucial need my character has ever experienced? Have I effectively communicated my character’s sense of urgency? How in specific scenes, action and dialogue can I turn up the story heat on the intensity of my main character’s desire?

#3. Why does my main character want this thing? Are her reasons – her motivations – admirable? Are these motivations logical in this story situation? Are her motivations believable to the extent that a reader will accept them as legitimate enough to motivate an intelligent, independent protagonist throughout the entire length of my story? Will a reader not only believe these motives but also adopt them on behalf of my character and root for her to achieve her desires?

#4. What does my main character not want? Is my character running away from something? If so, what is it and why is he on the run from it? Is my character avoiding something? If so, what is he avoiding and why? What is my character afraid of? Why is my character afraid of this thing?

[Here’s another way to Tell Strong Stories in terms of drama, intensity and power. Make sure every character fears something. Especially your main character. For example, what does Scarlett O’Hara fear in Margaret Mitchell’s Gone with the Wind?]

#5. What’s at stake for my main character in this story situation? What will happen if she fails to achieve what she wants or needs? Are those consequences dreadful enough to make a reader dread them as well? Who in my story besides my main character could also be adversely affected? How in specific scenes, action and dialogue can I intensify these stakes by making the potential consequences more devastating, pervasive and far-reaching? In order to Tell Strong Stories you must raise the stakes as high as your story will allow.

Brainstorm every possible response to each of these questions. Always push yourself beyond the first, most obvious possibility toward less expected, more original ones. The farther reaches of our imaginations are the place from which we Tell Strong Stories.

Alice Orr – https://www.aliceorrbooks.com

– R|R –

Amanda Miller Bryce is the main character of the strong story that is Alice’s new novel A Time of Fear & Loving – Riverton Road Romantic Suspense Book 5. Meet Amanda HERE. You can find all of Alice’s books HERE.

What readers are saying about A Time of Fear & Loving. “I never want an Alice Orr book to end.” “Alice Orr is the queen of ramped-up stakes and page-turning suspense.” “Warning. Don’t read before bed. You won’t want to sleep.” “The tension in this novel is through the roof.”
“A budding romance that sizzles in the background until it ignites with passion.”
“The best one yet, Alice!”

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Scrooged Stories Redeem Our Writing

Storytelling, ,

Scrooged Stories are the writer’s ideal holiday gift, because they come with Scrooged storytelling and the Bountiful Writing that can result from opening this particular package all the way into your creative heart.

The result for Charles Dickens was his fabulous and fabled A Christmas Carol which has turned out to be one of the best known and most popular stories in the English language.

You can wrap some of that and gift it to me anytime, and I don’t believe I know a single writer, or reader either, who wouldn’t feel the same. Scrooged Stories are pay dirt and pop chart dirt too. So, what can Charles and Ebenezer teach us about how to get a dusting of that magic on our own storytelling shoes?

I imagine most of us are familiar with the narrative theme, “How the Mighty Have Fallen.” Some of us, including me, have even written those stories. A Christmas Carol, the ultimate among Scrooged Stories, moves beyond the downfall scenario to “How the Mighty Have Fallen Then Been Dragged Back Up Again.” In other words, Scrooged Stories are about Redemption. The best Scrooged Stories are about Dramatic Redemption. Dramatic, because of the depth of the depravity pit into which the central character has plunged himself, usually before we encounter him. Scrooged Stories are, after all, mainly about the Scrooge.

Our prototype, Ebenezer’s personal human depravity has to do with compassion. He doesn’t have any, not any we can readily discern from his perpetually scowling face and stingy, heartless behavior. Worse still, he is pleased to be exactly what he is and regards the caring world as, in a word, a humbug. Redeeming this dude won’t be easy. But then, that’s what makes Scrooged Stories so reader appealing. The more irredeemable the character is, the more dramatic the story will be. And drama, along with power and intensity, is the wellspring of that pop chart pay dirt I mentioned.

Thus, Ebenezer is the poster boy for those of us who would like to produce Scrooged Stories of our own. He is a deep-down mean, unrepentant character who disdains charity and scoffs at charitable folk, betrays his beloved sister’s wishes by disowning her only son, and all but freezes poor Bob Cratchett out of his threadbare office. Such an extreme character portrayal demands an extreme plot, and well-crafted Scrooged Stories do not disappoint.

Dickens thickens his extreme plot with a ghost. Not a happy, harmless Casper, but a chain-clanking, shrieking, ominous and terrifying horror named Marley, who is dead set (pun intended) upon rattling Ebenezer out of his complacency , into awareness of the doom he inevitable faces, if he doesn’t change his ways.

Thus, the quintessential exemplar of Scrooge Stories presents us, and Ebenezer, with his story goal. He must change. Which is also his story problem, or internal conflict, if you prefer. He does not want to change. He is absolutely committed to his bad old self. Dickens will have to dredge up some mega-dramatic means to so much as capture Ebenezer’s attention, much less motivate him toward metamorphosis.

At which point, my particular favorite of Scrooged Stories gives us more ghosts because, besides being a Redemption Story, A Christmas Carol is a ghost story too. Our heartless (supposedly) hero (sort of) is forced to experience and, even more soul-quaking, to witness what these phantasms have to show him about himself. His past retreat from human feeling. His present cold, solitary, disconnected state and how it affects others. The dark, dire future consequences that await him if he fails to change.

Meanwhile, this Father Christmas of Scrooged Stories, rackets us, and its host of readers, relentlessly forward through Ebenezer’s tumultuous adventures at whirlwind pace, all the way to the most foreboding possibility possible. The grave. We are set up big time for the payoff and the pay dirt. The Redemption of Ebenezer Scrooge.

Once again, Scrooged Stories don’t let us down. We are showered with a bounty of glorious gifts, the most bounteous of which may be the key insight into what make this story as popular as it is. The dramatic contrast of its final act from its initial one. Joy, giddiness, laughter so unrepressed we might think it would break Ebenezer’s stony face. And it does. Which brings us to the most satisfying payoff of all. Magnanimous deeds. Ebenezer scatters goodness, light, and even life in every direction.

Because Scrooged Stories are, at their essence and at their endings, all about satisfaction. A wild, careening ride from the depth of depraved darkness to the light of salvation. The satisfaction of the main character’s life versus death problem. Satisfaction of his hard-won goal. Satisfaction of the author’s goal as well, in the form of many satisfied readers.

Scrooged Stories are the gift Charles Dickens gives us, at the holidays and throughout the year. Each story element brightly wrapped and ready to be transformed by way of your unique imagination into your own Tale of Redemption. Your own addition to the ever-popular pantheon of Scrooged Stories. To which I say, “God Bless Us Every One.”
Alice Orr – https://www.aliceorrbooks.com.

– R|R –

A Time of Fear & LovingAlice’s new novel, including a Scrooge of her own, is A Time of Fear & Loving – Riverton Road Romantic Suspense Book 5. Available HERE. You can find all of Alice’s books HERE.

What readers are saying about A Time of Fear & Loving. “Alice Orr is the queen of ramped-up stakes and page-turning suspense.”
“Warning. Don’t read before bed. You won’t want to sleep.”
“The tension in this novel was through the roof.”
“A budding romance that sizzles in the background until it ignites with passion.”
“I never want an Alice Orr book to end.”
“The best one yet, Alice!”

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http://twitter.com/AliceOrrBooks/
http://goodreads.com/aliceorr/
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TAGS – Character Development, Plotting, Dramatic Storytelling

 

 

Ginny Gives Us the Skinny – Riverton Road Monday

Great Read, Kindle Bargain, Storytelling, ,

Interview with Ginny Simmons at Ginny’s Coffee Corner in Riverton NY

Go Confidently Mug on DeskCurious Questioner: Excuse me, Ginny. I understand you own this place. Could we possibly sit down for a minute and talk?

Ginny Simmons: We can talk, honey. But I hardly ever sit down. Why don’t you just try to keep up while I take care of my paying customers?

CQ (Hurrying after Ginny between pink and white booths as she refills mugs from the carafe in her hand.): What’s it like to be a woman running a business in a town like Riverton?

GS: Good morning darlin. (Ginny bends over a table while the man she’s greeted with a smile and a wink stares as if in a trance at her ample cleavage.)You just let me know if there’s anything else you need.

CQ (Still shadowing Ginny as she leaves that table and steps back to survey the room with booths along one side and a counter along the other.): Do you always flirt with your customers like that?

GS: Honey, you asked me what it’s like to be a woman doing business in this town. My business is hospitality and most of the people who come in here in the morning are men on their way to a long day of working hard. My job is to put a little lift in their step and a big smile on their faces.

CQ: And they know there’s nothing more to it than that?

GS (Turning with a hand on her hip toward CQ): Well, honey. If they don’t, they aren’t old enough or smart enough to be drinking anything with caffeine in it.

CQ: I’ve heard you know a man named Gus Kalli. Is he old enough and smart enough?

GS (Starts to walk away then doesn’t.) Gus Kalli is more than enough of just about everything. But most of all he’s more than enough of a man to take care of his family. Those four handsome hunks of son he has couldn’t have a better father than Gus. He’s been known to take in strays too, kids and even adults who need the kind of family that gives a hoot what happens to you. His wife Angela’s a good sort too. If she wasn’t, I might take a run at Gus myself. But she is, so I won’t. You can quote me on that.

CQ: It’s my understanding that the Kalli’s have been in the middle of serious trouble more than once. The kind of trouble that has go do with murder. What do you think about that?

GS: Well there, honey. It seems to me you shouldn’t talk about understanding much of anything if you don’t know life’s got trouble in it for everybody, here in Riverton and everyplace else in this world. You’ve just got to have what it takes to stand up on your hind legs and take care of business. The way the Kalli’s always do and the way I’m going to do right now.

GS flashes a smile and a wink before leaving CQ behind and moving on to the two gentlemen in the next booth): Good morning sweethearts. What can I do for you today?

RR

 A YEAR OF SUMMER SHADOWS – Riverton Road Romantic Suspense Series Book #2 is available at http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00ZBOTH5O, This is Alice’s 13th novel. Stop on over for a cuppa at Ginny’s Coffee Corner and a good read too. Alice Orr – www.aliceorrbooks.com.

Win a mug like the one in the picture above by sending an email to aliceorrbooks@gmail.com that says “I want to have a cuppa with Alice.”