WHOOO...are you? (How Characters Come to Life)

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by Enisa Haines

I love immersing myself in stories where I'm plunged straight into the midst of action from the first page, where I meet characters that yank at my emotions and, as events unfold, I experience what they experience and feel what they feel.

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Stories like Diana Gabaldon's Outlander. I lived that story as if it was real. When Claire Randall was hurtled back in time to 1743 Scotland, I tumbled with her. When raiding border clans clashed, I fought alongside Jamie Fraser. As Claire fell more and more in love with Jamie, their love story enthralled me.

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Sometimes I'll pick up a book but it doesn't captivate me. I'm drawn by the plot and the setting but the characters fail to pull at my emotions. I don't care about them, about what they say or do. Instead, I'm disappointed and in frustration I stop reading.

That's a reader reaction no author wants.

So how do you hold a reader's interest?

Know your characters. Visualise their external appearances and uncover who they are deep inside. Ascertain what they think, how they think, how they react in different situations. Discover their childhood backgrounds and how they relate to others. Identify their likes and dislikes, their habits and mannerisms, strengths and weaknesses, fears and secrets and goals.

Learn everything about them and then they'll be real. You will identify with them and care for them. And as you write about them, fleshing them out in your stories, they'll pull the readers in and grab at their emotions.



How do we learn about our characters?

Fill out character charts, listing basic details such as appearance, background, education, career, personality and desires.

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Interview your characters, asking a series of in-depth questions that will bring them to life.

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Get inside the minds of your characters. Put yourself completely into them, feeling what they feel, thinking what they think, seeing what they see. By being a character, getting deep into their point of view, you will show them to readers and they will experience everything the character experiences.

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Characters are the living heart of a story. Know them well, inside and out, and you'll pull readers into your stories, making them feel the emotions the characters feel, making them never want to put the books down.

That's the reader reaction authors want.

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How do you get to know your characters? Do you have a favourite technique?


Love to love: discovering all the different types of characters.

Love to laugh: when a character behaves in a way I don't expect.

Love to learn: what makes people who they are.

Jumping In At The Deep (POV) End

with Marilyn Forsyth

A lot has been written about Deep Point of View (DPOV) and I think I’ve read most of it in my efforts to create an emotionally fulfilling story. But there is a difference between reading about it and mastering it in your own writing. If you’ve found yourself at sea in that same boat, read on; I may just have located a bailing bucket.

Basically, DPOV and ‘show, don’t tell’ are different sides of the same coin. By employing the DPOV technique you are showing, not telling, thus eliminating author intrusion and delivering that emotional punch we’re all after. The aim is for the reader to experience everything our point-of-view character sees, feels, hears and smells, as he or she experiences those sensations.

'Good writing is supposed to evoke sensation in the reader - not the fact it is raining, but the feeling of being rained upon.'
E. L. Doctorow

The big question is: How?

I’m a huge fan of Jill Elizabeth Nelson’s Rivet Your Readers with Deep Point of View. It’s a great introduction to DPOV, with tips, examples, and a wealth of exercises to test your new-found understanding of the concept.

However Marcy Kennedy’s Mastering Showing and Telling in Your Fiction (from her 'Busy Writer’s Guides' series) goes that little bit further. Only 52 pages long, it’s jam-packed with practical tips on how to recognise ‘telling’ in your own writing and a guide on how to make the necessary changes (keeping in mind that telling isn’t always wrong). A perfect blend of theory and practice.

Marcy guides you step by step through your work in progress to find where you’ve been telling not showing, using lists of words in different categories (e.g. telling-style dialogue tags, sensory filter words) you should be aware of as indicators of ‘telling’. Genius.

When you purchase the e-book it comes with a password enabling you to print these particular pages. Links to recommended sites are also provided. At around $4.00, it’s a steal.

Do you, like me, experience problems with telling rather than showing? I'd love to know if you've come across any other great books on DPOV or ‘show, don’t tell’. Please feel free to share.

This week I’m:

LOVING my pink giraffe-print onesie. Perfect for cold-weather writing.

LAUGHING out loud at this:

LEARNING more about DPOV.