Think of your favorite characters, and what universal character types they might stand in for. Why do these characters speak to you? The psychologist Carl Jung delineated personality archetypes on which he wrote extensively. [2] X Research source The Archetypes and the Collective Unconscious, by Carl Jung Literature is often interpreted through this approach, so it will be helpful to be familiar with Jungian archetypes. For example, the “Mother” archetype is positively characterized by sympathy, instinctual wisdom, and nurturing, but can be negatively characterized by secrecy and inescapability. The “Warrior” is a hero marked by courage and strength — someone who engages in head to head conflict and overcomes obstacles through strength of will. Byronic heroes, named after the English Romantic poet Lord Byron, tend to be darkly handsome and intelligent, but cynical and self-destructive. They are often loners, misunderstood and mistreated by society, like Pride and Prejudice’s Mr. Darcy.
Was your character always like this? If not, what made him or her this way? In what contexts does your character act unexpectedly? For example, Jane Eyre’s Edward Rochester was a harsh man who was for some reason still beloved by his staff. Despite his bad reputation, he also looked after a young French orphan for reasons unexplained until the author was ready to reveal more about the character. Blending characteristics from different archetypes can result in unexpected twists that ratchet up the reader’s emotional investment in a dramatic story. For example, if your hero or heroine is normally a “Warrior” who usually overcomes obstacles on their own, the reader will be especially moved when he or she needs to be rescued by a character who is usually a damsel in distress.
Think about who your main characters are before you even sit down to write the story. Flesh out their backstories. In fiction, readers meet the characters at a point in their lives of the author’s choosing, but there’s a whole life that has been led before the story began. Even if you don’t include those details in your story, think about them. Regardless of what point of view you write the actual story from, do writing exercises where you write from the first person point of view of all your main characters. Try to get into their mindsets. This will help your audience empathize and identify with your character. [3] X Expert Source Dan KleinStorytelling Teacher Expert Interview. 22 March 2019. Imagine what the darkest days of your main characters’ lives were, and have them speak from that moment.
Flannery O’Connor’s “Good Country People” is a short story in which both main characters change greatly — Hulga Hopewell because she herself changes, and the Bible salesman because the reader’s perception of him changes. [5] X Research source The reader doesn’t even like Hulga at first because she is too proud and arrogant, and she treats people with condescension. However, the story ends with a moment of revelation in which she comes to the crushing realization of her vulnerability and silliness. Even though we didn’t like her at first, the reader is moved to empathy. The Bible salesman does not actually evolve at all. Though the reader likes him at first because he is polite and kind, his later actions make him repulsive. In this case, his true nature doesn’t change, but is masked and then revealed, causing a change in the reader’s perception. The dramatic intensity of this story is due in large part to the complete reversal of the reader’s attachments to characters: you go from disliking to feeling bad for Hulga, and you go from liking to despising the Bible salesman. A character arc that takes the reader by surprise will work well in a dramatic story.
External-world conflict is a problem external to the main character(s) — something beyond their control. It can be as grand in scale as a war, or as small and domestic as a character’s parents getting divorced. External-personal conflict is a conflict between your characters. Examples might be two characters fighting over a common romantic interest, or two politicians going head-to-head in a political campaign. Internal conflict is a character’s struggle to overcome their greatest personal weakness. For example, a character might have to overcome their fear of commitment to find happiness in a relationship, or overcome their arrogance to succeed in their career. Because the success of your dramatic story relies so heavily on the reader’s engagement with your conflicts, it’s important that you map out your conflicts during the brainstorming process, before you begin drafting.
Your story might have a very clear and explicit goal, such as “to leave behind an impoverished past by getting into an Ivy League college,” or your character’s motivation might be less defined — to cope after the death of a spouse, for example. Flesh out what’s at stake for the character if they fail to achieve that goal. Are the results disastrous and epic in scale for the public, or merely monotonous and quietly depressing for the individual character? Remember that in a big splashy adventure story, epic disaster might be sufficient for emotional stakes. However, in a drama, the story needs intimate, personal emotional stakes. The general public in the world of your story are not nearly as important as the one or two characters you’re asking your reader to care for. Focus on the individual story, goals, and repercussions, not the larger story beyond your main character(s).
The costs might be emotional (unhappiness), physical (your main character is a police officer who gets shot the day before retirement), or circumstantial (your character loses their job because they reported their boss for improper conduct). Don’t let your character’s suffering become boring for the reader. For example, if a character is simply sad because their mother died for an entire story, the reader might turn against them and say “well, do something to try to work through your grief. " However, if the reader sees the character trying and failing to move on from their mother’s death — doing their best, sacrificing, and still suffering in new ways that only freshen and sharpen their grief — then they will suffer along with your character instead of growing distant from them. For example, your character might feel frustrated that they don’t connect with the therapist they started seeing; that the estranged father they reconnected with in the wake of their mother’s death is a brash jerk, or even just quietly disappointing; that their attempt to go out on a date resulted in embarrassing failure; and so on. Each of those attempts to cope brings a new dimension to the character’s emotional journey. The ultimate benefit of a happy ending will be magnified, and a sad ending rendered more devastating, by this accumulation of costs.
In Act 1, you explain who the characters are and reveal their goals. Provide the dramatic premise that will propel your plot, and the “inciting incident” that kicks your plot into gear. [9] X Research source In Act 2, throw obstacles in your main character’s way to prevent them from reaching their goal easily. It might seem at first as though your character will simply easily achieve their goal, before something takes their feet out from under them. After struggling against these obstacles, your character should reach a low point, where they cannot see a way to achieve their goal. In Act 3, your character reaches a turning point marked by the story’s climax. The conflicts you mapped out earlier reach their highest level of tension, bringing the reader to an emotional high point. After a final confrontation/climax, the storyline should resolve itself.
In Flannery O’Connor’s short story “The Life You Save Might Be Your Own,” the main female character is abandoned by her new husband, who only married her so he could steal her car. The story doesn’t end on a happy note, but we’ve learned everything we need to know about the husband to understand him as a human being. Although the ending is sad, we still feel satisfied in having read a complete, fleshed out depiction of a man’s nature.
Don’t worry about grammar and inventive language at this point. Your first draft is just about getting the bones of your story down: who are the characters, and what happens?
It’s the details of life that readers connect to most readily. It’s difficult to imagine grand disasters — the death of a child if you’ve never experienced that, for example — but we can imagine the quiet indignities of life. For example, a character might not cry at a funeral, but dissolve into tears the next day because a customer blamed slow service on her as a waitress instead of realizing it was the kitchen holding up the order.
If the dialogue feels forced, put what you’ve written away and try to imagine you are the character. Imagine what they need to communicate in that moment, then say it aloud in your own words, using your natural speech pattern. While your exposition should be grammatically correct, your dialogue will actually sound strange if it’s grammatically correct. Native speakers almost never speak “correctly” unless they’re delivering a speech or in an important situation like a job interview. Use elements such as contractions, sentence fragments, and interruptions to make your dialogue sound more realistic. Pay special attention to conversations at key dramatic moments, as they tend to get overwritten. When characters are voicing important thoughts, their language sometimes grows too grand and eloquent. Normal people don’t change the way they speak when having important conversations — if anything, they sometimes become less coherent.
Use strong verbs and nouns to pack a greater punch. Note the improvement from “she sat around lazily” to “she lazed. ” Sometimes, you will need to keep adjectives and adverbs to make your writing sound natural, so don’t go overboard with cutting them out. If you find that you’re relying on the adjective or adverb to do the work for you — for example, using “She said, happily” as a dialogue tag, instead of demonstrating the character’s emotion through what she says and how she acts — definitely eliminate those.
Maintain a balance between the acts of your plot. The emotional tension of your language shouldn’t be turned all the way up throughout your entire story; it should be highest during the climax.
Give yourself a few days between rounds of revision so that you can see the story objectively. Save all your drafts, so you can undo changes you’ve made if you decide they don’t work.
