More Tips for Building Character

I am in the midst of designing a new class for Your Plot Thickens Writing Workshops that will touch on how to build stronger characters throughout your novel or screenplay. Some of the tips that I will be teaching in this class are:

1) What is your character’s voice? I advise you begin to speak as that character speaks. You can do this in your head or actually out-loud. I also want to know how she moves, walks, sits or eats dinner? What does she do when she first gets up in the morning? Then, what are her steps for getting ready for bed? A lot of screenplays that are heavily character-driven will even begin by showing what the main character does when they wake up first thing in the morning. Two movies that come to mind right now are Sideways and Stranger Than Fiction. Basically, what are your character's rules for living her life?

2) What is related to what your character's voice is, obviously, is what her dialogue is like? Does she speak the same way to everyone? I assume that she will have a different way of speaking to her parents, than she does with her children, than she does with her significant other. And how does she speak with people out in the world? Is she polite or impolite when she goes to order her morning coffee? Finally, does she have any special catch phrases? Does she use a lot of slang? These will be important issues when writing how your character actually converses.

3) Also, I would like to how your character might create her own obstacles. This is related to her flaw, of course. But does she leave her room really messy, and thus she can't find her car keys, which leads her to be late for work or school each day? Or is she the ultimate neat-freak, and thus she neglects her husband or children because all she ever does is spend the whole day cleaning the house?

Tips for Creating Great Dialogue

Want to learn to create awesome dialogue that will pull readers in and differentiate you from the pack of writers whose characters all sound the same? Here are some tips!

Think about what each of your character's attitudes are: Are they happy? Are they sad? What I mean is are they are a happy or sad person overall? Do they take a gloomy perspective to life or an optimistic one? Do they find barbs in every compliment? Or are they the sort of person who pulls others up out of bad moods?

Think of who your character is and how they approach life. Then fool around with writing some dialogue by creating a situation that this kind of character would be faced with.

For example: a character who thinks the whole world is against him has to ask for help when his car breaks down.

A character who is perenially happy is going to approach this situation differently, as is a person who finds sexual innuendo in everything -- or a person who very much has a victim mentality. What about the person who gets off on gossip. Or that person who always must one-up everyone on everything. You get where I'm going. Think about the attitude with which your character approaches life because this is going to inform the kind of dialogue he or she uses.

Related to this is what your character's background is. Obviously if you are a professor of English you are going to have a different way of speaking than a guy who fixes cars for a living. (Although a great way of creating a deep characters is making your mechanic speak as if he were a college professor.)

Sure, we don't want to stereotype too much. Still, how much education we've had, our social class, etc., does often have an impact on how we speak. And these differences can be subtle. A professor of English at the local community college might speak differently then one from Harvard. The same professor who comes from the South may speak differently than someone from the North.
Again you can brainstorm the different ways that different characters might ask for the same thing. Say, your characters all want a cup of coffee.

The elitist wants a cup of French-pressed Ethiopian roast with no cream.
The coach dad wants a cup of joe.
The New York taxi-cab driver wants a cup of caw-fee.
The Brit wants a cuppa.

You get it. And then does your character say thank you when they get their coffee? Or do they just take it and drink it without saying anything? Or do they even just send it back because they don't like it? All this is what your character can be saying that lets the reader (or audience if this is a screenplay) learn about who your character is without having to use a lot of expository sentences to get across the same idea.

Another great way to distinguish characters is by creating a catch phrase that you character always uses. I learned this in a character improv class, but you can also apply this to your writing. Is there that one thing that the character always (or often says) that can distinguish him from everyone else. This is especially true when writing screenplays. You want a reader to be able to cover up the character names and STILL be able to get an idea of who's talking.