From bestselling author and former writing professor Dave Farland:

The script doctor Michael Hague has pointed out that for every successful motion picture, there is a central question that revolves around the protagonist: “Who are you?” After studying this insight for a dozen years, I’m convinced that Michael is right. You can’t write a powerful story of character without it.

In other words, your protagonist often has people around him who define him. Let’s take a romance story. Perhaps your protagonist is young, from the “wrong side of the tracks.” He’s poor white trash. His dad is a convicted felon who strips copper pipes out of houses that are in foreclosure and then sells the copper for recycling. Thus he’ll do a hundred thousand dollars in damage to a home in an effort to steal a few hundred bucks. Our young protagonist rides a motorcycle and has biker friends. He’s been arrested for taking meth. But he wants more out of life. He’s determined to go to college, to make something of himself, and there on his first day he meets the girl of his dreams.

Now, who is he? Is he the brilliant young doctor that he imagines that he could be, or is he the pond scum that past evidence shows him to be? Well, that’s what the story is about.

Imagine that he falls in love with a beautiful young pre-med student. Her father knows all about the boy’s dad. After all, the guy’s face is all over the newspapers. In fact, they’ve had run-ins since high school. The boy’s family are all losers.

So the “story” revolves really around the evidence for what your protagonist is. Is he drug-using biker? Is he from a creepy background? Everyone agrees. In fact, it is best if even your protagonist doesn’t know who he is . . . yet. He’s in motion, trying to move from one definition, “Creepy druggie,” to a higher status, “worthy young doctor.”

. . . .

In fact, at some point, our hero will even need to struggle with self-identity. Maybe he’ll go take some meth. Maybe he’ll hop on his bike, borrow a gun, and consider robbing a Pizza Hut in order to get the money he needs to stay in school. In short, he’ll have a crisis of some sort.

At the same time, we as the audience should also see evidence that this young man has potential. He did great in chemistry in high school (possibly because he was studying so hard, trying to learn how to make meth?). We might see his kindness, his compassion. We may see him studying at night, straddling his motorbike out in the garage while he reads a textbook.

Link to the rest at David Farland

From Dave Farland:

I’ve read dozens of articles and books on characterization, all written by well-meaning people, and personally I found them befuddling. While each had a few good ideas on how to generate characters, most of the authorities found themselves trying to give so much detail about what makes a round character that the writer eventually got stuck down in the weeds, creating detail that could never be used.

That’s a waste of your time and your mental energy.

There are some things that you really do need to know, and the first one is “What is your protagonist’s character arc?”

You see, stories are about character advancement, about the opportunities that come with risk, about growth and learning, and a whole bunch more. One easy way to begin plotting a story is to look at your character and ask, “What is the opening state of my protagonist?” and “How does he change through the course of the story?”

. . . .

Yet if you look at a tale as being about a character moving from one phase of life to another, you can immediately begin to see some of the conflicts you might want to establish, and you’ll get ideas for what needs to happen.

Take the movie Gladiator. In it, our protagonist moves from being “Most trusted general and family man,” to “accused traitor,” “to widower/bereft of family” to “slave” to “gladiator” to “arena champion” to “avenger” to “gaining heavenly reward.” That’s a great character arc.

. . . .

Just about any noun that defines a state will do. How about “Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy”? Or “Rich man, poor man, beggar man, thief?”

Using this method, you can literally suggest an entire plot for a novel or series of novels in a few words. Here is one that I’m working on: Jester, Outlaw, Defender, Wizard.

Link to the rest at David Farland

From Terrible Minds:

5. The Ben Stiller Effect - I don’t want to feel a sense of unending embarrassment for your main character. Watching him, I shouldn’t be constantly wincing, crossing my legs, furrowing my brow. Do not let conflict be driven by the character’s ceaseless stupidity. Endless humiliating self-driven failure ceases to be interesting.

. . . .

7. Muddy Motivation – I need to know what your character wants and why he wants it. That is the bare minimum psychic investment I must possess for your character — motivation is the engine behind a character’s actions, and if I have no idea why the character does what he does, then I’m floundering about on the beach of your fiction like a dying porpoise. You can obfuscate a lot about your main character. But not that.

. . . .

18. Atlas Pooped - A character is more than just his philosophies. We are not the sum total of our beliefs. We have friends and family. Hopes and dreams. Secret plans and bizarre sexual peccadilloes requiring an oil drum full of egg whites and Abe Vigoda in a too-tight wetsuit. If your character fails to possess those things and is just a mouthpiece for his (or worse, your) belief systems, then I will come to your house and beat you about the head, neck and butthole with a copy of Ayn Rand’s Atlas Shrugged.

Link to the rest at Terrible Minds

From author and former writing professor, Dave Farland:

When Stephenie Meyer came to me in 2001 and asked “How can I become the bestselling young adult writer of all time?” I had a conundrum. Historical analysis shows that the bestselling books—like HARRY POTTER—all had male protagonists, and most were set in another world. I told Stephenie that she should write contemporary YA fantasy romance for girls. It bucked most of the trends of the past, but it did so in a way that recognized that there was this HUGE AUDIENCE that neither the book publishing world nor Hollywood even
knew existed.

I also told her to make it a fantasy in a contemporary setting. In short, set it in our world, but create an “other-worldly” feel. I believe that there are a lot of readers out there who want a sense of wonder, but they’re not fully capable of enjoying novels set in other worlds. So I figured that would enlarge her audience.

Last of all, I warned her that it might be hard to sell. In 2001, young adult publishers didn’t have any YA fantasy lines. But I told her that as Harry Potter grew in size, the publishers would realize that they needed such lines.

The big question in my mind was, “Will publishers be able to embrace the idea of a book that is a romance that caters to minors?” If I tried to write such a book as a male author, I doubt that it would have seen the light of day.

So Stephenie wrote the novel, sold it big, and it became a monster hit.

In the same way, the Hunger Games movie is going to make this series huge. It combines all of the right elements in just such a way that it plays upon the burgeoning market for adventure/romances with female protagonists.

Link to the rest with lots of discussions about how Hollywood thinks about audiences at David Farland’s Daily Kick

From BookRiot:

Jane Eyre and Rhett Butler- Jane has the morality and goodness that Rhett always praised in Melanie. She also has the sass and ferocity of Scarlett, but without the self-centered cattiness. And we all know how much Jane loves a dark, unconventional man with high social standing.

Jo March and Atticus Finch- Jo loves a learned older man, and what literary character would make a better mother to the tomboyish and rebellious Scout?

. . . .

Don Quixote and Miss Marple- Miss Marple would show Señor Quixote enough adventure to keep him occupied without having to leave the neighborhood and possibly break a hip. Sancho Panza could be their gardener.

Link to the rest at BookRiot

Circa 1833-1842

Via brainpickings

Remember, PG doesn’t necessarily agree with everything he posts here.

From BookRiot:

Anton Chigurh | No Country for Old Men by Cormac McCarthy (2005)

Part Grim Reaper, part Rick from Casablanca, Chigurh is as suave as he is satanic. Nihilism never sounded so good.

. . . .

Daisy Goodwill Stone  | The Stone Diaries (1995) by Carol Shields

I honestly don’t know if I’ve ever read a more fully-realized character. Shields doesn’t portray Daisy so much as summon her. And even though pretty much nothing happens (this is a story about being ordinary), it’s a riveting work. Case in point: I got damn near misty when Daisy, in her signal life-triumph, gets a gardening column in her local newspaper. A gardening column. And yet I hadn’t emoted this much since Vader killed Obi-wan. Simply a stunning display from Shields.

. . . .

Lisbeth Salander | The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo (2006) by Stieg Larsson

Computer-hacker. Independently wealthy. Semi-pro level boxer. Photographic memory. Savant-like math skills. And one royally screwed up childhood. Salander is what would happen if the girl from The Lovely Bones survived and was heir to Wayne Enterprises.

Link to the rest at BookRiot

Almost one month ago, Passive Guy announced he would be writing a book that analyzed Amazon’s Kindle Direct Publishing contract.

It’s still happening.

He also announced this book would be available on November 1.

That would be tomorrow.

It won’t happen then.

The reasons are two-fold:

1. PG has been very busy working for his legal clients. His client base has grown quite rapidly. This is a good thing.

However, PG has obligations to his clients that he can’t ethically put on hold while he finishes his book.

2. PG has gained much more information about Amazon’s contract than he expected to gain. He can’t say more about that, but this is also very good because this means his book will be better.

However, it will take a bit longer to write.

PG is not sluffing off on this project. As evidence, he presents part of one the pages covered with what passes for a visual representation of PG’s analytical process.

This is how you find out everything about a contract. Well, maybe not you, but this is what PG does. PG has many, many pages like this.

“But wait,” you say, “the Kindle Direct Publishing Terms and Conditions are not all that long.” You would be right.

However, if you thought the Kindle Direct Publishing Terms and Conditions constituted an indie author’s entire contract with Amazon, you would be wrong. There is more.

To allay mounting hysteria among those conscientious souls who read the KDP Terms and Conditions and thought they knew everything, allow PG to say Amazon doesn’t have monsters in its basement. PG hasn’t finished his analysis, of course, but he has looked at enough contracts to be confident he would smell the monsters at this stage of his analysis if they were hanging around.

However, the longer a contract that includes cross-references and defined terms is, the more complex it becomes and complexity does not increase geometrically. A 20-page contract is usually far more than twice as complex as a 10-page contract.

One of the things a good attorney needs to do is to understand where all the moving parts of a contract are, then run through multiple scenarios under which various parts move in different directions and in different amounts. If there are 100 distinctive possibilities and an attorney only understands 99, as sure as the sun will come up tomorrow, possibility #100 will happen.

PG apologizes for not having his magnum opus Amazonius ready so you can give it to your grandmother for her birthday on November 2. He suggests 99 Little Doilies as a possible alternative.

PG is not going to reveal a new release date, but he is embarrassed enough about missing this one that the book will get finished in a hurry.

English teacher Brian McKenzie knows the problems when he sees them (but he doesn’t say how he knows):

1. If something would be boring and/or undramatic for a male character, it would probably be boring and/or undramatic for a female character. If you’re writing a female character (particularly in a major role), I’d recommend thinking about whether you’d want to read about a male character in that situation or with that trait. If not, then you’re probably boring your readers.

2. The character is useless. Have you made a main character more or less helpless for most of the story? Does she watch as the story happens around her? Does she get repeatedly saved by other characters when the going gets rough? Please think back to #1. You’d probably be bored reading about a more or less helpless guy, right? So why will your readers be any less bored by a helpless female?

. . . .

5. Please assume that your readers will be able to tell if you have not read many female main characters written by female authors. If you don’t have the firsthand experience of actually being a female, being well-read is probably the closest you’ll get to seeing the subtle distinctions between most women and most men in terms of perspective, dialogue and actions. Here are two trends that help me pick out male characters written by female authors.
The male character is hyper-introspective and collected (even in a crisis), but the author doesn’t realize that’s unusual. I’ve read quite a few supposedly ordinary guys (particularly high school students) that actually sound like philosophy professors.
The male character notices far too many irrelevant details, such as eye color. Generally, I think guys would only notice eye color if they’re romantically interested or if there’s some other reason the detail matters. (For example, a cop might examine a driver’s eyes to see if he’s drunk).

I’m practically certain that female readers and editors have identified similar giveaways. (If you know of any, please let me know in the comments!)

Link to the rest at Superhero Nation with thanks to the always-helpful Elizabeth Spann Craig

From an essay by a young woman who goes by a pen name:

“Not-writing is a good deal worse than writing.”— Flannery O’Connor

“She would of been a good woman,” The Misfit said, “if it had been somebody there to shoot her every minute of her life.” – from “A Good Man Is Hard To Find”.

. . . .

In high school AP English sometime between Ralph Waldo Emerson and e.e. cummings, we read Flannery O’Connor’s short story “A Good Man Is Hard to Find”. Her work was unfamiliar to me, but apart from all the major literary works we read in that stifled classroom, her short story was the air I needed to get through high school and impacted me the most of all my high school English reading combined.

. . . .

Many days after school and summers reading were spent soaking in every word, holding onto every story and character, hoping other people’s greatness in storytelling will somehow rub off on me. For years this was my life, but I still felt like I was missing something:

An author I genuinely looked up to.

. . . .

“A Good Man Is Hard To Find” was dark and funny (only to me, I would later find out) when I read it the night before it was due in class. A middle class family along with the husband’s mother set out on a road trip that ends far from their intended destination when they have a car accident in the middle of nowhere and are confronted with escaped convicts led by a man the newspapers called “The Misfit.”

Without spoiling the whole story—although the presence of escaped convicts may already hint at an unhappy ending—I’ve never seen an author be so ruthless with her characters, so deceitful to her reader. I felt helpless, I felt cheated even. “How could she?” and “Where did that come from?” were questions that racked my brain that night when I came to the story’s end. No amount of journal writing before bed could get me to sleep. No author’s work had ever perplexed me like that and it’s unlikely any other author I encounter during my lifetime ever will . . . .

. . . .

“Sitting at the back of the room, silent, Flannery was more of a presence than the exuberant talkers who serenade every writing class with their loudness. The only communicating gesture she would make was an occasional amused and shy smile at something absurd. The dreary chair she sat in glowed.” —Paul Engle, Flannery O’Connor’s teacher at the University of Iowa’s Writers’ Workshop.

For one week in high school, all I read was Flannery O’Connor’s Complete Short Stories and found in that book a kinship with the author. I really connected with Flannery O’Connor because I always felt like a misfit with a different sense of humor. High school for me was a prestigious private Catholic all-girls school. It’s a privileged kind of torture that only a certain few female adolescents can endure and still graduate with their wits about them. At least there’d be college; I’ll find my place in college. I was ostracized, and I was bullied. I’ve spent my lunch hour in the library sneaking bites of my sandwich when the librarian wasn’t looking because it was the safest place to hide. I didn’t belong there until I found Flannery O’Connor.

. . . .

And it felt selfish, and it felt good to finally have the female writer I could aspire to. The spot had been filled; no others need apply.

Link to the rest at A Writer’s Ruminations