Dwight V. Swain - Creating Characters: How to Build Story People

CREATING CHARACTERS: How to Build Story People

Dwight V. Swain has focused his life on writing. Growing up in Michigan, he was selling long before he was graduated from that states university. He went on to newspaper work, magazine staff jobs, pulp fiction (more than fifty magazine novels science fiction, fantasy, mystery, western, adventure), informational film (on topics ranging from raising bobwhite quail and acidizing oil wells to mental health and promotional pictures), and chasing guerrillas through all seven countries of Central America as a foreign correspondent.

On the side, Swain worked crops as a transient laborer, scrubbed decks on Great Lakes freighters, peddled razor blade hones on street corners, served in the U.S. Army in World War II, and edited labor papers. A traveler in many countries, he lived five years in Mexico. He taught in the University of Oklahomas Professional Writing Program for more than twenty years, coaching hundreds of students to publication. Now Professor Emeritus, he has been honored with the Governors Arts in Education Award. His books include Techniques of the Selling Writer, Film Script-writing: A Practical Manual, and Scripting for Video and Audiovisual Media. He lives in Norman, Oklahoma with his wife, Joye, an interpreter and travel writer.

CREATING CHARACTERS: Hew to Build Story People

Dwight V. Swain

Writer's

Digest

Books

Cincinnati, Ohio

Creating Characters: How to Build Story People. Copyright 1990 by Dwight V. Swain. Printed and bound in the United States of America. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means including information storage and retrieval systems without permission in writing from the publisher, except by a reviewer, who may quote brief passages in a review. Published by Writers Digest Books, an imprint of F&W Publications, Inc., 1507 Dana Avenue, Cincinnati, Ohio 45207. First edition.

94 93 92 91 90 5 4 3 2 1

Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data

Swain, Dwight V.

Creating characters : how to build story people / Dwight V. Swain p. cm.

1st ed.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN 0-89879-417-X

1. FictionTechnique. 2. Characters and characteristics.

I. Tide.

PN3383.C4S9 1990

808.3dc20

90-39640

CIP

Edited by Nan Dibble Designed by Carol Buchanan

For Phyllis A. Whitney... fine writer and good friend

Preface

ONE/THE CORE OF CHARACTER 1

Whats the one key element any major character must have?

The ability to care.

TWO/SEARCHING OUT YOUR CHARACTERS 5

How do you find the right character?

You scan the applicants until you locate one who turns you on and fits the part.

THREE/LABELS, LABELS 15

Why do you label a character?

Your reader needs some clue or two to help him recognize each of your story people.

FOUR/FLESHING OUT 21

How do you make a character real?

You provide him or her with appropriate tags, traits, and relationships.

FIVE/THE WORLD WITHIN: 1 38

How do you motivate a character?

You devise something that he or she must change in order to win happiness.

SIX/THE WORLD WITHIN: 39

How do you keep a character moving?

You point that character towards his or her private future.

SEVEN/THE BREATH OF LIFE 53

How do you bring a character to life?

You make the character reveal emotion.

EIGHT/BENT TWIGS 61

How much background should you give a character?

Only enough to make your readerand youbelieve in him.

NINE/WILD CARDS 76

What goes into building an offbeat character?

The same elements that you use in creating any story person only more so.

TEN/THE ROLE OF ROLES 88

How do you treat a hero?

You shape the hero to fit the job he or she has to do.

ELEVEN/THE LIGHT TOUCH 108

How do you make a character amusing?

You replace reader assumptions with offbeat alternatives.

TWELVE/THE RIGHT WORDS 128

How do you describe a character effectively?

You build the character with significant specifics that lead readers to feel the way you want them to feel.

THIRTEEN/THE THINGS THEY SAY 137

How do you write good dialogue?

You pay as much attention to feelings as to words.

FOURTEEN/VARIATIONS ON A THEME 146

How do you treat characters in the various lengths, media, and genres? You design your people to fit your market.

FIFTEEN/THE CHARACTER OUT OF TIME 157

How do you get people to read about characters in unfamiliar worlds? You provide emotional insight into the world and individuals involved.

SIXTEEN/THE DYNAMICS OF DISBELIEF 169

How do you cope when readers dont believe in your characters and stories?

You plug the gaps where belief leaks out.

SEVENTEEN/THE SEARCH FOR ZEST 182

How do you maintain your cutting edge as a writer?

You draw on the stimulus of story people.

Appendix: For Further Reading 187

Index 189

Fiction grows from story people.

This book is designed to help you bring such people into being. From it youll learn barn-brush characterization. Subdety youll have to master on your own.

(Remember what Somerset Maugham said about that? I was surprised when a friend of mine told me he was going over a story he had just finished to put more subdety into it; I didnt think it my business to suggest that you couldnt be subtle by taking thought. Subdety is a quality of the mind, and if you have it you show it because you cant help it.)

Why will you learn barn-brush characterization? Because I learned my basics in the action pulps, thats why. Anything else is after the feet.

Beyond that, barn-brush handling is what you need to start. It focuses you on the basics and its easy for both reader and writer to understand.

Not that youll stop there, please note. Indeed, you cant stop, because with every story you write your mind will automatically reach out, groping for better, more effective ways to draw your people. As you find them, make them part of your private kit of literary toolsyour skill will increase and your work will improve in keeping with your taste and the direction of your aspirations.

So, here well start with the broad strokes of a barn brush, and dont be disdainful of the techniques this approach offers. It works, believe me. Indeed, if youre of an analytic turn of mind, youll soon discover that, each in his or her own way, the men and women who created the worlds classics used the same devices presented here.

How should you use this book? A good way to start, it seems to me, is a quick scan. That will give you an idea of your present skill, and where youre strong and weak. Then you can decide for yourself whats old and whats newto you, that isand where you need to dig in and bear down.

I do not suggest that you work by the numbers, as it were. Thats a sure way to make writing a drudgery, and writings hard enough without that. Rather, fly by the seat of your pants, setting

down characters as they surface in your story. Then, go back and troubleshoot the product, reworking to improve any of your people whom you feel might benefit.

The key word above, please note, is improve. Anyone can create a character. What I offer here are merely some time-tried devices by which to make such pseudo-beings better. Sometimes. Because even the best of devices wont always work. At its heart, ever and always, writing remainsto a greater degree than we like to admita trial and error process. So as you work and study to acquire skill, never forget to pray a little too, for in the clinch we all need to have Lady Luck riding high upon our shoulders.

Its the custom in a book like this for the author to acknowledge the help hes received from others along the way.