Three Dimensions of Character Gets Personal

I attended the LDStorymakers conference a couple of weeks ago. It was fantastic. Our keynote speaker was Larry Brooks and if you are interested in writing fiction you'll want to check out his site www.storyfix..com. Excellent writing advice.

He talked about the three dimensions of character. I found his take on this fascinating, but even more important, his message about fiction has resonated with me in my real life.

The first dimension of character is how that character presents himself to the world. His habits, mannerisms, physical characteristics, ticks, anything that can be viewed by outsiders. As we people our books with characters we may be tempted to only use this dimension. A dimension that makes our characters feel flat. We focus on physical traits and habits, like biting fingernails, to try to communicate something about our characters. This is one-dimensional and while important in building our characters, we shouldn't stop here or we will fail to create fully-developed, realistic characters.

The second dimension is the reason for those habits, ticks, quirks, etc. What is the backstory? Why does the character always bite her nails when another woman enters the room? Why does the hero start to stutter when he's in front of a crowd? The backstory is what explains the outer characteristics we see in the first dimension.

The third, and most interesting, dimension is who the character is and what he does when under pressure. Is the character the same as he presents himself in the first dimension? If he's established himself as being cool and calm--never getting ruffled--as his public persona, what happens when his child is held at gunpoint? Is he still cool and calm or does he start screaming and yelling like a madman?

What the character does under stress reveals who he really is. And that's what hit me on a personal level. Am I the person I show myself to be when I'm stressed or upset or annoyed? Who am I really? I've thought about his over the last few weeks as situations have come up and I've reacted to those situations. Am I still the kind of person I want to be when put in a bad situation? I'd like to say that I am. But, I'm not. I don't react well to stress or things that are unexpected. I need to work on that and learning about the 3 dimensions of characters has helped me see myself more clearly.

Who says that learning about writing fiction is only helpful in our writing? Sometimes, it can be helpful in our real, day-to-day lives.

Storyfix #1

This is exciting news for Larry Brooks. He will be the keynote speaker for the LDStorymakers Conference May5-7 at the Salt Lake Sheraton. If you haven't yet registered for the conference you can go to http://www.ldstorymakers.com/ to register. It's going to be an amazing conference.

January 9, 2011 - Scottsdale, AZ -- www.storyfix.com, the website created and authored by bestselling novelist and Writers Digest Books author Larry Brooks, has been named the #1 writing blog and website in a major nationwide judging. Hosted by Writetodone.com, this five-year old competition asks for reader nominations to cull a list of 20 finalists, after which four judges (all major blog owners in this niche, and prior winners) announce a Top Ten Blogs For Writers listing, with a hierarchical ranking that factors in content quality, reader response, and the quantity and content of reader nominations (there were over 500 nominations submitted). This year Brooks' Storyfix.com took the #1 spot among the ten finalists.


See the announcement here: http://writetodone.com/2010/12/21/top-10-blogs-for-writers-2011-the-winners/ .

Brooks' blog/site is 18 months old, and placed as a finalist last year while failing to crack the Top 10. After a year of subscriber growth to over 3500 daily readers, and a wide breadth of content with an emphasis on story structure and characterization, the judges found Storyfix sufficiently mature and worthy of the top spot.

Brooks' book, "Story Engineering: Mastering The Six Core Competencies of Successful Writing," comes out from Writers Digest Books in February 2011. His blog will continue with two to three major posts weekly, and Brooks continues to speak at workshops around the country.

Congratulations!

Writing Stuff

I actually finished cutting down my new novel, The Upside of Down, from over 80,000 words to about 74,000. It was brutal, but I think the end result is a much tighter story. I ended up taking out some redundant dialogue and scenes, combining tags with actions, and purging it of some of my "pet" words. I'm hoping it didn't harm the story, but rather made it better.

I still don't have a release date but I'm thinking it'll be springish 2011. I hope it'll be out before the next LDStorymakers Conference in May.

I'm now taking an online class on characterization through WriterU, http://www.writeruniv.com/, with CJ Lyons, a popular novelist. I'm enjoying the class because it also covers plotting. Her method is somewhat similar to Larry Brooks' method over at  http://www.storyfix.com/. I'm going to use this new information to help me plot my next novel.

My next novel, the one that won't leave me alone, is a YA paranormal. Think Twilight meets Supernatural, but without vampires. I'm currently fleshing out ideas using Randy Ingermanson's Snowflake method. Summer doesn't give me a lot of writing time, especially since my daughter decided she wanted to get married and on top of all the planning, I'm sewing bridesmaids' dresses. How cool is that? Not. I'm hoping to have a first draft complete by September.