Category: Characters

How to Create Authentic YA Characters

How to create authentic YA characters

Since you’ve heard a lot from me this month on how to create authentic YA characters, I decided to pull from previous author interviews I’ve done so you can read other author’s opinions.

What do you think are the keys to creating engaging main characters for young adult readers?

Laurie Lucking

Laurie Lucking

I’ve found that young adult readers seem to really engage with a character when they get to deeply experience that character’s perspective throughout the book. Rather than telling a story or giving limited glances into a character’s mind, narratives that allow the reader to live through the action right alongside the main character – practically feeling like they could be that character – are the ones teens just can’t put down. And I’m right there on the edge of my seat with them!

I still have a long way to go toward writing that kind of immersive point of view, but I think a huge key is having an understanding of the human mind and heart and translating it onto the page. Balancing beautiful prose with the way people actually think. Including internal responses in the midst of actions and dialogue. Taking the time to think through what sensory details your specific character would notice in place of generic descriptions. It’s a long, work-intensive process, but it’s amazing how that in-depth experience really draws readers in!

Read her whole interview here.

C. S. Wachter

C.S. Wachter

Round the characters. Flat or stereotyped characters won’t fly. Even secondary characters need to be more than cardboard cutouts. The characters need to be relatable. They need to experience real feelings: boredom, anger, pain, loss, sadness, confusion, pride. They help drive the story forward and keep the plot moving. Though teens are good at wearing masks of confidence, inside, they question themselves. I don’t try to use slang because I would most likely mess up and use it incorrectly, a big problem. I keep try to keep the language simple and not dated.

Read her whole interview here.

Most YA writers aren’t YA. How do you write authentically about characters younger than you are?

Clare Campbell

Clare Campbell

Young people are awesome! I’ve worked with all kinds of teenagers. From the homeless, to the disabled, to the exceptional, and each of them has a magnetic spark. A spark, I believe, we never lose no matter how old we get. Some of us might forget about it, or deem it too immature, or naïve. But, some of us retain that spark and hold it up as the thing that makes us see the world through a lens of hope. Or, the youthful energy that makes us believe we can achieve the impossible even against the odds. That’s all you need to connect with YA audiences.

Read her whole interview here.

Now it’s your turn. What do you think it takes to create authentic YA characters?

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Creating the YA Antagonist

creating the YA antagonist

Last week, I wrote about creating the YA protagonist. Now I flip the equation to discuss creating the YA antagonist. A protagonist is only as compelling as the antagonist he or she has to deal with. Would Sherlock Holmes be as memorable without matching wits with Professor Moriarty? You should invest as much care in developing your antagonist as your protagonist.

General Rules for Antagonists

They Don’t Have to be People.

An antagonist is whoever or whatever prevents the protagonist for reaching her goal. In Hatchet by Gary Paulsen, the main character is up against surviving in the Canadian wilderness with nothing but a hatchet and a windbreaker. In the nonfiction book Dove, Robin Lee Graham, who began sailing around the world at sixteen, must battle the sea and his own thoughts while he’s alone on the ocean. The antagonist for the main character in Challenger Deep is his own schizophrenia.

They Don’t Have to be Villains.

The antagonist doesn’t have to be evil or the bad guy. Just the person who is throwing obstacles in the way of the protagonist. Let’s say the main character is a sixteen-year-old boy who wants to become a cop like his late father, who died in the line of duty. His mother is dead set against his goal and does everything in her power to dissuade him in the name of safety. She’s the antagonist but not a villain.

I think it’s far more challenging to write about an antagonist, who is a good person, but is at odds with the protagonist. I can’t rely on painting my antagonist in pure black. I have to use more nuanced colors. While this can be challenging, and even frustrating, there’s also a greater reward if I succeed, creating two characters who aren’t just the good guy and the bad guy.

Rules for YA Antagonists

Your Antagonist is an Adult.

Don’t fall into the cliches I’ve seen in a lot of teen books in which all the adult characters are either stupid or mean or both. The adult characters in a YA story should be as fleshed out as the teen characters. If the adult antagonist is a villain, I have to supply a better reason for his villainy than “I said so”.

It’s difficult for a teen to contend with an adult because of the vast experience an adult has built up. But don’t level the playing field by making the adult antagonist a dope. First, you want your teen main character to have a worthy adversary. As I said in a teen writing workshop I led over the summer, you don’t want Conan the Barbarian going up against the Easter Bunny. You have to develop a realistic way for your teen to overcome the adult antagonist to make the characters both believable and the story rewarding for the reader.

Your Antagonist is a Teen

If your antagonist is a teen, you may run into the flip side of the problem above. To make the clash between protagonist and antagonist interesting, I may end up with two characters who dress like teens but act like adults. Since I write mysteries, I might have a teen as the culprit. Having been a teen and known teens, I don’t buy the teen villain who hatches his plan like a master criminal. What seems more believable is the teen who commits a crime in a sudden burst of anger and then spends the story trying to stay ahead of the police and the teen protagonist.

What are your thoughts on creating the YA antagonist? Who are your favorites?

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Creating the YA Protagonist

Creating the YA Protagonist

Creating the YA protagonist is the most important part when it comes to writing a YA story. If your protagonist doesn’t appeal to your audience, nothing else in the story will matter. So how do you create a protagonist that teens will want to get to know from page 1 until the end? From my writing and reading, I think the key ingredients are giving the protagonist characteristics that make them likable and relatable as well as vulnerable.

Likable

Your YA protagonist should be someone teen readers want to spend time with. What qualities could your main character possess that would attract teen readers? Reread stories you liked as a teen and take notes. What appealed to you about these teen characters way back when? Was it their sense of humor? Their loyalty to friends? Their bravery? If you don’t remember, read current teen books and make notes about what you like and don’t like about the main characters.

Relatable

When creating the YA protagonist, you have to make him or her relatable, even if your character is a Plutonian with X-ray eyes, or a page to a medieval knight, or was raised on the run by a father, who is wanted by the F.B.I. The main character has to have some qualities that teens share through time and space.

I fell in love with The Outsiders in high school, although the protagonist, Ponyboy Curtis, is fourteen, lives with his two older brothers since their parents died, and has to worry about getting jumped by the rich kids in 1960’s Tulsa, Oklahoma. I had none of those problems and was a teen in the 80’s, but I related to Ponyboy’s anger over class distinction. He also likes to watch a movie so he could live the story with actors. I was becoming a serious movie fan at the time, so I could relate to Ponyboy’s desire.

Vulnerable

Giving your main character certain vulnerabilities goes a long way to making them both likable and relatable. If your protagonist is afraid of driving because of all the responsibilities it entails, that’s a vulernability readers can relate to or sympathize with. If you sympathize with a character, chances are you like her. Also since we all have areas in our life where we’re vulnerable, it makes the character seem human, and therefore, relatable.

Now, a Warning …

Two things that irritate me when I encounter them in protagonist in YA stories are main characters with tons of attitude or wisdom beyond their years.

My objection to the character with attitude is it’s been done. A lot. I understand why. It’s easy and fun to develop a character who is always mouthing off and making snarky comments in his head. I learned this when I wrote an inverse mystery, “Bovine”, from the point of view of a snobbish New York author. But all the nasty observations can be a thin cover for the fact that there isn’t much development of the character.

Of course, your protagonist carries a certain attitude toward life and you have to convey that. Just be sure to flesh out your main character, that he has more going for him than a caustic wit and disrespect for his fellow humans.

When I read about teen characters who move through their lives with more wisdom than Yoda, I’m turned off. A teen can’t know as much as an adult. They haven’t had the time. Now they can be very knowledgeable in certain areas, but when it comes to dealing with people, they should not be masters. Most elderly people are not masters, so it’s silly to create teen characters who have such a deep understanding of other people’s motivations, that they can read them correctly or give advice.

I have to watch this when writing my mysteries with my teen detective. Rae Riley is supposed to be smart. But she’s also nineteen, going on twenty. She will do things wrong simply because of her age, and I have to let her so that readers are convinced she’s nineteen, going on twenty.

For more tips on writing YA, click here.

What advice do you have for creating the YA protagonist? Which books have great YA main characters?

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Couples in Fiction Need Conflict

couples in fiction need conflict

Why do couples in fiction need conflict?

Because if you don’t have conflict, you don’t have much of a story. Let’s say I write a story about an engaged couple and all the mishaps that occur during the week leading up to their wedding, I’ll have the caterer cancel, the best man bow out because he has a terrible case of poison ivy, and the bride’s mother and mother-in-law locked in a passive-aggressive war over how to plan the wedding.

Now if the couple are never in conflict, then when they learn about the caterer, the bride suggests to the groom that they ask all the guests to bring one dish and the reception will be potluck. The groom loves the idea of friends and family helping them out in an emergency. The bride also suggests the groom ask his father to step into the best man role, and the groom agrees because he’s been quarreling with his father and now is the perfect time to bury the hatchet. The groom mediates between the two mothers, and the bride completely supports how he handles the situation.

Do you sense any story at all in that synopsis?

Couples in fiction need conflict for several reasons. First, to make a story. Stories must have a beginning, middle, and end, and those are usually described in terms of introducing the problem, efforts to solve or overcome the problem, and finally reaching a resolution of some kind with the problem.

Second, conflict is life, and if you want your couple to make any connection with your readers, you must add conflict to make the couple seem real. Third, conflict keeps readers reading. If you set up the conflict correctly, then readers will want to know how the couple deals with the conflict and what their ultimate solution is.

So how do you give a fictitious couple conflict?

Conflict in Goals

Giving the man and woman differing goals will create conflict, especially if the goals are mutually exclusive, such as the woman gets her dream job in Miami but that means the man leaves his dream job in Maine.

Conflict in Personalities

Opposites often attract, and a conflict in personalities is even more effective if the personality trait both attracts and frustrates the other person. For more on creating an attractive couple, click here.

Let’s say you’ve created an artistic, disorganized, laid-back woman character who’s fallen for a Type-A man character. She admires his take-charge personality and how well he accomplishes things. But she’s learning he also doesn’t ask her for advice on anything since he’s so sure he knows all the answers. He could admire her mellow attitude but also be frustrated when she doesn’t exhibit drive or ambition.

Conflict in Values

This one is serious in real life. It’s very hard to remain a couple if the members don’t agree on similar values. In fiction, you can reveal this conflict with children. Couples can gloss over different values until they have to apply them to their kids. Using the couple from above, what if Type-A Dad wants his kids signed up for every advanced class and sports opportunity while Mellow Mom wants to give the kids time to explore their own interests at their own pace? Now you have conflict you can work with.

Since couples in fiction need conflict, what kinds of conflict do you recommend? Or what kinds of conflict have you read about that really made the story effective?

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Start a Story with a Character

start a story with a character

I’d say the majority of writers like to start a story with a character, and I’m one of them. Usually a face I’ve seen somewhere takes hold of my imagination and I begin to build a character behind it. Before I list tips on how to start a story with a character, I want to emphasize two dangers when developing characters.

Too Much Backstory and Not Enough Real Story

One problem with creating characters is that a writer will get so caught up in characters charts, personality quizzes, and history that he or she neglects to actually move on to writing a story. Playing with our characters is fun, like playing with our kids. But at some point, playtime is over, and it’s time to do homework.

You probably know some writers who are always in the planning stages of writing a novel, who talk all the time about the fascinating characters they’re developing. But they never graduate to plotting a story.

When you first discover an intriguing character, by all means, have fun. Enjoy the discovery process as the character reveals different aspects of her personality and history. But keep in the back of your mind all this fun is pointless unless you actual settle down to writing a story about this great character.

Take Off the Rose-Colored Glasses

Characters are like our children. We often overlook their flaws and only see their virtues. This can be deadly in a story. If I’m reading a story in which one of the main characters is consistently praised by every other character, I begin to dislike him or her. If you have a likable character, let readers come to that realization on their own. Those kind of discoveries are a joy for readers. You don’t have to prime the reader’s pump by having the other characters constantly point out a main character’s sterling qualities. Yes, friends or family would complement each other, but keep it to a realistic minimum.

One of the things I enjoyed about writing my mystery short story, “Bovine”, was describing my fictional Marlin County, Ohio, in a negative way. The main character is a New York novelist who comes to the county to enact his perfect crime. Not being used to country life, or country people, and being entirely self-absorbed and nasty, he views the area through his snobby perception. He considers all locals “bovine.” Not only was this character a change of pace for me but it helped me see my fictional world in a new way.

Make Your Character Fit Your Genre

If your hero has weathered more trials than Job, he probably won’t work in a rom-com. If he’s a comedian, he might not fit in a gritty police procedural. Once you have a decent grasp on your main character, determine which genre will work best for him.

Road Test Your Character

If you have no idea what kind of plot to drop your character into, write a few scenes as road tests to see how she operates under different conditions.

  • A scene in which she is kind
  • A scene in which she is angry
  • A scene in which she has a victory
  • A scene in which she has a defeat
  • A scene with her best friend
  • A scene with her closest relative
  • A scene with an enemy
  • A scene with a difficult person

After you’ve seen how your character behaves, hopefully, you will start generating ideas for plot in which he can get to work.

For another view on creating characters, click here for a ten-part series on The Write Conversation.

For character prompts, click here.

How do you start a story with a character?

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