Tag: Advice on developing characters

Dig Deeper to Write a Compelling Antagonist for Your Novel

How to write a novel

Just like you have to investigate the history and psyche of your protagonist, you need to dig deeper to create a compelling antagonist for your novel. The biggest mistake I think rookie writers make when writing the antagonist, especially if he’s a villain, is …

He’s mean because he’s mean.

There is no more reason behind the antagonist’s dastardly actions than the writer needs him to do dastardly things. But that kind of shallow writing won’t create a compelling antagonist.

Build the antagonist like the protagonist.

Do you know her likes and dislikes? What personality type does he fit? Understanding your antagonist as well as your protagonist will make him come alive on the page. Below are a few points to keep in mind as you do your digging.

  • Make sure your antagonist is a worthy opponent. In a mystery, the antagonist has to be as clever as the protagonist or the protagonist will solve the mystery on page 10. Sometimes, writers make the protagonist so powerful or accomplished that the antagonist doesn’t stand a chance. Conversely, it’s all right to make an antagonist seem unbeatable. That will make readers root for your protagonist more. Just be sure that you create a believable trajectory for the protagonist to overcome a super-powerful antagonist.
  • If your antagonist is a villain, don’t glamorize the villainy. This can be easy for writers to do if they get carried away with wearing the black hat. You can have fun writing the villain, but within the novel, his evil actions should be treated by the other characters for what they are: evil.
  • If your antagonist is a villain, her backstory should explain, not excuse, her evil actions. Star Wars fans enjoy the prequel trilogy because it gives us the backstory of one of fiction’s greatest villains, Darth Vader. While these movies provide an explanation, they don’t offer the backstory as an excuse for Darth Vader subjecting the galaxy to terror and tyranny.

When I create the villain in one of my mystery novels–the character who has committed a crime and is trying to prevent anyone from discovering it was he or she–I ask myself a few questions:

  • Does the antagonist have a realistic motive to justify the crime? If my antagonist murders a man for stealing his lunch money in first grade, then I don’t have a realistic motive for murder.
  • Is the crime spur of the moment or planned? Certain personalities might commit a serious crime in the heat of the moment. Others definitely would not. I need to understand which camp my villain belongs to.
  • If the crime is planned, would the villain have the resources to do it? Does she have the intelligence to plot a locked room murder? To give herself an alibi? Is she deceptive enough not to give herself away to the police? How far will she go to protect herself from exposure to the authorities?

Here are all my tips and prompts this month on writing characters.

Who are some of your favorite antagonists? If you’ve created an antagonist, what are some problems you encountered while developing this character?

1

Three Tips for Creating an Antagonist for Your Novel

How to write a novel

Creating an antagonist for your novel is as important as creating the protagonist or main character. Would Sherlock Holmes have achieved literary immortality if Sir Arthur Conan Doyle hadn’t created the perfect nemesis in Professor Moriarty, the Napoleon of Crime? Below are three tips for creating an antagonist for your novel.

An antagonist does not have to be a villain.

Yes, you read that right. An antagonist is someone or something that prevents your protagonist for achieving the goal she is working toward in your novel. Let’s say your protagonist is a high school senior who wants to become a cop like her late father. Her mother is dead set against it because her father was killed in the line of duty. So Mom is the antagonist of the daughter without being a villain.

An antagonist does not have to be human.

If your novel is a story about how a family tries to survive on a mountainside when caught in a freak snowstorm while hiking, then nature itself is the antagonist. In a scene from Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea, Captain Nemo and his crew from The Nautilus battle giant squids. In that scene the squids are the antagonists. If your protagonist is battling the oppression or corruption of a political system, then the characters advancing that system are the antagonists but the specific political system itself can be one too. That leads me to my next point …

Your novel can have more than one antagonist.

This concept is often used in mystery novels. A murder has taken place, so the antagonist is the murderer. But he may have a friend who is shielding him from the police. So you have a second antagonist.

My next example is a spoiler, but it’s from a very old novel, so I don’t mind divulging it.

In the novel, Too Many Women from the Nero Wolfe mystery series, a wealthy man commits two murders. He wants to prevent Nero Wolfe and his whip-smart assistant Archie Goodwin from catching him. Standard mystery antagonist. What makes this novel different is that the man’s wife is pretty sure she knows what he’s doing but says nothing because it would interfere with her luxurious lifestyle. To protect herself even further, she manipulates her husband into committing suicide. She’s antagonist #2 and I find her far more repellant than her obsessed husband.

Next week, we’ll dig deeper into creating an antagonist, just like we did when creating the protagonist.

Who are the antagonists that stand out in your experience?

1

Dig Deeper to Write a Compelling Protagonist

How to write a novel

Last week, I gave advice on beginning the creation of the main character or protagonist of your novel, developing their physical appearance, basic personality, and some backstory. This week, I want to dig deeper to write a compelling protagonist, delving into goals, lies and fears. All three elements can be uncovered with one question.

The Power of Asking Why

Sometimes, the genre dictates the goal of your protagonist. I write mysteries for teens. So the goal of my teen sleuth Rae Riley is to solve the mystery. But I have to go deeper with my why questions: why does Rae have to solve this mystery? Since I write a series, her goal can change for each novel. In the short story that started the series, “A Rose from the Ashes”, Rae is looking for the father she’s never known and trying to figure out if he attempted to murder her late mother when she was pregnant with Rae.

She wants to solve this mystery for personal reasons. But why? That might sound silly–everyone wants to know who their father is, but I need to find out why Rae does. Well, she was raised by her mother, who had no family. Now that her mom has died of cancer, Rae is alone. So loneliness and the innate desire for family are driving Rae to uncover a possible killer.

In later stories, the goal is still to solve the mystery but for different reasons. No matter what the reasons, they still have to fit with Rae’s basic character, which is she’s observant, curious, and likes to help people in trouble. Nothing angers a reader more than for a series character to suddenly acquire deep motivations that have never even been hinted at before because the author needed those motivations for this particular novel.

Does Your Protagonist Have to Believe a Lie?

Many tips on developing your protagonist say he must believe a lie, and through the course of the story, learns it is a lie and grows from this new knowledge. This approach works well for protagonists in stand alone novels. But if I have the same series character believe a lie in every novel, she will eventually come across as a nitwit.

Another way to create growth for a character is doubt, which works for both a stand alone and a series characters. In fact, I even put doubt in one of my titles, A Storm of Doubts. In that novel, Rae wrestles with the doubt that Mal, the man her late mother said had to be her father, actually is. Because Rae and Mal thought they didn’t need a DNA test, Rae worries that her con man uncle’s insinuations that he is her father might be true.

I like working with Rae’s doubts rather than her belief in a lie because it gives me more room to explore her experience and keep readers guessing about what will happen next. When a character believes a lie, most readers can pick it out easily and know right away that the story will be about the character learning it is a lie. I want to surprise my readers, and a protagonist with doubts lets me do that.

What is Your Character’s Greatest Fear?

In a stand alone novel, your protagonist’s greatest fear should be the most serious threat he faces as he works toward his goal. The hero of a fantasy novel fears letting down his father the king, once again, and the whole kingdom as well, if he doesn’t recover the item that will rescue it from the forces of evil on his quest.

Keep asking why questions to uncover your protagonist’s greatest fear. In A Storm of Doubts, why does Rae care about her uncle’s hints, especially when she knows he’s a con man? Because she loves Mal and the family that’s accepted her. His hints stoke her greatest fear, losing her dad and her family.

Since I write a series, I can’t invoke this fear in every novel–too repetitive. But Rae has other fears that mix with her doubts and are tied to the mysteries she solves.

What techniques do you use for digging deeper to write a compelling protagonist?

1

Creating the Main Character of Your Novel

How to write a novel

Creating the main character (MC) of your novel is the most critical task you face when starting to write. You have to get him or her right. There are myriad ways to do this. Below are just a few suggestions that might work for you and they are ones I think give you the best chance to create a realistic MC.

Create a main character you want to spend time with

This is so important. A rookie writer will probably take a couple years to finish a novel. Do you want to spend all that time in the company of a MC you don’t really want to be friends with? And if you don’t, how will readers?

In an interview with CBS Sunday morning, author Louise Penny said she based the MC of her mystery series, Inspector Gamache, on her husband because she realized she might be spending a ton of time with this character.

Create a main character based on yourself

Only God, and possibly your mother, knows you better than you do, so basing a character on aspects of yourself will cut down on your research and raise the realism of your MC. Since there’s only one you, drawing from your own history, personality, and beliefs should go a long way toward making your MC unique. That doesn’t mean your MC is simply a reproduction of you. Feel free to add and change elements that are alien to your experience or personality. But if your MC has several things in common with you, that gives you a familiarity and comfort with the character when you start to write.

The MC of YA mystery series is Rae Riley. She’s nineteen going on twenty. She has a similar personality to mine, but not exactly. She’s much braver than I am and doesn’t deal with depression and anxiety. We also have similar interests and beliefs. I’m working on my fourth novel with Rae and she’s a character I love to sit down and work with.

Create main character based on someone you know well

If you’re not comfortable creating a character based on yourself, then let someone you know well inspire you. Again, your MC doesn’t have to be a clone of that person. Just sample a few characteristics so you can build a MC you would like to know.

Once you have the basic ingredients of your MC–physical appearance, core personality, and some backstory–you need to get to know your MC. Your MC is the one character you should understand as well as yourself or your kids. How? There are tons of tips in this area of writing.

  • Interview your MC. Prepare an interview for your MC. It can be like a job interview — “So you want to be the main character of my novel. What are your qualifications?” Or an interview with a therapist. Or pretend you’ve met a few times at work or school and you’ve decided to have coffee to get to know each other better.
  • Take a personality test. Some authors swear by this approach for most of their characters, not just the MC. You can use any personality test that makes sense to you, whether its enneagram or 16 personalities (I’ve take this one).
  • Write a detailed backstory. You write their biography. The fun thing about this approach is you don’t have to write well. No one will see this bio. It’s only to help you get to know your MC. Just write down the facts as they come to you, and you don’t have worry about style or even grammar.

You can also keep your MC in the back of your mind as you go through your day and ask yourself how your MC would react to what’s happening in your life. I like this approach because you can work on getting to know your character in real world situations while still doing your life.

  • What’s her attitude toward grocery shopping? What would she buy?
  • How would she handle that difficult co-worker?
  • How does he spend his time during his lunch break?
  • How does he react to picking up kids at the elementary school?
  • What does she usually fix for dinner?
  • What’s her bedtime routine?

Most of these attitudes and incidents won’t appear in the novel, but they help you see your MC as a real person. And that’s the goal of fiction–to create a world with characters that seem real.

But what about MC’s goals, lies and fears?

Many writers give the advice that you have to understand what your MC’s goal is in the story, what lie she believes at the beginning of the story and how learning it is a lie will change her, and what her greatest fears are. I think this comes after you get to know your MC, and I’ll dive deeper into the MC’s development next week.

What advice to you have for creating the main character for your novel? I love to learn from other writers!

Here are more tips on creating characters.

2

How to Add Humor to Any Story

No matter what genre, if a few characters in a story display a sense of humor, that hooks me as readily as quirky characters or an intriguing plot. Click here for a previous post on the importance of humor.

Inserting humor into a story, especially one with a serious premise, can be difficult. I’ve discovered how to add humor to any story by knowing my characters extremely well and allowing their natures to dictate their sense of humor.

Assigning the Correct Sense of Humor

In my YA mystery A Shadow on the Snow, my main character Rae is quiet, shy person. Most of her funny remarks are in her thoughts. Her uncle Hank is the family joker. He likes to tease relatives to show his affection, especially Rae’s father, his brother-in-law. This kind of humor seems appropriate for a laid-back, extroverted character. Rae’s father, on the other hand, uses sarcastic humor. That fits with his being a cop of fifteen years experience.

Rae jams in a band with two guys. Houston is from Texas. His sense of humor is exaggeration. When Rae asks him how he came to work in Ohio, he answers, “Like any good Texan, I was undone by a woman.” The other guy Chris is very reserve, and Rae finds it difficult to read his facial or body language. He has a very dry sense of humor that Rae only figures out when she sees an ornery glint in his eyes.

As I’m writing a scene, and a joke or humorous observation comes to me, I have to make sure I assign it to the appropriate character. Sometimes, I’ve had to discard something I think is funny because no character in the scene would make that kind of joke or comment. Writers don’t want to break the illusion of reality they create around their fiction. Jamming a joke in the mouth of a character just because I think it’s hilarious will shatter that illusion quicker than just about any other mistake.

My joker, Uncle Hank, can’t suddenly turn sarcastic because I want to dazzle readers with my wit. Or Rae’s father can’t tell a thigh-slapping joke when up until this point in the story he’s only used sarcasm. Readers won’t buy it, or even worse, feel cheated that a character has suddenly swerved from the personality they’ve come to understand.

For more on writing humor and comedy and what’s the difference, check out this very helpful article on “Almost an Author”.

What stories or shows do you think demonstrate how to add humor naturally?

1

Powered by WordPress.com.

Up ↑