Creating

characters
and action
Creative Writing
September 24, 2014

Narrators
Following the principle of Show Dont Tell
makes the narrator of a creative piece
someone we want to listen to.
Creative authors use fresh perspectives on
the page to invite a readers participation in
their writing, making the human voices of
their pieces vivid and interesting to read.
Good narrators are people we want to
spend time with, because of their power to
show us new perspectives on the panorama
of life.

Characters
The other human presence on the
creative page are, of course,
characters.
From great romantic heroines to
chilling serial killers, from life writing to
narrative poetry, three-dimensional
characters make creative pieces vivid,
moving, and meaningful.

Practice 1
Characterization and Character
Development
Choose a favorite character from a
book youve enjoyed. How does this
character seem to the world when they
first appear in the book? List five
things about how they come across
when you first meet them on the page.

Practice 2
Now use hindsight. What are the
hidden depths that make the character
so engaging to follow? Again, list five
qualities if you can.

Building Characters
Authors build characters so that a
narratives events can develop them,
revealing new facets and hidden
depths, which is what makes our
favorite characters so memorable.

Coming Alive on the

page
A creative author breathes life into
characters. Characters who dont come
to life on the page make reading difficult.
New authors are encouraged to write
what you know and that can mean write
about people you know. (characteristics)
Use the principle of Show Dont Tell with
your characters as well. This will give
your characters dimension and depth.

Practice 3
List five qualities you possess.
Focus on those that dont get a lot of
recognition.

Practice 4
Think of a character from your own
writing, and how youve imagined them
so far. Does your character have any
of the qualities you listed for yourself?
If you wanted to show your reader that
this character has the qualities you
listed, how would you do it?
Try sketching at least a couple of ways
for each of your five qualities.

Qualities
I hope you found that working with qualities
you possess yourself was a help in
practicing. Abstract qualities can
sometimes be hard to translate into
meaningful action, but you know from
experience how the qualities you listed
sometimes find expression in everyday life.
Tracing believably human interconnections
between surface and depth, in response to
the events of a narrative, is the key to
successful character creation.

Characterization and
Deep Character
Characters that live and breathe on the
page are fluid.
Whether were writing biography,
fiction, drama or poetry, were not
writing about static people definable
only by their status, possessions and
quirky hobbies, but about individuals
undergoing meaningful change.

Characterization and
Deep Character

The central character of Thomas Hardys

poem The Darkling Thrush, like that of
Robert Frosts Stopping by Woods on a
Snowy Evening, moves from isolation and
fatalistic despair at the start of the poem
to reconnecting with the world at its end.
The heroine of I Know Why the Caged Bird
Sings moves from being a little girl
stuttering over her lines in church, to
spending years as a shell-shocked child
rape victim, to becoming a woman
rebuilding her connection to life.

Character
Development
Characters in creative writing move from
opening positions their characterization,
their place in life at the start of the piece
to closing positions that resolve and make
meaningful whats gone before.
We call this process character development.
When there is a coherent progression of
character development, in response to the
events of a creative piece, we call the map
of the progression a character arc.

Character
Development and
Character
Arcs
The heroine of The Bell Jar is living
the dream at the start of Sylvia
Plaths remarkable piece of life writing.
Shes won a glittering summer
interning at a top magazine in New
York, all expenses paid, and with a
first-class ticket to the A-list life that is
hers for the taking.

The Bell Jar

By the end of the book, shes living in
a mental hospital, with terrible
experiences behind her, yet is
receiving helpful treatment at last and
is responding. The heroine arcs from
success thats tainted by mental
illness, to failure (in material terms)
bolstered by self-understanding.

The Darkling
Thrush
The characterization of the speaker in
Hardys The Darkling Thrush is of a
man isolated from his fellows, perhaps
foolishly on such a bitter winter
afternoon. But in tis telling the poem
reveals his deep character: that of a
man pausing in life to consider the
bigger picture.

The Darkling
Thrush
The poems action an elderly thrush singing,
despite the midwinter lockdown moves the
speaker from an opening position of isolation
and despair to a realization that, beyond his
gloomy outlook, life is chugging along
cheerfully, even in the frozen depth of winter.
Character development is used to confirm life
and humanity, as the speaker arcs from
isolation to fatalism, in the fading of a freezing
winters day, to kindling a glimmer of hope.

1984
But the same arc that produces an
ambivalent or feel-good ending can also
end in overwhelming negativity.
In Orwells 1984, the hero begins with a
powerful determination to be true to his
inner self, and finds some success, yet
ends a broken husk of a man.
Character arcs, like the human processes
they represent, are as diverse as
humanity itself.

Practice 5
Try to trace lines between the following
four opening positions on a character
arc, and the four developed positions
beneath.
The first row represents four places
where a character could be in life at
the start of a creative piece; the
second row represents where they are
aloyalty
third of the
way through
piece.
justice
courage thesuccess
failure

unfairness

split
allegiance

fear

Practice 6
Now try to connect the developed
positions identified to where this
character arc could be by the time its
two-thirds of the way through the
piece. Whats the next logical
progression? Again, try to draw lines
from the value positions in the top row
down to the value positions beneath.
split
allegiance

unfairne
ss

fear

failure

cowardice

betrayal

sellingout

injustic
e

Negative Arcs and

Redemption
Negative end-of-the-line positions
dont mean negative endings to
narratives. The unbearable conditions
at the end of the line spur change, and
can even generate hope.
A character can start out in a position
of material success and end with
spiritual success:
Success > Failure > Selling-out >
Getting by

Negative Arcs and

Redemption
Getting by is the true positive position
on the arc.
Material success is a matter of privilege
for some and hard work for others. Its
usually charged negative in creative
writing because its the truth. Privileged
people may dine at the top table and jet
around the world, but they can be
insulated from real life with all its
beauty and grindstones, heartaches and
treasured joys by a bubble of luxury.