Wednesday, June 16, 2010

Writing Exercise 06: Developing Characters

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(Note: This is a unit of "Schreibaufgabe.de")

THE CHALLENGE
To make a plot thrilling or at least interesting, your characters should want something. There also had to be (open and hidden) conflicts, means very often novels have protagonists and antagonists. When your hero has some flaws and your villain some nice qualities, your reader will be even more taken.
The difficulty is NOT to tell your reader everything, that would be boring. You show through scenes what your characters want, and there the actions have to fit in with your character's qualities. Remember, the author always have more information than the reader!
What to do now:
  1. Take one of the names from "Writing Exercise 05: Names Is For Tombstones ...", forget the given background.
  2. Chose if your character is a protagonist or an antagonist.
  3. Make a cluster (cf. "Writing Exercise 06: Clustering")
  4. Make a short, tabular curriculum vitae for your character.
  5. Answer a bunch of questions, which were given on a separate worksheet.
  6. Do steps 1 - 5 for a protagonist and an antagonist.
MY OUTCOME
I thought for quite some time and decided to invest the work in my "Cathryn O'Connell", my leading character in "Voodoo Island". As for the fact, the author knows always more than the reader, I do NOT post the cluster and the curriculum vitae. Those would simple reveal too much.
But maybe I can make something with the bunch of questions? I got inspired by my dear friend and sister in writing Dolly:
In her post "Join me for some Fictional Fun" she invited her followers to pick characters from published books and invite those characters to a dinner party. What she did brilliantly in her "Dinner Party with Jane Austen's Heroines".
I'd like to do have a little chat with Cathryn and tell you about it.

QUESTION
Will you, please, be so patient and give me some time for doing this interview?

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Continue with Exercise 07: Writing Dialogues

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