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    Two Year Novel Course: Set 2 (Characters)
    Two Year Novel Course: Set 2 (Characters)
    Two Year Novel Course: Set 2 (Characters)
    Ebook83 pages1 hour

    Two Year Novel Course: Set 2 (Characters)

    By Lazette Gifford

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    About this ebook

    The second set of the 2YN classes takes you through the work of creating characters who will best represent what you want in your story.

    Included in this group is Creating Characters Who Work with You, Archetypes, Personality, Narrators and more.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherA Conspiracy of Authors
    Release dateJan 16, 2012
    ISBN9781936507139
    Two Year Novel Course: Set 2 (Characters)
    Author

    Lazette Gifford

    Lazette is an avid writer as well as the owner of Forward Motion for Writers and the owner/editor of Vision: A Resource for Writers.It's possible she spends too much time with writers.And cats.

    Read more from Lazette Gifford

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      Book preview

      Two Year Novel Course - Lazette Gifford

      Two Year Novel Course: Set 2

      By

      Lazette Gifford

      Copyright 2018 Lazette Gifford

      An ACOA Publication

      www.aconspiracyofauthors.com

      ISBN: 978-1-936507-13-9

      Copyright © 2004, 2006, 2012, 2018 Lazette Gifford

      All rights reserved.

      No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without permission in writing from the publisher, except by a reviewer, who may quote brief passages.

      Table of Contents

      Week 6: Characters, Part One

      Week 7: Characters, Part Two

      Week 8: Characters, Part Three

      Week 9: Characters, Part Four

      Week 10: Characters, Part Five

      Week 11: Characters, Part Six

      Week 12: Characters, Part Seven

      Week 13: Characters, Part Eight

      About the Author

      Week 6: Characters, Part One

      Introduction: Characters

      Over the next few classes, I'll present material in the form of guidelines and hints, but you will be doing your own character creation in whatever way suits you -- either following my suggestions or doing the work in ways you've done before. If you answer the questions in the assignments, it doesn't matter how you came to find what you need.

      Nevertheless, it won't hurt to read the classes carefully and at least experiment with what I offer to see if it inspires you to look at character creation in a new way. New ideas can help make new, different characters from what you might have created otherwise.

      Within the class environment, novel creation is forced into a linear mode for things which may be more fluid at other times. I happen to be character-driven as a writer and looking at the characters first comes naturally to me. Others might usually start with world building or with an outline, but for this course please stay in this order. I have created this collection to build one step upon another.

      But also, don't forget that you can write notes on anything and adapt it to later classes! These classes are not meant to stifle your imagination in any way, so don't let yourself get unsettled by the order of how things are presented. Experiment. Have fun.

      Creating Characters Who Work with You

      Characters can hinder plot development if they are not designed with care to meet the needs of the story. Even a character-driven writer, like me, should make drastic changes to the characters if doing so will make a better story. The plot must be the line against which you measure everything you create, including character traits, interactions, and histories.

      We're going to do this through Zette's Theory of Character Creation. How I do things may suit you, or you may adapt parts of it to your personal needs, or you may have an entirely different way that works for you already. Read through the material anyway, because sometimes my weekly assignment will be based in part on what I write in the class.

      Since I am a character-driven writer, I start with characters. I see them in a situation, and I build a story around this first vision, learning who they are and what they are doing as I look beyond the first scene. This doesn't mean that either the characters or the situation will not change as the story grows.

      So if I see a character staring in shock at a television news report (Example 1) or a tall, lithe alien coming unexpectedly into a room, startling someone (Example 2), then I begin by asking myself the inevitable question all writers ask: Why?

      A plot-driven writer may start out with a series of events instead (Example 2 tends more toward event-driven rather than person-driven), and then create a character to fit those events. For this type of writer, it is the story which sparks the initial creative response.

      Either way will produce a good manuscript. A reader can rarely tell -- at least if the story is well-written -- which process the author used. In the end, all novels are about characters reacting to situations, so it doesn't matter how the characters got there.

      People are products of their environment, but in novel writing, we can -- and should -- shape the environment to fit the story. Since the character is going to be the embodiment of his background and the vehicle for an idea imposed on the background by the author, it is far better to know what you want your characters to be like, and fit some aspects of the world to them. Don't believe you cannot change a character. Always keep the betterment of the story in mind.

      Names

      Names are tags for the readers and don't have to be anything more. You can play with a name to give it an extra meaning (Thomas Covenant, for instance), or to add a bit of humor (Buffy the Vampire Slayer). A name does not have to exemplify the

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