I’ll start this by admitting that I am currently reading the book Story Genius, by Lisa Cron, which really presses the idea of knowing your characters’ motivations and back story. I got it for Christmas and have since been incorporating the ideas and exercises of the book into my current work-in-progress. I’m not going to be quoting that book here or inappropriately borrowing its contents, but its ideas will colour this post. Like I’ve said before, I’m still struggling to bring a novel to life, and I’m currently trying out different approaches. In the end, I think I’m coming up with my own hybrid approach, as I’m sure many writers end up doing.
Before Christmas, I had decided to try the Snowflake Method. To that end, I now have pages of character bios and a plot outline with around forty scenes defined. I have been working on this outline since late November 2020. I had been mulling the seed of it since about October, about the time I finished my previous, and in my opinion ultimately unusable, novel first draft. I had decided to try the Snowflake Method because in my past attempt I had enmeshed myself in seemingly impossible knots of plot, so I felt I needed a straight-shot line to follow, so even if I decided to deviate, at least I would know there was a way through the trees that wasn’t going to end in an impassible river or sentinel of blocking trees. Yet, even as I worked on my plot outline, I knew it would prove, while useful, not the full story, because part of me knew that external plot, while challenging, was not my major issue.
My major issue is that I struggle to write believable characters. There, I’ve said it. I have plenty of life experience that should inform me on the human condition, but it often falls flat on the page. I have written a whole first draft and felt at the end that I didn’t know who my protagonist really was.
I’d seen Lisa Cron’s novel on Amazon and placed it on my Christmas wish list, and my wife was generous enough to buy it for me and put it under our tree. It caught my eye because it is primarily about how characters can and arguably should drive your story, even more so than external plot. It’s big on cause-and-effect as the engine of story as well, which resonates with me, as I often feel I make unrealistic plot leaps that are not properly bound by the logic of what came before.
All this to say that now I am getting to know my protagonist in a deeper way than ever before. I’m doing this by delving into the character’s back story, as Lisa suggests. I’m not filling out my protagonist’s whole life, because that would be tedious and mostly unhelpful (I have always cringed inside when I hear that writers — usually fantasy writers, not to pick on them — write endless pages on the minutia of their character’s every waking hour from the day they were born until the novel’s start). Instead I am focusing on some key points that shaped my character in the past. I’ve discovered that doing this, and digging deeper in asking myself what really drives my character’s thoughts and motivations, has helped tremendously. It’s really brought him to life in my mind in a way that surprised me.
I’m still working the Snowflake Method, but I’m now incorporating Lisa’s thoughts on getting to know my characters, and I suggest you give it a try as well. It can’t hurt, and it may surprise you, as it did me.
