There are no rules.
Just kidding. Of course there are rules. There are rules of grammar, plot, structure, etiquette and all manner of other aspects of writing and publishing. The problem is there isn’t one, single set of rules. There are many.
When is good writing good writing? Is it a sentence or paragraph that hooks the reader? It is laud the ability to craft a gorgeous sentence no matter what? Or does noticing that great passage distract from the reading experience?
I think we can all agree there are books that amaze us with their prose and those that challenge us with their awkward phrasing and clunky pacing. It’s a question of quality. We know what works and what doesn’t on a visceral level. But how do we define it? And, more importantly, how do we make sure we’re on the right side of that line with our writing?
Like the rest of the pandemic-trapped world, I’m at home social distancing and watching way too much HGTV. It has inspired me to launch a few home improvement projects and write this blog, which is admittedly more of a rant. Sorry. Though I think I do make some good points about using the right word and why that’s important, so please read through the rant to the end. It gets better. And thanks for letting me get this off my chest.
There are so many blogs out there about writing and they all offer advice. Some of them contain sound advice and some are so vague they barely count as helpful. My intent at Figments & Fables is to share advice and tips that will help someone have a real career, whether in fiction or nonfiction. If I ever stray in this goal, feel free to nudge me back on course.
We all know that writing is easy, “All you do is sit down at a typewriter and bleed” according to Ernest Hemingway. And that is true to a point. But it isn’t the whole truth. Writing is easy and hard, but it’s also exciting, creative, playful, and relaxing. It feeds the soul and can be magical.
Abraham Maslow identified human needs in his Hierarchy of Needs (as described in the last blog). But later in his career, he expanded his hierarchy to include Cognitive and Aesthetic Needs (both of which fall under Esteem Needs) and Transcendence Needs that served as the final level—the level to which we all aspire once our Deficiency Needs are met.
The first two parts of this series focused on using wants and needs to develop characters and laid out the basics of wants vs. needs. Now we’re ready to take a deeper look at needs and the human condition, which will help write better characters.
In the first blog in this series, we explored what wants and needs are in their most basic form. Now we’ll look at how they can be used to design plot and characters. [Warning: This blog includes spoilers for some novels, so if you have not read the books or seen the movies, be forewarned.]
Stories are about character. Sure, you can have an action film with little more than special effects and plot (think Transformers), but those kinds of stories have little emotional impact. They are fun while you’re watching them, but they don’t linger. They don’t make the audience think. Or feel. For those reactions, you need characters who want things and need things.
Wants and Needs are two elements that drive stories. They determine plot and character. Story and resolution.
This is the final blog in the How to Introduce a Character series. In the first three blogs, we touched on the basics, tips on how to introduce characters, and examples from both films and books. This blog will complete the examples and ways to introduce a character, whether main or side.
In the previous two blogs, we looked at some basic advice and criteria for introducing characters—the lifeblood of any story. Now we’re going to go deeper and look at various examples of the ways in which you can bring your character to life the first time you introduce them to your reader. As you can imagine, this is a huge topic, so these examples will be broken into two blogs to finish out this series on character introductions. Now to begin…
Ways to introduce characters:
The first blog of this series laid the foundation for character introductions. Now we’re going to go deeper into ways to introduce characters. The final two blogs in this series will explore each type of introduction with specific examples and explanations.
Bringing your characters to life begins with the introduction, no matter whether it’s in fiction or film, it’s how you choose to begin that matters. There are many options: