first drafts – Publetariat

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Are you one of those people who starts off a rough draft so excited about your characters and your story, only to plow through to the end and find that it has lost its charm? We should start a club together.

Sometimes it is because familiarity rubs the shine off, but you still have a great character and a great story. Other times the character you thought was deep enough to carry the plot turns out to be as deep as a sheet of paper and really can’t live up to the role. Janice Hardy’s Fiction University to the rescue! Learn how to tell if it is you or your character that needs changing.

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Keeping Your Characters Compelling Beyond the First Draft

Wednesday, May 25

By Janice Hardy

It is either you, your character, or his evil twin…..

Before I dive in…I had lunch with reader Carol Baldwin and did a little Q&A. That interview is up on her blog now for those interested. Come on over and say hello when you’re done here.

We’ve got a bit of a theme week going, looking at a few “beyond the first draft” issues writers run into. Today, it’s keeping a character as interesting and compelling as we thought they were when we first created them.

Characters often evolve as we write them, and it’s not uncommon to have a character we loved while we were planning a novel or writing that first draft feels a little, well, meh when we go back to revise. Now that we’ve seen them in action, we wonder why anyone would care about this person at all.

Sometimes this is just us second guessing ourselves and the character is still good, but other times our instincts are right on target. The character is boring. We created them and even we don’t care anymore.

Is it You or Them?

It’s possible you’ve lost the love because you’ve been living with this character for a while, and what was new and exciting is now old hat. You know how their story plays out, you’ve figured out all the twists and secrets, and knowing that makes the character less mysterious and fun.

It’s time to analyze the issue and find where the problem lies. Take a close (and hard) look at the character and ask:

Read the full post on Janice Hardy’s Fiction University

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If you liked this article, please share. If you have suggestions for further articles, articles you would like to submit, or just general comments, please contact me at paula@publetariat.com or leave a message below.

This post by Greta van der Rol originally appeared on her site on 5/3/14.

Like every other writer, I have a vault where I keep stories I’ve written that have never seen the light of day. Or maybe shouldn’t have seen the light of day. I recently blew the dust off a manuscript (koff koff), thinking this was one I could do something with. It was fan fiction and not half bad, as I recalled. Okay, way back when I wrote it I thought it was crash hot. Which is pretty good. I figured I could change a few names, tweak here and there, and maybe end up with a salable story. It would be fun.

So I opened up the doc and started to read.

And folks, it was AWFUL. Newbie writing 101 FAIL.

So… what was awful about it? Oh dear. Let me count the ways…

Look, when you’re critiquing, you’re suppose to find the good points first, so let’s get that out of the way. The plot was reasonable for what it was. Princess wants to avoid an arranged marriage so has a few adventures crossing the galaxy to a relo’s house, expecting to be safe. There, she meets a dishy alien admiral who was her dead husband’s CO. Sparks fly. He keeps her safe. The end. The spelling was spot on and the grammar obeyed the rules.

BUT

Point of view

What possessed me to think we needed her father’s POV? It’s easy enough to establish he’s a conniving prick from her POV. And why do we need the little cameos between daddy and the jilted suitor? We’ll find out the baddies are chasing her soon enough. (In her defence, the writer probably thought she needed to warn the reader that Mary wasn’t safe, and that it wasn’t daddy’s men chasing her, it was the other dude’s. To which this critiquer replies, ‘so what’?)

Click here to read the full post on Greta van der Rol’s site.

Quick Link:Keeping Your Characters Compelling Beyond the First Draft

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Keeping Your Characters Compelling Beyond the First Draft

Is it You or Them?

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Oh Dear. This Is AWFUL.

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Keeping Your Characters Compelling Beyond the First Draft

Is it You or Them?

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