Home » Writing & Publishing » Book Publishing » Writing a Novel -Character and Setting

Writing a Novel -Character and Setting

© Joanne Reid

Part 1 - Characters

Remember, even as you round out your characters, you should be writing, writing, writing to get it all down on paper. Writing generates ideas which generate more writing and so it goes.

What I like to do is make notes of people and the odd things they do and use them later. For instance, I have this character I like to use a lot as a minor character. She has the occupation of a woman I once knew, the tongue and temper of another and the looks of a third woman I knew. The one thing these three women had in common in real life is that they were outrageous. We have a tendency to want to write as if we were the main character, perhaps because we're inside them as much as we are inside ourselves. This can limit you if you don't have a lot of self-knowledge or if you are afraid of your self-knowledge.

My characters used to come out quite shadowy until I realized that I was trying to force them into my notion of being nice, being the way I wanted to be. So now I like to chuck in a handful of spice from other people I know. You all know them...the people who drive you mad with their illogic, their sheer evil, their addictions, their foibles. Take a pinch of this and use it. It's human nature.

A new character has entered the soap I write. He just appeared. He looks like a neighbour of mine, acts like an uncle of mine and has the flamboyance of my best friend.

One of the leading causes of rejection by a publisher is poorly developed, one-sided characters.

Characters should have four sides:

• general - traits formed by heredity and environment
• physical - the person's physical traits
• emotional - the mental or psychological traits
• personal - the social or ethical traits

How to reveal character
As I was watching a baseball game, a group of people in the crowd held up a banner that read: The game does not build character, it reveals it. In essence, that is what characterization is all about. You let the novel reveal the person's character.

First of all, a character must be in conflict with some part of his or her environment. The protagonist in conflict with his or her environment is the basis of the novel. This is how you chose to show the story, theme, human nature and meaning in your novel. In your novel, nothing "just happens". Everything you chose to include in your novel has to relate to the central focus of your story. What does your protagonist

The copyright of the article Writing a Novel -Character and Setting in Book Publishing is owned by . Permission to republish Writing a Novel -Character and Setting in print or online must be granted by the author in writing.