Lesson 3: Casting Your Book.
Putting Depth in Characters.
The depth you put into a protagonist or major character depends partly on the length and complexity of the book. “The Orange Outlaw” is between 8,000 and 9,000 words, and has a mystery plot. Too much character development spread over three protagonists would unbalance such a short book, and it is likely the three won’t change much from book to book.
“Alien Dawn”, much longer and much more complex, needs strongly drawn central characters because Jed and Karen have to stand out against a supporting cast of eccentrics.
“Trinity Street”, at 84,000 words, has plenty of room for character development. The three main characters don’t change in essence, but their reactions do change according to their circumstances. Tell is suspicious of Gerhardt at the outset, because she doesn’t know much about him and fears his intentions. She is even more suspicious after the Recovery. Later, when she finds out he is telling the truth, she trusts him, and when Gerhardt learns that everything he has stood for is a lie, she is able to help him to trust himself again.
Characters like Tell and Gerhardt have strong personalities to begin with, but it is also possible to begin with a shallow seeming character and let the depths develop and emerge as circumstances put him (or her) against the wall.
Character is often partly hidden in reality, and you can use this to your advantage in a book. Strong characters might have hidden weaknesses, or might break when faced with dramatic reversals because they are inflexible. Seemingly pliable people sometimes develop an unexpected strength when faced with something that really matters to them for the first time. It is always good to have tiny hints to the hidden characteristic before it reveals itself in full. That way, readers can believe it was there all along, and just needed the right circumstance to bring it out into the open and into focus.
Show Don’t Tell
One of the maxims of writing fiction is that you should “show, not tell”. Like most maxims, this is true up to a point, but in a short children’s book, especially a JCB, you don’t have time or room to let each character display the same characteristic two or three times. And the characteristic must be displayed more than once to count as “showing”. If it is displayed only once, how can the reader know the character isn’t acting unusually or out of character? With this lack of room, sometimes you have to take a short cut and tell your reader that “Jodi was short-tempered” rather than arranging for Jodi to explode over minor problems three times before the major explosion to which you are working.
Balancing Characters
When creating a core group of characters for your book, you need to ensure two things.
(1) That the personalities are not carbon copies of one another. (2) That characters in one family are recognisably related and that friends are recognisably complementary.
You can create chalk/cheese siblings by indicating that one takes after one parent and the other after the other. Chalk/cheese friendships often work well in books as well as in life, but you must show traits that draw the characters together. Conversely, if you have characters that dislike one another, you need to show the character traits that create the antipathy. Dislike is based on several things; unfamiliarity, fear, irritation, envy, jealousy, rivalry and disgust. It is quite possible for two “good” characters to dislike one another, so one need not be the bad guy.
If you have unlikely companions, look for reasons to draw them together. In “The Orange Outlaw”, Dink and Ruth Rose are neighbours, and Josh is a friend of Dink’s. They are together because they like one another and because Dink’s uncle has invited them to visit him in the city. Children of up to nine or so are often friends because they happen to be neighbours, or because their parents are friends. It is assumed by everyone (including themselves) that they are friends, but the assumption often wears off the children before anyone else notices.
Jed and Karen associate in “Alien Dawn” partly because of shared experience, and also partly because of their less-than-ordinary homelives. There’s nothing odd about living in a stepfamily, but Karen’s elder half-siblings are decidedly hard acts with which to compete. Jed and Karen complement one another, and make a good team.
Tell and Camena associate because Camena needs a friend/minder to interpret life for her. Tell’s need (to help) is less obvious at first. Gerhardt’s association with Camena is purely business, and Tell is simply part of the package, at first. Later, he begins to see her as a personality, and his feelings shift through irritation to obligation to a kind of love.
Always think about why your characters are together. Once you know why they like, dislike, love, fear and associate with one another, you’ll have a much better chance of creating rounded, breathing personalities.
