I write mostly fiction. Yes, I sometimes branch into non-fiction (under a pseudonym), but most of my work is fiction. And fiction involves characters, sometimes a great many characters. If you want to draw the readers into your story, these characters will have to be as real as your neighbor, as real as your best friend, as real as you are yourself. If you can't do this, your readers will abandon you well before they finish your novel.
So how to do create realistic characters that will jump off the page and have tea with you? You watch the world around you.
Creating Characters Out of the People You Know
Great fictional characters stay with the reader long after the book has closed. Think of the best books you've ever read. Who were the characters? Can you remember the details of the main characters? I'm betting you can. There are great books of every genre that are just full of wonderful characters. And these characters stay with you.
But here's the secret: Most of these characters are, at least in part, real people the author knew. The crotchety old man? Possibly a neighbor or grandfather. The sweet and innocent woman? Maybe a daughter, niece, or another young woman. The powerful and invincible man? Perhaps modeled a father figure.
So look around your own world and find inspiration. I don't just mean friends and family. Go to your local coffee shop or park and take a notebook with you. Observe the wide variety of people who frequent these places. Write down bits of conversation and physical descriptions that you can use later. Do this quickly and quietly though or you risk irritating everyone in the area. Once you get home, you can exaggerate or tone down your notes until they match the story you're writing.
Be careful not to model characters directly after people you know. Your sister probably doesn't want to be in your novel, so if you're basing characters on family (as I am wont to do) you'll have to change details. I tend to mix traits until the characters aren't recognizable as immediate family. If people can recognize themselves, you're opening a can of worms. Some authors have even been sued for this very reason.
Creating the Emotions for Your Characters
The characters in your book have to have physical traits, yes, but they also have to have substance. Characters have feelings, and these feelings determine how they react in any given situation. So you have to come up with a way to convey these feelings to your readers.
Do this through characterization. Action, conversation, and body language are all powerful tools for revealing how a character feels about something. Instead of writing, "he was angry," think of a way to convey this without referring to anger at all. Perhaps the following passage would be more effective:
He clenched his fists at his sides. His body began to vibrate with barely suppressed rage. Closing his eyes, he took several deep breaths and tried to think soothing thoughts.
This passage tells us the character is angry, but it also does more than that. It gives us some insight into his character. Read the passage and see what you can infer about the character. He has certain physical responses to anger, notably the clenched fists and the trembling. But we can see that he doesn't just let his anger fly. He tries to control it. Not everyone would, but this character does.
You must use prose to create the substance of your characters. It is only through the power of the written word that we can begin to know and understand your characters. Spend some times observing the world, make sure you use your knowledge of the written word to help the reader understand your characters, and your halfway toward creating characters who will leave an impression.
Novels need action. The type of action varies, but they certainly need some kind of action or your readers will fall asleep reading your book. Action is the core of your plot. Without action, there's no story. But just as important to the action is the pacing of your novel. These two elements make up the very basis of your general plot.
A Novel Needs Action
Your novel must have action at various points, but defining action can be a little problematic. Is action a car chase? Yes. Is action a standoff between your protagonist and your antagonist? Yes. Is action the thoughts running through the protagonist's head? Yes.
Action can be a lot of things, usually depending on genre and context. So let's define the action in a novel as anything that is important to the overall plot of the story. This could mean that the "action" in your novel includes your main character sitting at a bar thinking to himself. He might not be involved in a gunfight, but that doesn't mean something important isn't going on in his mind.
So, now that we've defined action, perhaps you can see how novels are built up of these little bits of plot. You don't need a gunfight or car chase on every page. But something needs to happens to further the plot.
Constantly throwing action at your audience, however, creates its own set of problems. You need to break the tension once in a while, but without letting the action stop completely. This is where pacing becomes important.
The Pacing of Your Novel
The pacing of your novel can be defined as the rate at which the action happens. This rate will be primarily determined by the type of book you're writing. A laid-back romance will have a slower pacing than an action-adventure novel, for example. But how do you convey this pace?
Start by classifying your scenes into two groups: tense and relaxed. If you're having trouble categorizing some of the scenes, create a third category: semi-tense. Once you've done this, space them out a bit. You probably don't want eight tense scenes back to back (unless you're writing a thriller or a horror). I write a lot of fantasy-adventure novels, but I'm careful not to pack too much tension into one section (except for the end). I vary the intensity of the scenes to keep the story moving.
Now that you've ordered your scenes, look at each tense scene and sharpen it up. You can add action, of course, or you could use the power of the written word. Short paragraphs. Sharp words. Tiny sentences. These help increase the tension in your story. Heighten the tension until its wound tight.
Then release it. Use longer sentences and larger words while increasing the size of the paragraphs. You'll be surprised at how this technique can increase or decrease the tension of a given scene. The words you use and their structure on the page should reflect the pace you're trying to convey.
Your novel should be like a roller coaster ride. Take the tension up and down as your story requires, giving your readers a break from the tension when required. Think about the feel you want to convey and work hard to make sure your take your readers on the journey with you.
Every book has a theme, sometimes more than one. As an author, I'm often asked what the themes of my various books are. This is sometimes a hard question to answer, and not just because I don't necessarily write a book with a theme in mind. What's really hard about answering the question is this: themes are open to interpretation. Knowing this, how important is theme and should you decide on a theme before you begin writing?
What is Theme?
When it comes to novels, the theme is the overriding point of the story. Stories are, at their core, about life, and each novel makes a statement. That statement is your theme. Sometimes this theme is also the lesson of the story, especially if you're writing children's fiction. But whatever genre you're writing, your story does have a message.
What might the message be? Well, look at your story and see if there's an overriding message. My second novel (Dragon's Tempest) had a lot of things in it. Dragons. A prince and his friends. Cute girl. A creepy nasty not-human guy. And a lot of stuff happens. Battles are fought. People fall in love. A few people die. But none of these things are the theme. Instead, the theme is that sons need to individuate themselves. They need to find out who they are not just as their parents' son, but as grown men. This is the theme.
Never confuse theme with the conflicts in your novel. Conflicts are the obstacles your protagonist encounters. In the case of Dragon's Tempest, there are a lot of conflicts. The principle one is the good guys battling the bad guys. This is in a lot of novels (and virtually all fantasy novels). But Dragon's Tempest isn't really about good vs. evil. That's the entertainment portion of the novel (though "good triumphs over evil" can be a theme). The theme, the thing we learn about human nature from the novel, is about the father-son relationship. Theme and conflict are not the same thing.
Should You Write a Novel With a Theme in Mind?
The answer to this question is maybe. It depends on your point. I haven't written any of my fantasy novels with a theme in mind. And if I had, I probably wouldn't have ended up with a fantasy novel at all. Think about it. If you were going to write a novel with a theme about the nature of the father-son relationship, would you write a fantasy? Probably not.
And yet the entire story of Dragon's Tempest flows from the difficulties between father and son. The rest of the story simply wouldn't have happened without that catalyst. So the overriding theme of the novel is important, but I had no idea what the theme was while I was writing the thing. I simply wrote the story that was crying out to be told.
If, on the other hand, you have a theme in mind, you might want to write from your theme. I'm doing this with a new series of books I'm working. It's a trilogy with one overwhelming theme: the ability to recover and learn from mistakes. That is the theme. That was the theme before I had a clear idea of who the main characters were. I fully intend to convey a certain message and every work of the three books is being crafted with that message in mind.
So you can choose whether or not you'll write with a theme in mind or whether you'll just write the story. A theme will eventually emerge and permeate the whole novel. But it's important to remember that different people will see different things in your novel. One person may say your theme is the enduring quality of the human spirit while another is convinced the theme must be the inevitability of change. A book can have more than one theme, and it can have different themes for different people. This is one of the best qualities of literature.
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