Can we talk for a little moment about character profiles? I feel like they’ve fallen out of vogue but I still recommend them frequently to authors when I read their manuscripts and see places their characters need work.
Reasons to still use character profiles
1. Consistency
Are you writing a series? Then character profiles are a part of your series bible you should not be skipping. Will you remember the colour of your character’s mother’s eyes after she’s been absent from the page for three books and they’re dramatically and emotionally reunited? No, no you won’t. But that fan who has read your series nine times will notice if her eye colour changes. Don’t force yourself to go back and find where a character appears on the page, make a character profile.
2. Breaking stereotypes
Most characters fit into an archetype fairly well. “The badass fighter chick,” “the wise wizard,” etc, etc. Those are fine as a jumping off point for your characters but if you stick too closely to those archetypes you’re creating a character we’ve all seen done before. To break your character out of their stereotype you need to notice they fit it first and profiles are great for that, but they’re also great for finding ways to do that. Many character profiles ask small questions of your character which allow you to showcase the individuality of the character.
Perhaps your badass female character is always in armor because she is never not in danger on page, perhaps she has fought hard to get out of her dresses which made her defenseless. But you don’t need to define her so rigidly, she doesn’t need to abandon her femininity entirely. Perhaps she still wears diamonds in her ears, or a jasmine perfume that the protagonist begins to associate with her so strongly they mistake a jasmine blossom for her presence. Small details like this are easily over-looked, even hard to think of, but a series of questions prompting deep thought into a character like say, a character profile, force you to think in small ways about a character. Those small things are often what make them more than a stereotype.
3. Details
I watched a video by ShaelinWrites on Youtube quite some time ago that spoke about specific details in prose and the image it grants the reader. It changed the way I read, I learned to pick up on details that were forming pictures in my mind more clearly, but especially the way I write. The Dagasi Saga in particular has a great deal of visual detail within it because she stressed the important of choosing something specific when you are describing something to your reader.
A veil covered her hair vs a gold silk veil covered her hair
A pot plant sat on the table vs a fern sat on the table
His red hair vs his auburn hair
Writing a character profile allows you to discover specific details that can be used to describe, perhaps frequently, the poise, presence and appearance of your character. Yennefer of Vengerburg wears a perfume of lilac and gooseberries and dresses entirely in black and white. You need to describe nothing else about her to find ways to make her appearance and presence striking with those two details and neither describe her physically. Many people define themselves with little details like this or reveal details about themselves unintentionally in the same way. Use a character profile and it’s probing questions to discover specific details you can use to enrich your prose.
Watch the video here.
4. Fighting homogeny
I am a bisexual woman, and if I wrote without really thinking about it you know what 100% of my characters would be? Yeah, bisexual women. Unfortunately for my instincts men, heterosexual, homosexuals, nonbinary, asexual and every other kind of queer / gender fluid or not women exist. I’m also prone to write more white characters than POC although its not as big of a problem as the bisexual woman thing, because guess what? I’m white! But the world is multi-colored, multi-gendered and full of different sexualities and one of the ways I realise I have written a pack of bisexual women is by writing a bunch of character profiles and describing pretty girls with wicked eyes over and over and realising, well... shit.
Even so The Dagasi Saga has Georgiana Allegra, Amira of Milkain, and Zahara Andefor as three major female characters and they’re all bisexual despite thei heterosexual marriages. Only one of them is white though, so I’ve got that at least.
A few good character profiles to get you started:
Reedy’s character profile
Fantasy Review’s character profile
Jedi Knight Muse’ s character profile
I solidify my own template for a character profile in the coming weeks so stay tuned for that!
The fact of the matter is.... If you're not turning yourself on with your shit, you're doing it wrong.
Every piece you write should make you wet, twist your guts, make you angry, or make you laugh. Not everything is bloody or rough. But everything should make you feel something.
The whole point of all of this is to FEEL. If you ain't feeling that piece, it ain't done yet. If it feels wrong, put it on the shelf and try something else. Ask for help.
But don't you DARE give me, give yourself, something that doesn't make you feel anything.
I read to feel YOU, and you better fucking bring it.
Getting the stakes, the “what’s at risk” factor of a story right is SO important. Will the world end? Will their mother die? Will they lose the love of their life?
Whatever the stakes it’s important that a character can’t simply walk away. If “they might die on their quest” is the height of the danger for the character you’re not thinking deeply enough about what motivates a person. Okay, they might die, that’s some tension. But why would they go on a quest that might kill them? To do the right thing? That’s a bit vague, almost meaningless really. For a character’s motivation and stake in the outcome of the plot to really grab the reader with both hands it needs to be personal.
That’s rule number 1: Make sure every character has something personal at stake.
After that you need to think about execution. It’s important to let the reader know what is at stake and why to care immediately. From page one the character needs a problem. It doesn’t need to be the problem, the one kicked off by the inciting incident and everything that happens because of that. No, that can come as far as 25% into the book if you have enough interesting content to come before the inciting incident. What you do need is to have the character wanting something and striving for something right away. Otherwise you’re just sharing incredibly mundane details of day-to-day life without giving us any real insight into the main character.
That’s rule number 2: Start the stakes on page one.
Continuing on with execution, you can’t keep the stakes at the same level of tension as page one. Think about Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince as a great example. Page one stakes? Harry is waiting for Dumbledore to visit, the tension is that Harry really doesn’t believe he’ll come but he desperately wants him to. Immediately Harry wants something. But the stakes don’t stay at the relatively mild level of Harry wanting a visit, things get pretty intense in that book. We move from Harry’s desire for a simple visit to his desire to find a way to destroy Voldemort and save, not only his own life, but the lives of everyone he loves AND to avenge the deaths of all his loved ones at the same time. Pretty big escalation right? But that’s so important, whether you’re writing a romance or a fantasy or a horror, the tension and the stakes need to rise with each act.
And that’s rule number 3: Keep rising the stakes.
All of this is inspired by a truly great blog post by the fabulous Janice Hardy. You can read that blog post here
Inspired by a recent reblog titled “words to use instead of crying,” I want to talk a little bit about physicality.
So often in my critiques and beta reads I see authors using fanciful words in an attempt to express emotion where a physical description would work better.
Crying is the perfect example of this.
Crying is a physical expression of emotion and it leaves traces all over the body. Sobs shake the body. Tears make the eyes sore. Extended crying gives the crier a headache. Loud crying/sobbing makes the voice ache. Crying thickens the throat and makes the breath come quick and shallow. Already you can probably think of several ways to describe each
Telling your reader that “grief washed over” a character, that they “cried hysterically” or “broke down in tears” is just that. Telling. By giving the reader an insight into the way the emotion makes a character feel inside their body you provide a link to the reader’s own experiences with the same emotion. You trigger memory of a time they felt the way the character is feeling, a memory they can use sympathetically to feel as the character feels. If the reader can relate, they can empathise, and if they can empathise you’ve got them right where you want them.
I write for myself. Its therapeutic for me. It calms down my mind when my thoughts are all over the place. Sometimes, I write for others too because they motivated or inspired me. However, sometimes it brings me down though when I show others my works, and they end up telling me to write something else that they would like. Its even sadder when that kind of request came from someone I really really trusted.
Afterwards, I felt like doing what they wanted me to do. For a second, it excited me because my brain automatically justified is as something that would help me challenge my craft. But later that evening, I realized how I almost just set myself up to please one person again, over doing something that I ‘actually’ loved... well, at least, currently. The suggestion given to me was up my alley, but these days, that isn’t really my cup of tea. Yet, I was made to feel like I should do that just so they would be on the same page with me.
There needs to be more legal protections for content creators of all stripes. The internet changed the game. Now, it's time to change the rules. We're still in a "wild west" situation right now. However, what we do is a legitimate career/job and we are entitled--yes, entitled--to labor protection. Just like you see in the Hollywood entertainment industry. Even extras on a film set are given protections. This goes for Youtube content creators, authors/writers (Like me! Check the sidebar--shameless plug!) and any other content creator making money for a distribution business.
I realize people hate the word--union and all of the scaremongering it entails. Maybe it doesn't have to be organized that way.
But we need to organize.
Distributors are making millions of dollars off of us--billions in most cases.
Once distribution markets (Amazon, Youtube,) start amassing in excess of a billion dollars, then what we do is no longer "cute" or "a hobby"--but a job.
Authors invest a lot to produce well-made content for their readers. And unfortunately, books don't contain ads like Youtube videos (well, at least that we get a cut of). Plus, I think the way ads work, in this day and age, is terrible anyway. Users avoid them like the plague...
Plus, Indie writers/authors are truly in a game of "sink or swim" with minuscule revenue sharing for book streaming services. Yes, "book streaming" services are in fact, a thing.
To anyone that says get another job if you want to make money...
To them I say, don't ever read a book/comic or manga either, watch a TV show/movie or listen to another song--ever.
Yeah, that’s what I thought.
People love to be entertained they just don't like to pay for it. But that's another subject, sticking to the matter at hand...
Nothing ever changed without someone standing up to change it. This subject, legal protections for content creators, is definitely going to be more important in the future.
Why I wrote this? I don't know. I haven't made my morning coffee yet. I'm just frustrated to see fellow creators--of all stripes--get shafted and exploited.
