Becoming Your Characters by Mary Deal

Selected article from WINK: Writers IN the Know, issue #1

Becoming Your Characters

Several authors have asked why their characters did things they (the author) didn’t understand. Each time, I had to smile with approval.

What I find is that you may know your character well, intellectually, as you have outlined in a character sketch or other notes. However, in order to understand the moves your character makes, you must become that character.

In dialogue especially, stand in front of a mirror and talk to yourself. Be the character talking to you. Notice the facial expressions and physical gestures. Include those in your descriptions. When you feel you are that character, you will understand why they suddenly do something in the story that you hadn't expected. When you are the character, you will cut loose from any restrictive thinking. This will help you to move the plot faster and in more meaningful ways.

In other words, you, as the character – what would you do in the situation you have set up? Being the character, what would you do to cut loose and respond to a situation in a totally off-the-wall manner? Or maybe a subdued manner. See where this is going? When you are the character, you understand everything that character does. It frees your thinking to take your story in unexpected directions.

An added plus is that you can and should become any and all of your characters. Once you get in the habit of seeing your story this way, your writing ability and expression are freed up.

You won't see your characters as if in a state of unexpected flux.

You won’t see your characters as people other than yourself.

You will see and understand their motives and moves – and they will make those moves – as totally normal to their personalities.

—MaryDeal.com

Mary Deal is an Amazon International best-selling author who has won numerous awards for her suspense/thrillers, romance, adventure, short story collection, writing reference, and self-help nonfiction. Some of her books have been translated into several languages. Her first feature screenplay, Sea Storm, was a Semi-Finalist in a Moondance International Film Festival competition. Mary is a Pushcart Prize nominee and former newspaper columnist and magazine editor. She is currently writing another nonfiction.

She has traveled a great deal and has a lifetime of diverse experiences, all of which serve as fodder for her fiction. A native of California’s Sacramento River Delta, where some of her stories are set, she has lived in several states, England, the Caribbean, Hawaii, and now resides in North Carolina. She is also an oil painter and photographer. In addition to art prints, her images are used to create gorgeous personal and household products from her online galleries.

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