So today I thought, hell, might as well have more Thoughts on the Writing Process.

       The agenda today is on character. I will do my best to answer these questions in my thoughts.

       What makes a character?

       Who is a character?

       And why the hell should we give a damn about the characters?

What makes a character:

       Before, when I spoke of characters in my writing exercises. I said they had personality and performed actions based on the information they were presented with. Of course there is far more too it then that.

       Personality is a set of traits which show particular combination of emotional, attitudinal, and behavioral response patterns of an individual.

Action is the result of those response patterns, and those response patterns are generated whenever a misunderstanding occurs.

       Appearance was unmentioned before, but also important. Unlike information bodies inside a story which result in responses, character appearance is reliant on observation.

       So with these basic idea's planted, lets dive deeper.

Personality:

       How does an author decide which traits to give? How does he make them believable? How does he avoid over describing?

       A story usually has an end concept, or at the very least a checkpoint for the author to achieve. To get to this point he will need character willing to naturally proceed to his end goal.

       He may want his story to end in a romance, but if he makes his shrunk male lead, Hitler, and his giantess a Jewish girl, he may encounter serious problems. So if he had proceeded, he would most likely have been faced with disastrous reviews of his story.

       So if the male lead needs a personality that is easy going and likeable, the information generated by the character interaction with the giantess should be peaceful instead.

The way your character is, by his very nature, is the way he acts. Every misunderstanding bring about infinite possible reactions. But a character with a proper personality will only ever chose the same action given the same circumstance, that is personality. The core at which all humans are held to.

Action:

       Since our character is a bundled mess of possible actions, depending on his personality, and the misunderstanding he is presented with. We can assume, when asked what he likes to do, it will always be answered the same way if the person asking, is asking it for the first time.

       Assume for a moment, that our character has a diverse set of traits which make up his personality. But when he was twenty five years old, he was captured by a giantess. The shock was so hard to bear, that when the alien giant returned him to earth, his personality had become locked. He forget everything he was told, the previous minute.

       Asking the man a question always result in the same automated Action response. There is no change in his action.

       In reality and fiction, a personality is fluid, so if you were asked the same question, you might respond differently. Your opinions make up a part of your personality which also dictate your actions.

       If Kelly accidently shrunk a bunch of her friends, and became frustrated caring for them in secret. She might eventually become frustrated as her mind begins to get sick of the same routine of caring for her friends which have no beneficial use to her. As her opinions of her friends change, so to do their importance to her, and the actions she takes with them.

       So in this case, her personality has twisted by the perception of Kelly's shrunken friends. They realize she no longer has any attachments to them. Because of this, those friends now sit in the bottom of a dumpster, in a shoe box.

Appearance:

       So while appearance may seem straight forward. The act of having an image, means that your character is observable by others. Stereotyping, or opinion based interaction is common in the real and fictional world. How your character looks, effects how the other characters have interacted with them, and conversely helped shaped their personality.

       Cheryl had grown up to be a smoking hot babe, but in truth she had been obese all though her school years. As a result of the bullying and constant abuse, Cheryl had developed a personality quirk, in which she hated skinny people who made of fat people.

       When her date made such a comment, she had such a deranged personality, she never hesitated shrinking him and placing his micro sized body in the fat ladies food, in the both next to them. Paul cried, for help, but alas no help came.

Who is a character:

       There are many characters already out there. They are often copied, remembered, and fondly adored by reader and writer alike. Basically, a character is a mess of information one could call a biography. So I like to think there are three common types of characters. Of course there are actually more, but let's not get ahead of ourselves here.

       A garbled mess of traits which don't make any sense, generally is not a character. It is an it, and the reader is forced to learn about it. This is the common character who makes appearances in quick porn, or that side character who was never mentioned again, let's call him Buck. Buck is the lazily written, uninteresting character, authors should try to avoid.

       Tim, he is a well established character. He doesn't have a bio, he has character interaction, and his own actions speak louder than words. He is a very hard person to make exists, because he is like a fragile glass floor.

       Francine, she is a sub character. She plays no other purpose for the moment, other than to interact with characters like Tim and Buck. Honestly she prefers Tim, but often ends up sleeping with Buck. Oh the Irony.

Buck:

       The easy character to write for. He doesn't have very coherent traits. He could hate banana's but love banana split ice creams. If his character needed to be a murderous mad man, the author would only need say so. One doesn't need to bother with misunderstandings to describe him. The author may just get lazy and write him a bio. After all once you read the bio at the beginning, it's all fair game. The author doesn't need to have reasons to account for Buck's actions, he simply says, consult the bio.

       Buck was a kind man who loved giant girls. So he invented a shrinking machine to use on himself. Now he is at Francine's house. End Bio.

       Francine was hoping for an interesting character to spend some time with. Perhaps someone she could learn about through exchanges of misunderstandings. Maybe a shrunk fellow who was lost. Instead she got Buck, he was a man she didn't know. But somehow without a word, she felt he must be smart. It was apparent that she had a role to play today. According to the manuscript her director/Author gave her, she was to act like a bitch, randomly discover the little creep, and without any reason end his life under her foot. She couldn't argue, she had not had any dialogue or interaction with Buck. Yet she had a job to do. So lifting her large white cotton suck, she breathed a sigh as she snuffed out Buck's life beneath her. A small red stain glistened on the bottom of her foot. Oh, she wished there could have been more, well anything. She will never be remembered as any kind of character for this role.

Tim:

       Tim didn't have any Bio. He was told by the author to reveal his unique personality to the readers through his interaction with, the setting, the other characters through dialogue, and of course, his actions.

       Since he did so, it was not surprising when the author noticed a spike of new readers on his story. People generally cared about Tim's tough decisions he had to make. His heartfelt conversation's with the girl named Francine. A girl who had apparently had a crush on him years before. It had all come down to a near happy ending, when Francine discovered he had been lying to her. He was married, and unable to fulfill any promises he had made to her over the past few days. She ended it.

Francine:

       Francine is the glue which hold the story together, she can be a important character, or side character, she can even be a cheap thrill in Buck's story, serving no other purpose then to get you off. Francine is important as part of the main character's setting, and as a tool for his inter action.

       I feel both the example stories above showed how Francine can be done. Please don't neglect Francine, without her, your Tim, is nothing more than a boring auto biography!

Why we should give a damn about the character:

       As an author you should care, because those reading it, can usually tell when you don't, and as a result won't either.

       If your character is not relatable, or liked in any way by the reader, not even in the form of general interest. It's going to be rather hard keeping them as a reader.

       If your character is Buck, and the reader is only their because Francine kills him, then you might want to re-evaluate your stories. If your story is only there for a cheap thrill, chances are, that's all the readers will ever expect from your writing.

       If your characters are deep, and their personalities captivating, and interesting, chances are your story will be remembered and well liked.

A special note regarding Bio's. I mean no disrespect towards anyone who uses, Bio's I'm merely stating my thoughts and opinion's on the matter.

       Bio, is short for Biography. It is a way to describe your character's in a plain strand or chunk of data to anyone reading it. It may be convenient, but it's destroying any future build up about your characters in your story. It is lazy act done by authors often to bypass the inconvenience of writing out scenario's which bring your characters personality and traits to bear. Reading a chunk of raw facts is far less appealing them simply learning about the characters as the story progresses. Often times the data in some people's bio's is completely left out of the story, leaving the readers who skipped the bio's lost and confused when the reader expected them too.

       It is a silly practice, and no professional author does it unless they are writing a factual writing construct, like a biography, or facts book. Please let your characters act out their own traits, let your side characters observe and describe your main characters. Don't become the author who dictates every little thing to their reader, because they are too lazy to write out the proper scenario's which would do so, far better.

So with all these current thoughts in my head written, I will leave you again with another simple exercise which may improve your writing, try this exercise if you wish.

       Take a look at a picture, just use Google to pull something up with two people inside the shot. Now try writing a scenario for what you see in the picture. Do your best to have only your characters describe what they see, and use their actions they take, to describe what they are doing in the picture.

       Got your scenario written? Good, do it again, accept link this picture with the last.

       Finished that? Well, now try writing a scenario without a picture. Once done have a friend read it and the scenario you wrote from the pictures. Ask his opinion of which was better. This may help you identify problems in your writing.