Pintrest to Develop Characters

Many Social Media platforms can be used to help you develop and track your characters. This week, I’m exploring just one of these: Pintrest, to see how useful it can be in developing a sense of a character and in creating an evocation of that character in order to flesh them out, ready for and beyond words on a page.

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Tracking Your Characters

Keeping track of your characters can be a tricky business, especially if your novel has a complex plot with lots of twists and turns, or you have a number of characters who are all pivotal to the success of your storyline. How do you keep tabs on them all to ensure they have depth of character, are well rounded and believable rather than simply one-dimensional fillers who pull your story down around them?

 

Girl with mauscriptFirstly you need to simply keep track of who is who and how names are spelt – pretty basic stuff. You also need to keep track of the way your characters look: if you say one character has green eyes in chapter 2, you don’t want to forget this detail and give them blue eyes in chapter 15. Again, it sounds like basic stuff, but it is easy to confuse these small character details when a character from the beginning of the story reappears toward the end, and you’ve dealt with a number of other characters in between. And you need to keep track of your characters actions.

 

Methods for tracking your characters

  • Index cards

Use index cards to list your characters. Clearly write the name of your character on the top of the card. Then list the basic details, like date of birth, where they were born, who their family is, who they are in a relationship with, who their friends are, who their enemies are…hey, even where they went to school if this is relevant to your particular story. Write a physical description of your character: what they look like, how they move, etc. You can file these cards alphabetically for ease of access.

  • Address book

Buy a cheap address book and add your characters to that, including lists of all the important details as per above.

  • Spreadsheets

Another way is by using spreadsheets. Enter the name of every character in your book – it’s much easier to do this as you go! Then add columns for all the important details as per above, eg: a column for family, a column for friends, etc.

  • Accordian file

Grab one of those alphabetised accordion files. These are a great supplement to other methods because you can put found things in there. For example, you might trawl through magazines looking for faces or images that remind you of or symbolise your character. You might come across an article about something particular to one of your characters, eg: one might be a beekeeper and you find an article on the declining health of bees; or you might find relevant brochures, eg: a character might be a gardener and you pick up a brochure for your local botanic gardens. Get the idea?

  •  Timelines

Timelines are great too. These can help you track the individual journey and development of each character and can be created using paper and pens, index cards and spreadsheets with all your characters’ details. There are also a number of timeline programs that can help you with this. Microsoft offer timeline templates in both Word and Excel, Time Glider is one online timeline – great for collaborative writing projects.

 

Tracking your character resources:

 

 

If you found this post useful, you might want to look at my previous blog What Are Plot, Subplot & Backstory?

…And keep an eye out for my blog this coming Friday about using social media for character development and tracking.

 

Photo credit: Girl with manuscript

 

Friends

How do people make friends? School, work and hobbies often form the basis of meeting people – places where you meet regularly or have a shared interest. Small children are much better at making friends than adults, I mean, walking up to someone in the supermarket and saying “Will you be my friend” like a child in the playground, just isn’t appropriate! It can even be difficult within clubs, like sports groups, to form friendships that stretch beyond the group itself.

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Character Prompted Writing

Coming back to basics, like character descriptions, can prompt new writing. Today I am using brief character descriptions to prompt writing for my novel. This is useful in times when you have a writing lull…never panic, just go back to a writing exercise to keep writing and keep thinking about your story. This will breathe life, not only into the plot, but into you, the author. In this way, writing exercises can keep you fresh and keep your writing flowing, even on those days when the writing of your actual novel has slowed.

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Difference and Discrimination

My writing at the moment is slow…no lightening pace for me, no blistering pace with fingers scorched from the heat of frantic typing. My writing proceeds at a slow, secreting, oozing pace. It is frustrating, but every word counts.

Actually, this is not quite true, I am writing quite a bit: poems, appraisals, reviews, essays …just not much on my novel!

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Building a sense of character

This week I am trying to bring my main character, Annabella, into my head so that everything that happens to me becomes raw material. With each event or occurrence in my life, I wonder how she would react. I am building a sense of where I see her in life. This is helping me to notice things in my life that might be useful in my writing. Give it a try yourself: be observant – how can you use your life in your writing?

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Relationships and action

Today, I am thinking about relationships, specifically how each of my characters relate to the protagonist, Annabella. I realised that I had too many good guys and not enough really horrible ones – so I have tried to balance this out a little by creating the following list.

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A new writing day

Louise Doughty says, “A novel is written in increments, just as a weight-loss plan happens pound by pound…it is important to realise that there will always be times when it is one step forward, two steps back.” She concludes this particular chapter by declaring, “Today is the first day of the rest of my novel.” – not a bad mantra to have!

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