We Aren't That Interesting

Write what you know.

That’s what they say. A common mistake, especially among new writers, is that their main characters are just a version of themselves. Unfortunately, you’re not that interesting. I know I’m not that interesting. If your main character is a writer you’re not doing your story justice. What do writers do? They sit at the computer and type. I can get bored writing, I would hate to sit and watch 2 hours of someone typing. The main character should be out in the world doing something. Preferably something interesting. Even Hemingway didn’t sit on the back of an elephant writing a novel. Create a character that isn’t you.

Write what you know.

The good version of writing what you know (in my opinion) is that you’re writing about a character that you’ve spent so much time developing you can get in their head and understand their thoughts and emotions. These things should come from the character and not be reflections of how you would react. They should be emotions and reactions that come from that character. Yes the character comes from you but they should not be you.

What’s in a name?

A man in his late 50’s walks into the room and takes off his hat.

Archibald walks into the room and takes off his hat.

I like to start with a name for my characters. I think a name does a lot for a character. It makes the character a person. You can invest in someone named Archibald. You can’t easily invest in a male in his late 50’s. A name gives you something to hold onto. It gives you a sense that the character has a life outside the sentence. In the first example above you have no sense of time, place, or motivation. In the second example you can imagine that Archibald has a specific type of hat. You probably get a sense of what the room looks like. Who is Archibald and why is he in this room taking off his hat? Why doesn’t he go by the abbreviated name of Archie? I feel like the name starts building the character. Based on that single sentence your version of Archibald is probably far different from mine but it gets you to start asking questions about him. That’s a pretty good place to start.

My main character will be Harlan Millard. Thanks for the suggestions everyone.

Who is Harlan Millard?

Sometimes you just don’t know anything about the character and need to start with their information to get to know them and what their story is. Usually you will have some idea of the kind of story you want to tell and have some idea of a hook to the character that you want to start with and build out. A hook being an aspect of the character that you find interesting. Something that will be a central part of the story your going to tell.

Brainstorming the Hook

I was considering how to go about telling this story about Harlan, a man who needs to discover what it means to be a man in our modern American culture. It’s a search for identity. He’s searching for a role in life. If he’s searching for that perhaps he’s starting out as immature. Still childlike in how he sees the world. A child has a great imagination. The world is a wondrous place where anything is possible. Maybe Harlan sees the world that way. Maybe Harlan sees the world with so much imagination that he gets lost with his wandering thoughts and loses connection with the regular world. What if we could see what Harlan sees? What if we could see the dragons, robots, and adventurous things Harlan imagines as he takes the trash out? Is a ride on a bus a journey to a distant planet aboard a giant spaceship? It might be to Harlan. I think I want to find out.

We all have skeletons.

What are the parts that make up this person named Harlan? I have a hook but that isn’t enough. I need to know everything about him. I have a template that I use to break down a lot of the basic character work. You can find templates like this in tons of places around the internet. You can go simple where it’s just things like height, weight, age, etc. Or you can get really in depth where it’s 10 pages of information about every aspect of the character. Mine is generally 2 pages of information once it’s all done. Find something that works for you and start filling in information about the character. None of it is written in stone.

This is the form I fill out.

My intent is to tell the story of a man about to turn 30 who gets so involved in his imagination that we (the audience) slip in and out of his fantasy world with him. The things that happen in his fantasy world will be how he imagines the things he’s experiencing in the normal world. For example: if he’s making the bed we might see it as him doing repairs to a giant robot. He turns the normal world into a fantasy so that he can engage with it. I’ll be building Harlan with that in mind. The answers to the questions in the character template should give me ideas on how to get into his life and reveal who he is and how he thinks. They’ll also give me threads to work with as I build the story.

Next time we’ll take a look at the answers I have to these questions and which ones give me ideas to work with as we move forward.