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In the last post, I began a calm tirade about characters making the story.

That opinion hasn't changed.

Never will.

What I would like to talk about in this post (before I go into any Zoë details and ask for questions) is one method that can be used in learning characterization-in other words-how I build characters.

Anyone that knows me knows it's no secret that I'm a Gamer.

Not so much the stereotypical gamer-locked in a room or a house for hours with my hands melded into the controller, joining the ranks of the unwashed masses and a stack of pizza-boxes moldering in the kitchen garbage.

No, I'm talking more along the lines of table-top gaming, or affectionately known as Role Playing Games, or RPG.

For the uneducated, or you MEGO expelling unbelievers out there, RPG is all about character building, because without it, there wouldn't be a game.

It's very basic: a company makes up a world, and the world's rules as well as the social and economic events that take place in the macro-universe. All players buy a core rule book that gives out these details from currency to clothing.

Once the group of 4 or 5 decide which game to play everyone reads this book. Then, either before the first meeting or during, the player must create a character.

What...hello? What did she say?

Yes...create a CHARACTER.

Uhm-hum. And depending on the GM (Game Master) or ST (Story Teller), that character not only has to have game stats (as in his/her physical attributes, magical abilities -if any, intelligence, how strong, illnesses, weaknesses-you get my point), but they also have to come up with a character background.

Yes. Background.

I was fortunate that in my first real game since college (back then it was D&D and Vampire and I core-dumped it all), my ST wanted a FULL background. The character's history, their dreams, their hopes, their fears, their loss, what makes them go forward, what makes them cry.

I sort of stared at her in utter disbelief. "What for?" I asked.

"Because in order for me to run the game, I have to know where to add my conflict, where to add my corporation, and where to add the heartbreak and then happiness. If I know a character's background, then I know how they'll react in the situation. And so will you."

Can I say creepy?

Well...we were scheduled for a Hawaii trip between games. I was in a hotel a lot as my husband was off doing a conference on genetic-whatsis-nots. I pulled my laptop out (a nice Tangerine Shell design Apple at the time) and proceeded to write one of the most in depth character backgrounds (while watching the rules of the world) I'd ever done.

When I was finished, an hour and a half had passed, and I hadn't even worried about word count, or page count. I just opened up my imagination, and fueled the ideas.

I knew his race, his age, his likes, his dislikes, I knew his first love and his first heart break, and I even knew how old he was when his alarm clock went off (how old were you when you grew up-when the world was no longer full of rainbows and butterflies).

I felt closer to him at that moment than my own skin, and so upon returning to the game, I turned in a 14 page history/background to my ST.

Can I say Evil Grin didn't do the look on her face justice?

I had given her all the fuel she needed to bend and mold and shape that character within this world. Not only did she have mine, but the other four as well, and since she as the ST knew everyone's past, she could now play one off the other.

Hrm....kinda like a writer writing about their characters.

And as I played, I knew him, I knew how he'd react, and being a shy person, I tossed off that part of me and became him in game play just as a writer must become the characters they write through.

This wasn't me. This was the character.

My character.

And as that game went on, I would think of how he'd react to situations in the every day world. What would go through his mind. Would he eat that or be polite and lie? Would he help that elderly lady or would he pass her by?

Would he get involved?

And I knew I'd hit that eureka moment when I started writing stories about him, not in-game...but in real life. He became a full fledged person inside of my head.

Now, hold on before you call the white coats.

I knew he wasn't real. Not in my life. But in the world of my imagination he shown brighter than any character I'd ever written.

And you know what ridiculous thing I started doing because he was so vivid? I started recording our gaming sessions. Yep. And then I started writing them.

I worked our games into serial fiction, which I put online for anyone who played that particular RPG to read if they wanted. And believe it or not, it's still up, even with all its grammatical flaws!

This little exercise, which I don't really recommend to anyone if you're a busy parent struggling to find time to just jot down 500 words a day (me at the time), did do one very important thing for me-it taught me to write fast.

We gamed on Tuesday nights. I had the session transcribed, the fiction written, the graphics done and the whole thing usually up and posted by the weekend, before the next game.

Yikes!

Kiddies, don't try this at home unless you really mean it.

We played for a year.

And one month after we finished and I continued the story on my own without the need of the gaming partners-I stayed up one night in a writing workshop, and I created a background for a female character for inclusion in a novel proposal.

A month later, I sold Wraith, and Zoë Martinique was born, with all her human flaws.  

Boo-yah!

The point of this weird mess of consciousness is to explain that in fiction, in order for your reader to care about your character, you have to care about them. You have to know them-inside and out. Because believe me, readers want to know them. And sometimes they'll know them better than you.

Yeah, yeah, yeah-you've heard this before. All the books say it, all the writers say it at RWA or RT or any of the other conferences you've been to and you sort of by-pass it because it just seems like so much trouble.

So...if we all say it...why don't you believe it?

Give it a try. And for a really great character sheet, I recommend one I use, created by Laura Hayden, from Laura Hayden's "Left-Brain- Right Brain/Creativity Program."

We're all the sum of our experiences, our memories, our decisions (whether good or bad). Without those, there is no personality, no ego, nothing much to hold onto in the day to day. If a character doesn't also have these memories, experiences-they'll remain flat, two-dimensional people on a page. Oh there will be readers who still care about them...but wouldn't it be more fun to round them out ourselves?

Links to both the character sheet and game fiction can be found on my website at www.phaedraweldon.com, under Extras (column on the left).

 

Phaedra Weldon, Phantasm, urban fantasy, Penguin Books