Writers Workshop: Building Believable Characters

Honey over at Stories to Share is starting a Writers Workshop and I'm all fired up about it. If you haven't yet visited Honey and/or want to participate, please stop by her blog HERE, she's a wonderful writer and a super nice blogger. (:

In her post, Honey provides two really nice examples of characterization. One taken from Hemingway, The Short Happy Life of Francis Macomber and the second, her own characterization of the main character in her book. Please go check it out!

I also wanted to add another example of character description based primarily on physical appearance. It's an excerpt of the bounty hunter Stephanie Plum in Seven Up, by Janet Evanovich:

I wasn't sure what one wore to the Pit, but slut hair seemed like a good idea, so I did the hot roller and teasing thing. This increased my height from five foot seven inches to five foot ten.  I tarted myself up with a lot of makeup, added a short black spandex skirt and four-inch heels, and I felt very kick-ass. I grabbed my leather jacket and took the car keys from the kitchen counter. Hold on. These weren't car keys. They were motorcycle keys. Shit! I'd never get my hair in the helmet. 

That was, fun wasn't it? Not only did I great strong mental image of this woman but I also have good idea of her personality type based on this short paragraph. And according to Characters, Emotion & Viewpoint by Nancy Kress, the success of the above description stems from its ability to accomplish three main points:

     -provides a strong visual image
     -uses details to imply personality traits and/or personal background
     -the description intrigues us about what will happen next

So now here's my challenge (copied from Honey's post) :

     Exercise: Do a character sketch. I found this website, click on the word here, with some great suggestions for building characters. 

I'm going to do this by pulling out an excerpt from my wip. It's an early description of Edessa Scottwood, my main character as she sees herself in a mirror.

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My face was ashen white, my cheeks hollow and purplish shadows hung tightly beneath my eyes. My hair was a wiry mass that had been cropped short even by boys standards. My mind flashed back to almost a week ago during one of my destructive and hysterical breakdowns. My emotional pain had me toying with the idea of slitting my wrists, but I ended up hacking away at my hair instead. What a mess, Edessa. I couldn't help looking over the rest of my naked body and frankly, it too didn't look much better than the rest. I had lost most of my womanly curves and looked more like a dry, over stretched rubber band. I tried straighten out my back and moaned as it set in three different places. And as I scrutinized the rest of my haggard body in the mirror, I realized the only thing I did recognize were the color of my eyes, still the same shade of green. 

Why do I care what I look like anyway? The words suddenly growled inside my head. I tried to kill myself only yesterday, so does it really matter if I look like Hell? Interesting word choice, I thought. Hell…

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Well, I can't imagine what you all must be thinking right about now, lol. But it was either this excerpt or the one about the naked guy swimming in the lake. Aren't you glad I chose this one? Come to think of it, looks like I have a lot of naked people in my wip. (o_O) But seriously, I do I would really like to hear some of your thoughts, what works and what doesn't. I appreciate any and all critiques. (:  

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Flamenco Dancing is to a Man's Buns as Water is to a Cup of Tea – HOT*

So as part of my birthday present, my mother took me to the theatre. I hadn’t been in ages so naturally, I was excited. We saw a rendition of Carmen, preformed by a Flamenco dance company. It was amazing! The spirit of flamenco dancing was a perfect mold to Carmen’s fiery and sensual personality. The women dancers were insanely talented and beautiful with their hair pulled back, and their long flowing skirts, and wraparound shawls. Their movements were crisp and intricate combined with lightning fast percussive footwork.  And then there were the male dancers with their tight, tight outfits and superior glutei maximi. *stops to fan self*

Ok, so there was a point I wanted to touch make here… yes, so what I found interesting was that while I was drooling observing the dancers, I noticed each had a distinct persona and I had a lot of fun naming them. For instance, there was The Rooster. You know the one I’m talking about, the short dancer with the hooked nose that compensates by sticking his chest out further then the others. He was by far the best at the flamenco strut.  Then there was Tarzan (my favorite). He traded his vine swinging moves for some flamenco feet stomping. He was the tall guy with the broad upper body, shoulder length dark hair and angular jaw line. He also had deep V shaped eyebrows that gave him that savage look… There was also The Gentlemen with the walking cane. He was simply bad ass. Every time he preformed, he did so with the cane, pounding it on the floor to rapid beats and wielding it through the air like a deadly weapon. During the zombie apocalypse, I want this guy on my side.  And then of course, there was the dancer with The Hair. He portrayed Don José, the guy who kills Carmen at the end. He was your typical male lead, good looking guy with the great hair. I’d add that he had great buns but frankly, they all did. Anyway, I’m not going to name them all, but you get the idea. What was unfortunate however, was the lack of personalities in the women dancers. They were all beautiful, sensual but all cast in the same dye. All except for fiery red Carmen.  I guess that can be attributed to the story of Carmen itself, but still, it would have been fun to see the men pair up with their matching counterparts. When I write, (holy transition Batman, give me a break it’s 1:30 am) I want to be able to create characters like these flamenco dancers. I want characters who step out onto the page with crisp, distinct personalities. How do I do that? With great buns dialogue, but also through the use of physical tags and attributes that  set them apart from the rest. But there's a whole lot more you can do to create great characters. 

So how about you? How do you all make your characters unique?