Creating Memorable Characters

October 24, 2008

Falmouth, MA

Sea Crest Oceanfront Resort

Executive Summary

This course will teach you how to create memorable characters. Characters can make or break your story. Creating a memorable and intriguing character is often the difference between an agent or an editor deciding to commit several days of her life to read 450 pages, or putting your manuscript down. Attendees are encouraged to bring excerpts of their work for reading aloud, comment and critique. Questions will be welcomed.

Faculty

John Hough, Jr. is the author of the novels A Two Car Funeral, The Guardian, The Conduct of the Game, and The Last Summer. He is also the author the nonfiction works A Peck of Salt, A Dream Season, and A Player For a Moment. He is a former speech writer for United States Senator Charles Mathias and a former writer for the New York Times while serving as the assistant to James Reston. John is an experienced writing teacher. He resides on Martha’s Vineyard.

Tuition

The $495.00 tuition includes a continental breakfast, breaks, lunch with faculty, a detailed manual which can be retained as a bookshelf reference, and a dynamic learning experience.

Click here for registration information.

Schedule

Friday, October 24, 2008

Friday, October 24, 2008

7:00-8:00Registration and Continental Breakfast

8:00-9:00The Importance of Character in Fiction: What do the works of Shakespeare and Robert B. Parker have in common?
The construction of a novel can begin with character as well as with a story line. If a character or characters are good, story inevitably follows, because every character has one. We will discuss the importance of character in fiction–to what extent is good fiction dependent on good characters, and why?

9:00-10:00Idiosyncrasy: What Long John Silver, Huckleberry Finn, Harry Angstrom, Augustus McCrea, Lady Ashley, Daisy Buchanan and just about anyone in a novel by Charles Dickens have in common.
A fictional character can be described as “larger than life,” but only in the sense in which we sometimes apply the phrase to real people. Babe Ruth is said to have been “larger than life,” but this figurative largeness, both on and off the baseball field, was the sum of his eccentricities. Memorable characters are, by definition, unique, and uniqueness is comprised of idiosyncrasy. What is idiosyncrasy, and how is it manifested?

10:00-10:15BREAK & NETWORKING OPPORTUNITY

10:15-11:00Painting by numbers, or how not to create a fictional character
It is true that we create or invent our characters, but this process of invention is more intuitive than calculated. Actors talk about “finding” a character they play, and writers come to their invented characters by a similar process. Think of it is an act of discovery rather than invention. Characters are NOT assembled piece by piece, characteristic by characteristic, as you would paint a picture by color-coded numbers, or put together a robot. Characters come whole, whether suddenly or gradually, as you find or discover them.

11:00-12:00Action is Character: The most effective and memorable way to write character
F. Scott Fitzgerald said this famously, and there is no better rule for writing memorable characters. Characters are what they do. They reveal themselves in every action action and reaction, every decision they make, whether split second or meditated. Attendees will be instructed in the difference between writing characters externally and writing them from the inside, and the uses of both in revealing character. When is it sufficient to let a character’s actions speak for themselves, and when not?

12:00-1:00LUNCH PROVIDED WITH FACULTY

1:00-2:00Plausability: He wouldn't say that-or would he?
Implausibility can infect an entire work of fiction like a virus. What makes a fictional character plausible or implausible in the first place? To what extent can the writer rely on the reader’s willing suspension of disbelief? Know your characters. If you do, truly, then you will know what they can, or cannot, plausibly do, say, or think.

2:00-3:00Ambiguity: Is his name really Jimmy Blevins?
Some characters, in some cases, must necessarily have a certain mystery about them. They are written from the outside, obviously, and while there is doubt as to their motives, pasts, or truthfulness, they must be vivid and alive, they must be convincing as characters. Is it necessary for the writer to know the unrevealed truth about them?

3:00-3:15BREAK & NETWORKING OPPORTUNITY

3:15-4:15Sophie's Lie: How Character shapes story
It can take awhile to get to know someone intimately in real life, and the same is true of your characters in fiction. The more time you spend with them, the better you know them, and sometimes they can surprise you. These surprises may push your story in an unexpected direction. Writing, said the late Peter Davison, is a process of discovery. We’ll discuss this, and how to approach your fiction with the necessary flexibility of thought and imagination.