Inhabiting Your Character: Journeying to the Ends of the Earth

Posted by Anjuelle Floyd | Filed under Articles and Essays, Musings

Crafting a novel requires a major character with whom the author is willing to spend at least the next year. Much of the time spent with that character requires inhabiting her or his skin, living inside their situation that we have created.

As writers we expend a significant part of the energy of our imagination towards creating a living, breathing experience of the character and the problem they face, and then finding various ways to inhabit that world.

Characters come to us as writers and authors in myriad ways.

Yet to craft a novel, a story that sustains a moving experience that engages a reader across the miles of 150-300 pages or more, we must travel twice as far in the universe, mind and soul of this character, our protagonist.

We must also traverse plains, hills and valleys that comprise the experiences of the supporting characters.

Good stories do not simply reveal and dramatize the protagonist’s needs and desires. They establish the yearnings of held by supporting cast, most particularly the antagonist.

The head-on collision of the protagonist’s journey to manifest her or his hopes, dreams and wishes with that of the antagonist’s goals gives rise to conflict and tension.

Actions towards those ends, and shaped by quirks of personality rooted in back story dramatize the collision and gives birth to an atmosphere of transformation.

Characters’ opposing actions toward achieving their goals deliver a context ripe for upping the ante in the face of disappointment, and thus raising the stakes of the outcome.

Following characters through this journey, remaining true to their personalities through development of the story when the going gets tight and tough requires that we the writer travel to the ends of the earth, our experience as we know it, and cross over into that of the character about whom we write and around whom our story is centered.

Thus we undergo our transformation.

Writing involves our heart and soul as much if not more of our mind.

The challenge when having mastered an adequate sense of craft, is to then give way to the mystery and miracle of telling a story, that of the characters re-writing your and adding chapters to the story our lives as the writer.

This requires perseverance and faith.

How much thought do you give to understanding the personality of your protagonist and supporting characters?

What kind of transformation to you undergo when writing a novel, novella or short story?