Writing Real Characters

image from aspenpeak-magazine.com

  Your whole life is gathering material for a really good story. And that story should be filled with realistic characters and events and settings. Yes! Even Fantasy.

  After all, your readers have to be able to connect with characters in fantasy, too. That character may be a big hairy guy with an ammo belt slung across his chest. And maybe he doesn’t speak, just grunts and growls and roars. But I can tell you, that Wookie reminds me of someone’s brother or father or a guy I went out with once.

  For me, dialogue describes my character more than the color of their hair or how tall they are. Unless, of course, the color of their hair plays a significant role in my story. For instance in Murder on Ceres Rafe has red hair and green eyes. They are important to the story. If you haven’t read it yet, check it out. http://bit.ly/murderonceres.

  Where do I get the dialogue? It’s in the air, all around us, all the time. Even when we sleep, we dream dialogue. All we have to do is listen.

  My grandmother, being ever so conscientious about not taking the Lord’s name in vain, would occasionally exclaim, “Lawsy, lawsy.” As opposed to Lordy, Lordy. My grandfather, however, was not so religiously scrupulous. He was a good and kind man, but it was not unusual for him to emphasize a statement by preceding it with “eye-God.” Phonetically – he was saying “by God” not referring to God’s eye. If I use either of these exclamations in my story, you’ll recognize the character whether or not I describe them physically.

  I love to eat out. Don’t get to do it often, but when I do, I listen. I gather material. At a café in Santa Maria, California, on my way down Highway 101, I got to eavesdrop on a group of local farmers having coffee. Their conversation was not unlike the farmers having coffee in Guthrie, Oklahoma. Will it rain? Taxes are too high. A neighbor has done something that’s negatively affecting their creek, their fence-line, or their line of sight. The accent is different. Idioms are different. Even the rhythms are different. These things may be too esoteric to give a reader the information they need to locate the speaker geographically, but the farmer’s concerns are the same, and the reader will recognize them no matter the idioms or accent or rhythms. They are real characters.

  There was a man who came into the office where I used to work. He would say “She went to town. So she did.” Or, “it rained so hard, it was a toad-strangler. So it was.” He invariably ended whatever statement he made with “So he/she/it did/was/verb-of-choice.” Another distinctive voice.

  If you use a particular speech pattern consistently for a particular character, the reader will recognize that character whenever they speak, so they will.

  And not just words, repetitive noises can be identifying. Post-nasal drip sufferers and their sniffing and snorting. Smokers and their throat clearing. People who eat too much fiber and their – well, you know. Pencil tappers and toe tappers, paper shufflers and rattlers. People who pant and puff and suck their teeth. Eye-rollers, shruggers, nodders. Yes, sometimes we do need to listen with our eyes to catch all the wonderful sounds and actions to use in and around our dialogue.

  So my advice to character builders everywhere (and I don’t mean sports coaches) is to listen, appreciate, and use all the dialogue – verbal and nonverbal – that comes your way. Now, go to a local café and have a cup of coffee and a piece of pie for me. And eavesdrop.