Characters – Ellis Morning's Blog

Friends and Foes: Stay Track Of Who’s Who With Relationship Tracking

March 9, 2015 Ellis Morning Comments 0 Comment

All right! Let’s assume you’re plotting your characters for a full-length novel. You’ve used the character sheet to form a baseline idea of where everyone comes from and what they’re capable of. You’ve plotted out character arcs to figure out how the story’s plot is going to affect each character, and how they’ll react in turn. As you might realize while arc-plotting, these characters don’t exist inside glass bubbles, totally separate from other characters. They (gasp!) interact with one another…

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The Arc: Character Change Tracking

March 2, 2015 Ellis Morning Comments 0 Comment

(Image credit: Imagebase.net) When you create a character, you start with a collection of attributes. Then a story happens- and if it’s a complicated story, it affects the character. Their attributes change, for better or worse. Actually, there are two types of character change you may track as a writer, depending on how much upfront planning you like to do. There’s the anticipated character arc you plot out before getting started, and then there are the unanticipated changes that come…

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Writers Use Character Sheets, Too: Tracking The Present State

February 23, 2015 Ellis Morning Comments 0 Comment

You may need a few… hundred of these… Anyone familiar with pen-and-paper roleplaying games (RPGs) has spent a few hours, and plowed through a few packs of cookies and soda, to set up character sheets. Character sheets define the starting state of a character, and allow a player to track how that state changes throughout the roleplaying campaign. Most character sheets are daunting to the first-time player, because there’s so much to track. What does the character look like? What…

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“One Crisis At A Time!” Using Priority to Differentiate Heroes

January 5, 2015 Ellis Morning Comments 0 Comment

Does anyone else remember Swat Kats? I love this cartoon. Razor and T-Bone are heroes with a souped-up fighter jet, hearts of gold, and a common goal: protecting MegaKat City from villains. However, they sometimes disagree on how to go about it. Razor’s more cautious, strategic, and sensitive. T-Bone’s the stubborn tough-guy who relies on muscle and insane piloting stunts. So it’s not surprising that they come up with different ideas for handling a situation, or disagree on what their…

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What Do YOU Contribute To Your Characters?

December 15, 2014 Ellis Morning Comments 0 Comment

Short answer: caffeine and neuroses! How much are your characters an extension of yourself? This is a longer spectrum than one might think. At first blush, it might seem binary: either a character is based on you, or s/he isn’t. If s/he is, there’s a chance s/he’s the dreaded Mary Sue: a character who is 100% you (or what you wish you could be). Mary Sue tends to crop up in fanfiction, and is generally disliked. Why? Because when an…

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Ask Not Who Your Character IS, But What He DOES

November 3, 2014 Ellis Morning Comments 0 Comment

Or, ask both. (Image credit: Bill Main) Now that it’s November, I’m aware many of you are involved in an obscure, little-talked-about, mass binge-writing event. If you number among the participants, best of luck to you! Let me offer some help with the planning stages, so you don’t throw down 15,000 words and then realize you don’t know where the hell you’re going with it. Oh, you’re already at that point? No worries! I’ve got some rewrites of my own…

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Bad At Imagery? Your Characters Can Help!

March 10, 2014 Ellis Morning Comments 0 Comment

Ah, the unearthly blue lakes of the Swiss Alps. What a great setting to include in your story! Problem is, how do you describe it in words and achieve the same breathtaking effect? Trick question. You shouldn’t be describing anything. Your point-of-view character, or your narrator, communicates with the reader. The first step toward good imagery is describing the scene the way s/he would describe it. This is invaluable early in the story for establishing the world and revealing insight…

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9 Universal Tips for Describing Your Characters

March 3, 2014 Ellis Morning Comments 0 Comment

(Image credit: Leadershipcriteria Clipart) Character descriptions are one area where there’s no agreement on a single best approach. Everyone has different desires and expectations. Some writers paint vivid, exacting pictures of each character, down to eye and hair color. Some readers love this, and have trouble “seeing” the characters in their minds without those details. My approach, as a writer and reader, is the opposite. I prefer to describe only what’s vital to understanding the characters and plot. When I…

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