I think, for me, the most insightful thing I learned came the day before
the conference at the Publication Primer--and it came about because of
something I'd noticed after I sent in my first chapter of
The Swap for
review by my group. It had to do with point of view. My instructor was
Clint Johnson.
We
need to be very careful when we're writing MG or YA that we don't try
to view our mc as an adult would. We really need to be IN our MG or YA
character's head and see how their adolescent view of the world impacts
what we show and how we portray their thoughts.
He gave an
example of showing a character sitting at a table in the room where we
were gathered. If a woman entered the room and the character at the
table noticed she had on red stiletto heels and even what brand of shoe
they were, what would that tell us about the character? That she's a
woman (or a gay guy into shoes). If the character looked at the woman's
chest first, we could assume the character is a guy.
Clint then suggested we consider that the character was a woman who'd given birth to a baby a few weeks
ago and was suffering from severe postpartum depression. He asked how
differently she might see the room we were in compared to someone who was just
happy to be there and whose life was good at that moment.
When we
describe what our characters see, it should reflect their life experiences,
their current emotional state. What in a busy room draws their attention is important. In fact, it's a great way to
show their emotional state without
telling the reader what it is.
Clint asked me why my character in the chapter that was being critiqued was acting the way she is. He suggested that if the reason I gave was all there was to her motivation, then she was two dimensional. It really gave me
pause. I think I may need to give a little more thought to the
internal motivations and finally break down and do up a character bible
for each one.
What kind of information do you put together on your characters? Where do you keep it?
