Sketching For Writers

I must admit, doing character sketches might be perhaps the most entertaining part of writing. I’ve just finished a good hour or so of it, and I’m excited. Maybe mostly because I came up with a bunch of individual character traits for each of the three main characters for D:R, and have just spent an hour trying to piece them together – specifically, to build a hierarchy of traits. That is, the revolutionary soldier feels this way because he also feels this way, and that because he feels this way – using only the fifteen traits I wrote out earlier. Now, I fleshed some things out, historical things, that help this bridge to stand; but for the most part is was seeing (and a lot of just figuring out) how all these pieces could fit together. One guy seems completely paradoxical – and still is in the sense that he seems complex but is actually rather simple. Other characters are beautifully 

complex, and it is fun to see how they’re unique in their ways.

Of course, especially fun was listing two identical character traits for completely opposite characters, and then seeing how those traits became manifest uniquely to each. Another kind of pre-emptory thing I do is to create a map and work out some of the history of the place. That lends itself very well to plot, sometimes. Taking both of these concepts together, it’s interesting how much history can fill in the blanks of a novel – the history of the individual character drives their traits, which is going to drive how they interact with one another, and the history of the land drives how the characters will interact with their historical moment.

This is the first time I’m trying something like this – and, lacking any real experience, I feel like it is very right, somehow. I began trying to flesh out the characters of D:F – my abandoned first novel – but that was only after I had the plot almost totally worked out. It became almost secondary. Now, I’m in a position to try this at the very early stages; the plot for D:R is skeletal enough to allow lots of accommodation for character and historical needs.

So, while I personally cannot say for certain how good an idea this is, I think it’s worth the effort to try. There’s never anything wrong with getting to know your characters better. I’ll probably end up doing some character glimpse before truly sitting down to write, but I’m certainly one giant step forward. I’m excited to post that I have chapter one done. Even more excited, of course, to say that the book is done and sent off to agents. Stick around, and we’ll get there together!

See you Monday.