Breathing Life Into Your Characters by Mark Timlin

Never worry about going over the top when it comes to characterisation. Make your characters real characters but make them interesting. It’s fiction don’t forget, so don’t be boring.

Meeting a bore in real life is bad enough, but meeting a bore between hard or soft covers is possibly worse, and that’s why some books are put down and never picked up again.

Think of some the greatest characters in literature – Dickens’s Mr Micawber, Mrs Gump and Daniel Quilp (to name just three); Count Dracula; James Bond; Nurse Ratched in One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest; Captain Ahab; Mrs Bennet of Pride & Prejudice; Jay Gatsby, etc, etc – hardly normal, everyday people, but totally memorable and as real as the fingers you’re using to turn the pages.

What about the other main characters in my books? The truth is most, if not all, are based on people I knew, or had met at some time or another. In my previous life I’d come across a lot of really strange people. Musicians, actors, ‘duckers and divers’, villains, good people and bad. There were a thousand stories and a thousand lives I plundered, just changing the names to protect the innocent and guilty alike. A rich stew.

Sit in a bar, get chatting, tell your new friend you’re a writer, and people will pour out their life stories. I promise you it’s the truth.

Love your characters, even the most disgusting. Because if you don’t, no one else will. I love Sharman. I’ve killed him once and retired him to a desert island, but like Conan Doyle with Sherlock Holmes I just keep bringing him back. He’s like an old overcoat that fits perfectly. I don’t know what I’d do without him. If it weren’t for Nick Sharman I wouldn’t be writing this now and you (almost certainly) would not be reading it. 

Mark Timlin

(Taken from Write A Novel In 60 Days That Will Sell by Mark Timlin)

Mark Timlin: WRITE NOW!

Write your novel in 60 days - really!

Must have new eBook, $29.95

http://www.60daybooks.com

captain ahab, characterisation, characters, count dracula, dickens, dracula, james bond, literature, mark timlin, mr micawber, mrs bennet, novel writing, nurse ratched, one flew over the cuckoos nest, Writing, writing a novel

Popularity: 99% [?]

If you’re new here, you may want to subscribe to my RSS feed. Thanks for visiting!