Being a Better Writer: Digging Deeper With Characters

Yes! Being a Better Writer has returned to Monday!

Honestly, I think I just got lucky this week in not being called into work today, but even so, it feels good to be working on BaBW on a Monday again! This is the day when it's supposed to go down ... Well, up, technically.

Today is also the first day we'll be going off of Topic List IX! That's right, new list, new topics!

Which brings us to today's topic of choice: digging deeper with characters!

This is a topic I actually only added to the list recently, in light of some of my own reading experiences. You see, about a week ago I stumbled across a short story and blitzed through it, only to end up thoroughly nonplussed.

I'll be frank. It wasn't a very well written story. The dialogue was poor, the grammar even less impressive, the pacing nonexistent, tell instead of show everywhere, etc, etc. It was clearly someone's first or second work ... more likely the former. So lots of issues, both little and large. That's just how a first work goes, though.

Anyway, the issue that stood out most to me, however, was the one around which the "crux" of the story itself resolved. The story was centered around two characters, one trying to get to know some secrets about the other in order to be less "alone" (essentially). But ... it completely fell flat. And since this was the purpose of the story (these two characters interacting), everything else that was wrong with the work sort of fell by the wayside in the path of this largest omission. Sure, there were pacing problems, grammar issues, etc, but the core that the story wanted to deliver, nay, promised to deliver, that of a character-driven piece, was completely whiffed.

Why? Simple: It didn't give its characters any narrative depth or weight. They were simply ... pieces, for lack of a better word. Static markers being moved along a timeline. They reacted and they moved, but only in the same way that a game piece moves and reacts. They may have taken a position or "moved" from place to place, but they were still essentially markers for "Character A" and "Character B," with little nuance or action outside of that.

Dig deeper with the rest of this article at Unusual Things!