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Good characters give good pause

What do you remember about someone you met for the first time?

Is it their straight white teeth, or a yellowed and gapped smile? Is it their shoes? Are they perfectly polished or are they scruffy and sad looking?

Is it the way they dress? Is it their steady eye contact or did you find them to be shifty? Was it perhaps the timbre of their voice? What lingers in your mind?

If people make a value judgement on you from the first encounter, think how they see your written characters.

Think how they see your business in an article.

Will they see your cause clearly or will they have a vague idea that something is missing, without quite knowing what or why?

What legacy does your character leave behind when the story is done? Is the reader satisfied that the ending as related by you was the only way it could have come to a conclusion?

Did the reader find the factual article to be unfinished when they came to the final full stop?

How would you know what a reader’s reactions would be?

Well, to ensure you have not left a string unravelled or a point not made you could try telling the story to yourself.

The way to do that is to tape a telling of your story. Listen to it in its entirety without pause. Edit. You don’t need a broadcast quality recording. It is a work in progress, an aid.

In fact, many people use their mobile phone facility to record their thoughts and stories so they can listen back to them. Some listen while they drive along.

While it is the same piece of writing, your ear will relay a slightly different story than will your eye on scanning it.

When you record the piece, do so at a steady pace without coughs or hums or haws. Resist the temptation to stop the recording while it is playing back. You will lose concentration on the overall telling if you do so.

Your mind will note where the inconsistencies or rough patches may lie as you listen.

A good rule of thumb is to delete anything you found hard to say out loud.

As a piece of writing, the part you throw away is probably flawed anyway.

Be prepared to be surprised when you drop a subsidiary line from the story. You may find the story will run more smoothly without it.

So: record, listen, note the anomalies, and continue.

It will be time enough to attend to the re-write when you sit down to continue the article or the book.

In writing fiction, be it long or short, strive for a character that will make the reader pause in wonder from time to time at some observation or some action the character takes that surprises the reader; but which was inevitable given the character’s make-up.

In non-fiction try to include a stop-the-story factor every so often so as to keep the reader interested.

What makes you remember people in real life?

Do the same in your writing.

© Brendan Nolan 2010
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