characters - Steven R. Southard (Poseidon's Scribe)

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Raise the Stakes!

Does the current draft of your story seem uninteresting? Do you have to wake up your Beta readers after they get through the first page? Perhaps the stakes aren’t high enough.

Earlier this week, I attended an excellent Zoom talk by author Amber Royer called ‘Giving Everyone a Stake in the Story.’ That talk inspired this blogpost, but, as usual, I’m putting her presentation into my own words.

What, exactly, is a ‘stake?’ As a noun it has two meanings, the first being a stick or post driven into the ground, but we’re interested in the second meaning. One theory suggests that people in medieval Europe would wager on events (jousts or other contests) by placing bets on wooden posts—stakes. Over time, they referred to the bets themselves as ‘stakes.’

A stake, then, is the thing being risked, the thing that could be won or lost depending on an outcome of a future event.

What do the key characters in your story have at stake? If they aren’t taking some risk with a chance to win or lose something, your readers won’t care about them.

To have a stake, the characters must want something. The more important that thing is and the more they want it, the more interesting your characters will be. Stakes are tied up with motivations.

The thing your character wants could be tangible, like a physical object, or a job promotion; or it could be intangible, like love, status, or respect. Maybe it’s not something they want, but something they want to avoid, like humiliation, defeat, loss of self-respect, injury, death, etc.

Once you decide what your characters have at stake, think about how far they’re willing to go to get what they want, or avoid what they don’t want. Would your characters give up money, time, their reputation, their honor, a friendship, their life?

Stakes aren’t just for protagonists. Your antagonist needs a stake, too. Consider thinking about this even before developing your protagonist. What does your ‘bad guy’ want, and how far is she willing to go to get it?

Your story might also include a ‘Stakes Character.” This character personifies and represents what’s at stake for your protagonist. Often both the protagonist and antagonist strive for the Stakes Character, or want what that character has, but they use different means.

For example, in the movie Mary Poppins, George Banks is the protagonist. Mary Poppins is the antagonist, and the children, Jane and Michael, are the Stakes Characters. George thinks his career as a banker is what’s at stake, but really, it’s his role as a father. Mary opposes his focus on his career and works to make him realize being a good father is far more important. Seen in that way, they’re both fighting for the children.

Even your minor characters will have stakes. However, don’t let them steal the show away from the main protagonist/antagonist conflict.

How do you find out what’s at stake for your characters? Ask them. (Well, not out loud if you’re in public—that would seem weird.) Ask tough, deep questions. Think about their answers and let those deep, personal confessions influence how you write about those characters in the story.

Amber Royer credits editor Donald Maas with categorizing stakes as Personal, Public, or Ultimate. Personal stakes are inside, usually unknown to the world. Public stakes are known and often shared. If the protagonist fails, more than that one character would be affected. Ultimate stakes are the really deep ones underlying all other motivations. They’re at the end of the ‘why?’ chain of questions. They’re the ones you’d give your life for. A single character can have one, two, or all three types.

If your story is tedious or dull, or the characters seem flat and lifeless, raise the stakes! Give them something more to win or lose. Make them willing to risk more. If that doesn’t work, ask yourself how you’d write your story if you were more like—

Poseidon’s Scribe

June 13, 2021Poseidon's ScribePermalink

Characters Say More Than They Say

When we talk, we don’t often come right out and say what we feel. That should be the same with your fictional characters. There should be meaning below the words. That’s known as subtext.

I’ll come right out and admit this: I’m still learning how to employ subtext in my characters’ dialogue. As a trained engineer, I tend to speak plainly and strive for exactitude in meaning so I can be clearly understood. Unfortunately, many of my characters sound like me. Not good, but I’m getting better.

Let’s learn about subtext in dialogue together, then, shall we? There are some wonderful blogposts you can read, including this one on the Industrial Scripts website and this one by author K.M. Weiland.

These two sites give us techniques to practice, including having characters say:

what they mean, but in a different way,
something unexpected,
something understated or ironic,
something with actions instead of words,
the same words or phrases again later to gain additional meaning, and
the bare truth in a moment of high emotion.

Each blogpost also provides excellent examples from movies so you can analyze how scriptwriters accomplish the intended purpose.

The technique you choose should be consistent with your character’s motivation and personality.

Every major character has a motivation. The character wants something, or wants to avoid something. Let’s say female Character A is speaking to male Character B. A knows B can help her get what she wants, can interfere with her getting what she wants, or is neutral. Her motivation can guide you in infusing her dialogue with subtext.

Your characters also have distinct personalities. Those personality types influence both what the character says and the subtext beneath that. Therefore, both the dialogue itself, and the subtext beneath will help the reader become familiar with the character as the story proceeds.

In this blogpost, screenwriter Charles Harris discusses steps you can use to improve your use of subtext in dialogue. When you read his post, you’ll learn the details of how to:

Practice writing subtext to hone your skill.
Write straight text first, then alter it to suit the characters and the situation.
Study real-life dialogue; try to detect subtext in what real people say.
Study dialogue in fiction.
Complete a simple exercise to develop your technique.
Get better acquainted with your characters. Give each one a distinctive speech pattern, favorite phrase, or habitual saying. Hear their voice in your head.
Use idle moments to imagine (and write down) ideas for subtext-filled dialogue.
Eliminate excess words. Keep dialogue to bare bones.
Know when to have a character spill out actual thoughts when in an extreme emotional state.

Now you know. When I say I’m Poseidon’s Scribe, I mean I’m either much more than, or not really—

Poseidon’s Scribe

May 10, 2020Poseidon's ScribePermalink

Your Editing List

You finished that first draft of your story. Whew! What’s next? Most likely, you’ll need to work on second and subsequent drafts, like a sculptor smoothing and texturing a statue. How do you do that?

In a previous post, I recommended you create a personal editing list. It should contain things you want to check in each story as part of your editing process.

Why is it a personal editing list? Every writer has different strengths and weaknesses. Your editing list should focus on your known weaknesses, while ensuring your strengths remain strong.

How do you find out about these weaknesses? You consult people you trust (including yourself). These people can include other writers in your critique group, Beta Readers, and editors of previous stories. You may also include weaknesses noted by those who commented online about your previous stories, especially when you agree with the comments.

Obviously, as you keep writing and getting more comments on more stories, your editing list will change. It’s not only personal, it’s flexible.

For those just beginning, I’ll propose a starter list. Add items as you discover your weaknesses, and delete (or disregard) items that haven’t been a problem for you.

Overall Aspects. Who is the protagonist? What is the protagonist’s problem? Does the story pass the ‘so what?’ test? How would I briefly answer the question: What is this story about?
Point of View. Have I chosen the right POV for the story? If other than Omniscient, have I selected the right character(s) to narrate it? When I change the POV, are the transitions clear?
Characters. Are my characters compelling? Why should readers care about them? Are my characters too stereotyped, and if so, what can I do to correct that? Have I conveyed the thoughts and feelings of the POV character?
Beginning. Does the first sentence, or at least the first paragraph, hook the reader? Does the beginning hint at the problem, convey the tone of the story, and include the protagonist? Does the story’s beginning foreshadow the ending without giving it away?
Plot. Does the plot convey the protagonist’s efforts to solve the problem? As the plot proceeds, do I build and release tension effectively? Is the story suspenseful? Do all the events and all the narration in the story advance the plot, or have I gone down rabbit holes?
Ending. Does the ending include a resolution to the problem? Is the ending too predictable? Does the ending go on too long after problem resolution?
Setting and Description. Is the setting clear from the start? Have I included too many details or too few? Have I grouped the setting details into an info-dump, and if so, can I sprinkle them throughout? Do my descriptions appeal to all five senses?
Dialogue. Is my dialogue appropriate and realistic? Have I conveyed a language accent with too many misspelled words? Does each major character have a distinctive (and contrasting) manner of talking, and vocabulary? Have I used dialogue tags effectively?
Show, Don’t Tell. For the key plot points, do I show rather than tell? Do I convey emotions, feelings, and impacts of events on characters? Do I merely relate events through narration? Do my characters react to events and actions appropriately?
Style. Have I strengthened the prose with similes and metaphors? Are there adverbs I can cut out? Have I used active phrasing? Can I choose verbs that are more powerful? Are there clichés I can delete or modify? Do I vary my sentence lengths enough? Is my vocabulary appropriate and consistent?
Spelling and Grammar. Have I corrected all unintentional misspellings? Is my grammar correct? Do I still have any awkward sentence structures? Do I have any misplaced modifiers?

There’s your starter list. Happy editing! Now it’s time for me to chip away at the next masterpiece by—

Poseidon’s Scribe

February 10, 2019Poseidon's ScribePermalink

Characters at the Edge

Are your story’s characters living out at the edge? If not, maybe you should push them further out there.

What does that mean? In this post by author Steven Pressfield, he mentions a friend of his who considers fictional characters far more interesting, more worth reading about, if they operate at some extreme, if they’re desperate enough to act outside normal boundaries.

Only then is the drama enticing enough, the character fascinating enough, to make the tale worth the reader’s time.

Pressfield’s post cites examples including several movie characters played by Matthew McConaughey, as well as characters on cable TV shows like The Sopranos, Breaking Bad, and Mad Men.

Two thoughts I’d add to Pressfield’s post. First, he claims it should be as if a character is telling the reader, “Don’t take your eyes off me because I am capable of doing anything.” By “anything” I believe Pressfield means anything consistent with the character’s personality and motivations. The character should be at the edge, yes, but at the edge of a space bordered by that character’s nature and inner dreams.

Second, as one of the commenters pointed out, being at the edge doesn’t only mean rough-and-tumble actions such as picking fights, killing people, or driving 100 miles per hour.

For example, say you’re Arthur Conan Doyle and you want to write about a fictional detective. Taking that character to the edge means making him capable of deductive reasoning and powers of observations that are at the outer limits of human capability. Then, of course, compensate by giving that character weaknesses and flaws; you don’t get superhuman abilities in one facet without suffering in some others.

Say you’re Jules Verne and you want to write about a character desperate to complete a journey around the world before a deadline. Taking that character to the edge means making him fixated on time, exacting and precise, decisive and unemotional. Compensate by giving him faults as well, such as being uncaring and oblivious to the emotions of others.

Before writing your story, create a written description of your main characters, including each one’s physical appearance, motivation, personality type, goals, and dreams, etc. Then ask yourself if you can make those characters more extreme. Don’t worry about realism or authenticity too much. See how close to the edge you can push them.

If you succeed in doing this, your story’s action and dialogue will be fascinating and dramatic, your characters vivid and unforgettable.

Go ahead and push them out toward the edge…further…further… Out on that precipice stands your finest character, a big part of your best story. Now write that story.

One more thing. When your story succeeds, tell me about it by leaving an edgy comment for—

Poseidon’s Scribe

July 9, 2017Poseidon's ScribePermalink

Getting Inside Their Heads

How do you write a story about a character who’s completely unlike you? How do you get inside his or her head enough to make your story credible? Don’t we all admire authors who can do this well? Conversely, isn’t it boring (and confusing) when every character in a story thinks and speaks the same way?

I’ve blogged before about creating convincing characters who are the opposite gender from you. But there are many ways besides gender to be different—age, race, time period, nationality, home location, economic status, intelligence, species, planet, etc.

A few years ago, I read Next, by the late Michael Crichton. In that novel, one of the characters, Brad Gordon, is abnormally attracted to very young girls. If I remember correctly, I read about Brad attending a high school girls soccer game. The scene is in Brad’s point of view, and I read about watching the game through a sexual deviant’s eyes. Not only was the scene disturbing, but I was convinced Michael Crichton knew his character well enough to capture his mindset.

It’s a difficult thing, writing from the POV of a character so unlike you, one who thinks differently, who has different goals and motivations. That character doesn’t share your (the writer’s) basic assumptions about how the world works. The character reacts to events with different emotions than you would. Your job is to make that character realistic.

This character might be very different from your targeted readership. The character might be an extraterrestrial, a British colonialist explorer from the 1880s, a serial killer, or a Tibetan monk. Your readers won’t know if you “got it right,” but you still need to make it convincing. None of those characters should think or act like you do.

Of course, it’s worse when your targeted readers do match your character and you don’t. If you’re an elderly male author writing romance, your depictions of young women had better be very close to the mark, because your readers will spot any unrealistic actions, thoughts, clothing, dialogue, etc. If you’ve never been in the military and you’re writing a war story, your readership expects you to get in the mind of your POV characters and convey accurate feelings and actions.

In this blog post, Monica M. Clark discusses some helpful advice she learned from author Terry McMillan on this subject. Her three recommendations follow, paraphrased by me:

Empathize. Spend time getting in the mind of that character, feeling the passions, seeing the world through those different filters.
Listen. If possible, find real people who are like your character. Go to where they live, if you can. Then watch and listen. Pick up the speech patterns, the clothing, the gestures.
Apply for a job. No, the job’s not for you, it’s for your character. Fill out a job application as your character would. That will build the bio for your character.

All great advice. Regarding that last item, there are some things you need to know about your character that would not appear on a typical job application, like physical attributes and personality. Write those down, too. As you write your story, refer back to the job application every now and then to check if you have things right.

The better you can convey different characters, the better your stories will be. For example, I do my best to depict characters who are completely different from—

Poseidon’s Scribe

March 19, 2017Poseidon's ScribePermalink

My Stories and the Bechdel-Wallace Test

Here’s a touchy topic. Do my stories past the Bechdel-Wallace Test? How about other similar tests? How important are these tests?

What is the Bechdel-Wallace Test? It purports to measure the degree to which a work of fiction features female characters in their own right, and not just as characters who are there to react to males. A story passes the Bechdel-Wallace Test if (1) there are at least two women in it, (2) who talk to each other, (3) about something besides a man.

The test got its name from Alison Bechdel, who writes the comic strip Dykes to Watch Out For. Bechdel credits her friend Liz Wallace for the idea, too.

Other, related measures include the percentage of female speaking roles, the percentage of named characters who are women, the percentage of female characters overall, whether the protagonist is a woman, whether 2 out of the top 3 speaking roles are for women, and whether the character with the most dialogue is a woman. Then there’s the Smurfette Principle Test—whether there is only one female in an otherwise all-male group or ensemble of characters. And we shouldn’t forget the Mako Mori Test—whether a female character has a narrative arc that is not about supporting a man’s story.

With some trepidation, I’ll show you how my published stories faired in these tests. Note: I’m counting the two versions of “Alexander’s Odyssey” as different stories, because I substantially revised it for its second publication. I’m counting “Vessel” and “Last Vessel of Atlantis” as a single story because I did not revise it much for its second publication. That makes the number of stories 28.

bechdel-wallace-test-results

Not great scores, I’ll grant you, given that women are 50% of the population. For the record, I have nothing against women. In partial defense of my low scores on these tests:

I write a lot of alternate history fiction involving technology, and historically women have not figured as prominently as men in dealing with technology,
Very little of the fiction I grew up and loved reading would pass these tests, and
As a male writer, it is more difficult for me to craft a believable and relatable female character.

There is also some dispute about the tests themselves. A poorly written story could score higher than a well-written one. A writer bent on passing the tests could do so without necessarily representing female characters in a good light. I mention this not to denigrate the tests, but to point out the difficulty of accurate metrics in the social sciences. If you articulate what you truly want to measure, then any metric you come up with will be unwieldy and possibly subjective. If you strive to get an easy-to-calculate, objective metric, then it may only be a rough gauge of the truth you’re after.

Those are only excuses, though. I can do better, and I will. Not for the purpose of becoming a feminist writer, but to have my writing more closely align with the human condition. In short, I should be Amphitrite’s Scribe in addition to being—

Poseidon’s Scribe

October 30, 2016Poseidon's ScribePermalink

How Women and Men Yak

Do women and men talk differently? Do they use different types of words and phrases, or speak about different topics? More importantly to you fiction writers, should you have your characters speaking differently depending on their gender?

women-and-men-yakking This blog post comes with a giant disclaimer. I’ll be discussing general tendencies, not rules. Rather than concentrating on having a female character “talk like a woman,” focus instead on having her talk consistently with her personality, age, nationality, time period, upbringing, geographical location, and gender. In other words, the way your characters talk depends on a lot more than gender.

Let’s examine those tendencies:

Women characters tend to:

Commiserate, sympathize, and seek to understand the emotions, when speaking about another person’s problem, to help the person not feel alone in suffering;
Establish, when speaking to another woman, the degree of closeness (horizontally), to seek areas of agreement, perhaps by revealing a secret about herself, or a personal story, demonstrating her willingness to be vulnerable;
Interrupt, when the other person tells a story, to ask questions to push the story forward, or even co-author the story;
Ask more questions;
Explain or justify their actions and decisions;
Describe things and scenes by emphasizing appearance and other senses, using a full palette of color words;
Look or ask for validation, approval, or agreement periodically as they speak; and
Look directly at the face of the person they’re talking to, or listening to, alert for nonverbal emotion cues.

Men Characters:

Offer a solution when discussing another person’s problem;
Seek to establish the relationship, when speaking to another man, in a (vertical) hierarchy, through mild insults, jokes, and one-upmanship;
Interrupt to tell his own story, when the other person tells a story;
Make more suggestions and assertions rather than asking questions, but when men do ask questions, they’re specific and focused, not rhetorical;
Talk about what they did or decided, without offering explanations or justifications;
Describe things and scenes according to functions, directions, and numerical distances and quantities;
State their facts directly without seeking approval or agreement, without significant concern about the other person’s reaction; and
Gaze elsewhere when speaking or listening, rather than looking at the other person’s face.

Which gender talks more? Apparently, studies are inconclusive. Therefore, it makes sense to let a character be talkative if it fits that character, whether male or female. You can have interesting combinations of chatty characters paired with silent ones, or two loquacious ones, or two quiet ones.

For further information, there are some great blogs and articles out there, like this one by Kimberly Turner, this one by Rachel Scheller, and this article in Salon by Thomas Rogers.

Let me reiterate the disclaimer. Everything I’ve noted above is a general tendency, not a strict rule. Use the information sparingly and for guidance so your fictional characters sound realistic. If you carry this too far, you’ll end up with stereotyped characters. Let their speech style flow from who they are, rather than just their gender. It’s easy to find examples today of people who speak with the tendencies of the opposite gender without anyone else noticing, let alone caring.

I know this is a touchy subject. Still, if I’m to bring you the best guidance possible to aid you in your writing, I can’t shy away from controversy. I must boldly provide this information without worrying about charges of sexism. I cannot do or be otherwise; I must be—

Poseidon’s Scribe

October 2, 2016Poseidon's ScribePermalink

When Characters Wrest Control

Sometimes, while playing God, writers get surprised. Occasionally, while we’re creating our little worlds and our little people to inhabit them, one of those people doesn’t stay in the intended space.

Wresting Control Today I’ll consider the topic of characters getting too big for their britches, and assuming a bigger (or different) role than the one planned for them. When this happens in your writing, should you take it as a good thing or a bad thing?

This has happened to me a few times. In my story “After the Martians,” the character Frank Robinson is a war photographer. He’s meant to be a secondary character, pursuing a parallel plot line that intersects the protagonist’s life near the end in a meaningful way. However, Frank became a little more compelling than intended and darn near overshadowed the protagonist. I kept most of his exploits in, so the reader cares what happens to him and follows his plot line with interest.

In “Ripper’s Ring,” Diogenes is a Bassett hound owned by a Scotland Yard detective. You know how some movie actors dread performing with animals because the animal might steal the scene? That nearly happened with droopy old Diogenes, whose seeming lack of interest in following a scent made him an endearing comic character in an otherwise dark and philosophical story. I kept him that way.

There’s a French servant named Fidèle in my story “A Tale More True” who almost ended up having a more compelling personality than that of his master, the protagonist. Once again, he was a secondary character meant to provide comic relief and to showcase the protagonist. However, he tended to get the best lines, and to be the one suggesting the right course of action. I kept him as I’d written him, since the story is a voyage of learning and discovery for his master, and Fidèle is a necessary part of that.

Another servant, this time a plump Irish one named Daegan MacSwyny, nearly took over my story “Within Victorian Mists.” I’d meant this secondary character to be funny and unintelligent, but he ended up being secretly wise in almost magical ways. As with Fidèle, he gently prodded his master, the protagonist, toward the right answer at every step, though it’s never clear whether that’s by intention or accident. MacSwyny and all the Victorian Mists characters appeared again in “A Steampunk Carol” but there the servant kept to his secondary status.

In each case, a secondary character threatened to take over the story by force of personality and by being more endearing than the protagonist. That’s just the way my muse rolls.

But not only mine. Other writers have blogged about this phenomenon. Mae Clair lets it happen, for the most part, and later writes separate stories featuring such characters.

Melanie Spiller had written such a good scene about the death of a character whom she hadn’t meant to kill off, that she kept the scene in. She’d once been told a character wresting control of the story is a sign you’ve created a believable character.

When a character takes on a bigger role, you have choices. You can:

Let that character go in this new direction, at least to some extent.
Rewrite the story to keep the character as intended.
Delete the character.

So far, I’ve always chosen option 1. Other writers choose either 1 or 2. It would be gut wrenching to opt for 3, so I suspect that’s rarely done.

When you play God by writing fiction, do you have characters wresting control every now and then? If so, what do you do? Or do you just like that word ‘wrest?’ Rise above your role as a blog post reader, and leave a comment for—

Poseidon’s Scribe

June 26, 2016Poseidon's ScribePermalink

After the Martians – the Cast of Characters

Today I’ll introduce you to the four major characters in my new book, “After the Martians.” The alternate World War I of my story has brought them together in and near the Black Forest of Western Germany in 1917, some 16 years after the Martians’ failed attempt to conquer the Earth.

In order of their introduction in the story, let’s meet them.

Private Johnny Branch is seventeen, an American from Wyoming. The hero of my story, he’s enthusiastic about getting to fight in the war, and thrilled to be driving a Martian fighting machine, a tripod. He grew up listening to, and reading about, the Martian War. Like boys across the nation, he built rudimentary models of the fighting machines and waged little battles with toy tin soldiers, pretending to be Teddy Roosevelt in the Battle for Washington, D.C.

Second Lieutenant Henry Wagner is about twenty-three, and commands the fighting machine driven by Johnny. Their machine is part of Crazyhorse Troop, Tiger Squadron, Third Armored Cavalry Regiment. He’s from Norristown, Pennsylvania, near Philadelphia. He’s been in the war since the beginning and is now seasoned by battle, and quite skeptical about the war. He looks forward to the end of the war, when people can develop peaceful uses for Martian technology.

Frank Robertson is a photographer for “The American Magazine,” initially assigned to send back pictures to give the public a sense of the life of a doughboy. As the war has gone on and casualties have mounted, his editor tells him to snap some shots of American heroism and gallantry in battle, to keep up the patriotic spirit. However, it’s hard to get close to the action in a modern war, with Martian heat rays and poisonous black smoke.

Hilde Gottschall is an old German woman living in a wooden cabin on Feldberg Mountain. She lost her husband in the Martian War and her son in the Great War. After the death of her daughter-in-law, she lives alone with her infant grandson, Andreas Gottschall, whom she calls her Schätzchen (darling). She is cynical and angry about all wars.

In addition, there are a couple of minor characters with bit parts, but those four are the major ones. Each of the latter three influence Johnny in various ways as he matures toward full adulthood.

On a separate note, I’m hoping to speak on a panel or two at BALTICON , the science fiction convention in Baltimore, next weekend. At a minimum, I’ll be signing my books on Saturday from 1:30 to 2:30, and I’ll be reading from one of my books on Sunday from 7:00 pm to 7:50.

I’ll post my complete schedule when it’s approved. If you’ll be in the area, you can meet, in person—

Poseidon’s Scribe

May 22, 2016Poseidon's ScribePermalink

Character Relationship Maps

Try as you might, some of you can’t help but read my blog. Perhaps it’s like a horrible highway accident; you just can’t avert your eyes. You regular readers know, then, that my mind favors images, graphs, and pictorial displays, and that’s what I’ve got going on today.

It isn’t that I disdain text; I am a writer, after all. It’s just that a picture is worth a thousand words, so when I need information in a condensed form, it’s hard to beat a graphical chart.

When a writer sets out to craft a story, it can be difficult to keep all the characters in mind. One technique for doing so is to use a Character Relationship Map (CRM). Like a mind map and Root Cause Analysis motivation chart, this map is something for your use alone. No reader will see it, so you can make up your own format.

The one I’m showing here, for the first Star Wars movie, A New Hope (Episode IV), is for illustrative purposes only and is not complete or necessarily accurate. My only intent is to show one possible example for a case familiar to most readers. To see many other sample Character Relationship Maps, do an Internet search for that term and click on images.

The CRM depicts, on a single page, all the relationships between all your story’s characters, or at least the major ones. Having this map before you as you write the story will help you keep these relationships in mind. Note that your story must contain written evidence of each relationship. If not, the reader will not know the relationship exists.

Another advantage of a Character Relationship Map is to ensure you create and understand the relationships yourself. Each major character should have some arrows going out and some going in. Each major character should have arrows connecting to all other major characters.

You might think a CRM would be useful only for novels, or other stories with plenty of characters. However, such maps can be helpful even for short stories with as few as two characters. As I mentioned in an earlier blog, you could connect two characters with four relationships using four lines. Use one line to depict how Character A feels about Character B internally, another line to show how A behaves toward B externally, and two more lines to represent the internal feelings and external behavior of B toward A.

Relationships can be complex. A good author shows some amount of friction, or at least tension, between even the friendliest or most loving characters. Why? Conflict is central to fiction. No two characters are alike, so they will think differently and there will be some level of uncertainty, some speck of doubt or occasional distaste even between the closest and most devoted characters.

To make your CRM more beneficial to you, consider using colors and line thicknesses or shapes to represent other aspects of characters and relationships. For example, you could use box colors to represent character gender, where they stand on the good-evil spectrum, or some other attribute. You could use line thickness to indicate the intensity of the relationship. You could use line shape to indicate the type of relationship, perhaps curved lines for friendship and jagged lines for enmity.

Characters, and their relationships, change through the story. You could show that by means of two maps, one showing the before state, and the other the after state. Or you could find some method of picturing the change on a single map.

Have you used a Character Relationship Map? If so, did you find it helpful? Leave a comment for a rather colorful character known as—

Poseidon’s Scribe