We take a differing view from the usual in The Writer’s Interface about story characters.

Writing craft writers and teachers say that your characters motivate the action. Or they say that you should know your characters as you know a human being.

When you plan a story, write down what your main characters eat, habits they have, what they wear, whom they are related to, and so on.

This is treating your character as a human being and this will destroy your ability to write stories that sell and are widely read.

Why? Why is this?

Because as we say elsewhere fictional story and drama is not the same as life incidents and real life people.

For Great Story Telling one of your key craft principles is that Characters serve and illustrate the key life themes you are dramatizing with your story.

Another key principle we use is, write not one word that is not directly relevant to your story and its development.

Don’t put in that your character is drinking coffee unless such an act is taking the story-line another step further. Don’t have your character making love or taking a shit or swearing or whatever real life people do unless such story behavior is directly relevant to developing the character’s character and laying the groundwork for a strong contrast and change in that character’s behavior when it is to come.

Nothing is relevant like irrelevancy to the irrelevant story-writer.

In The Writer’s Interface we have a lot of craft ideas for building successful characters that readers will identify with or be repelled by, or both. Use them. Know that your characters are there to illustrate a strong story theme and its variations and conclusions

In life, as we have said elsewhere, murderers are only convicted about have the time. We ask what are the police doing everywhere that they are not getting eighty to ninety percent convictions?

I thought murder was a heinous crime and the murderer should not go unpunished.

Want to change those statistics?

Decree that when police do not get a conviction for a murder one of their own must die as a sacrifice for failure?

This is dramatic and cruel, but so is not convicting and puting away have the murderers of the world, would you not say?

Thus thrillers and action films are read and seen because the public knows unconsciously at least that half the world’s killers are walking around free and that is so hard to face, to face that this is a rather unsafe world we live in.

What are the chances that the person who robbed your house will be found and convicted? One burglar in a hundred gets caught and convicted. What are the chances you will get your stolen goods back? Almost nil. Right?

What are the police doing? You complain to them that someone is threatening you, is threatening to hurt or kill you? They say we cannot do anything until there is an actual crime. Yeah, yeah! Do they catch the criminal after the crime is committed? Murderers convicted at fifty percent!

Why do we need heroic avenger and savior films?

To compensate for what is not happening in life itself. Right?

Even if we don’t have a child kidnapped and killed ourselves we certainly read about these real life events in the news.

So story-tellers: tell your stories but in such a way that they compensate reality.

This is effective craft.

How do Internet sales people get you to buy their software and services? By telling you you will make a lot of money if you use it, with the disclaimer at the bottom that they do not guarantee you will make any money if you pay for their products and services.

What does an effective sales person do?

They sell you a story. They do not sell you reality. They build up a big success story, much bigger and much more successful than in actual life, and that is what you are buying, not actual life success yourself.

You are buying fiction, not fact. And the Internet marketers have just enough maybe true testimonials of success to back up their fiction stories of success that they successfully sell you on the story, not the reality.

Never underestimate the power of well-crafted fiction, whether written by a novelist, a screen writer or a professional sales copywriter.

Rate this:

2.5