Something I have been trying to do lately is to write slower. Maybe this is a benefit or a consequence in its own right. Regardless, there is a greatness to writing with lots of thought and precision. Maybe this is in aspect to your own life, or in aspect to writing your story, I do understand how it is sometimes vital to slow down and get to the grit of writing your characters.
I would not recommend doing it in the first draft, I would wait until at least a few drafts until you know your characters a bit more until you start to figure out how you want to put all of the pieces together. And sometimes, the way that you would understand your characters would change over time, especially as they interact with multiple characters and become more concrete and easier to understand.
Writing characters.
The relationships your characters have with each other is huge web that scatters and potentially meld together over time.
You as the author may not always realize the way that your character’s relationships are written. This may confuse you in terms of how their relationship was like. I was a bit like that with some of my characters. I found that as a writer, at times, you may want to focus on certain relationships and see how it develops.
In the Sorcerer of Runes series, there were certain characters where I have explored their dynamic over the past few years. And the more you can understand them, the better perspective with how your characters will be like over time.
In the Sorcerer of Runes series, Jules and Lucile seem to get along great together. They’ve lived nearby for a little while, interact with each other quite a bit and is on good terms with each other. Which in some cases, you may mistake something like this friendly or deeper. But it is also good to consider the individual’s perspective.
Jules probably finds Lucile naive and doesn’t know enough about the world. Yet they do emphasize with her due to the experiences that they have shared which makes them relate to her a bit more and not want her to get hurt.
Lucile however seems to like Jules more, because of how they helped her throughout the times when she’s struggled. She appreciated however they have helped her when they can. But, throughout the story Conjured Secrets tests this. Jules seems to carry lots of things that Lucile doesn’t know about or understand. She wants to understand them more, but Jules may not want her to be too close to them, even if they did like her.
Character’s energy:
I will be honest, that may be something that made you raise your brows a bit. Now, what could I mean by the energy?
I may be going a bit into Spirituality, the concept of Voodoo, or… I don’t know what it is. But bear with me on this one.
When I mean the energy of the characters, I mean, that you get a foretelling about certain characters. This can be from who seems similar to each other to who may get along best. This can also include who may be chaotic with each other! But this goes deeper! There’s a feeling you get as you write about them. This can range from their background, their past experiences, their family history and more!
When I have placed certain characters side by side, whether romantic or platonic. But it also can lean towards a positive, a negative or somewhere that is in between. Which I honestly find profound in terms of how some of these can work, especially when other characters can be involved in the dynamic.
There could be three characters that interact with each other. But if one pair likes eachother and another doesn’t like one of those characters, there could be a deeper sense of conflict than if the characters are all in neutral terms with each other.
So when you go about and consider it in that regard, the energy between characters are something to delve into and consider.
Understanding yourself:
Another thing that helps is that when you write slow, you get to understand yourself. The way you write, perhaps the experiences that you have faced and how it is expressed throughout your characters.
It can even help with knowing the words that can help you with and in some ways, process the events that you may be currently facing or have faced before in a different point of view.
I may go deeper into this in another post, so look forward to that.
So thank you for reading this post. Some of these things I will go deeper into as I release more posts.