editing/revising | Victoria C. Slotto, Author

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While driving from Reno to Palm Desert I listened to some CD’s presented by The Learning Company‘s Great Courses. If you have access to these, I strongly recommend them to you. The particular series I’m addressing is called The Art of Reading and is presented by Professor Timothy Spurgin of Lawrence University. The lectures are well-organized, clearly presented and as applicable to writers as to readers.

Today, I want to share an important point from the lecture on characters about developing round characters.

The concept of a round character, as opposed to a flat one, was presented by E. M. Forster in his book, Aspects of the Novel. Simply put, a round character is one who will capture the reader’s interest because of his unpredictability, his complexity and the changes he undergoes during the course of the story. And this is key: “The test of a round character is whether it is capable of surprising in a convincing way.” (Forster)

We’ve previously discussed the fact that, while your protagonist needs to draw the sympathy of the reader, he should have some character flaws. Inversely, your antagonist should have something that makes him, if not attractive, at least capable of being understood. Just like us–no one is all good or all bad.

As you write, reflect upon your own reaction to the key characters in your manuscript. Are you able to identify with them to some degree? Are there things that, if you were that person, you might be ashamed of or want to change? Are there events or reactions which are surprising without being totally out-of-character (unconvincing)? Is your character someone you would want to know, or avoid?

One thing I find helpful when writing fiction is to base my characters on a composite of people I know or with whom I have been acquainted. You can even take someone who is in the public eye. I try not to use one person because I would never want anyone to say to me, “That’s me, isn’t it?” My mother once thought a character was her because I set the scene in a room in her house!

I suggest referring back to a couple of posts I’ve written on character development using the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator or the Enneagram because these personality profile systems help you to identify how a character might react in a given situation as well as their strengths and weakness. This can suggest a source of surprise as well, since none of us is a perfect fit to any one personality type.

I plan on using the round/flat character definition to help in rewriting my second novel…a goal I’ve set for my visit here in the desert.

Happy writing–enjoy the process.

In writing “Winter is Past,” I spent much more time on editing than on writing–but that’s part of the package, isn’t it? Now that I’m zeroing in on the completion of the first draft of “The Sin of His Father,” I’m getting geared up for revisiting what I’ve written. While editing can be somewhat tedious, there are bursts of creative bliss that make the task exciting.

I approached novel #2–“The Sin of His Father”–from a totally different direction than my first novel. I wrote “Winter is Past” without an outline and without a clue as to what would happen next. The plot did unfold eventually but I got lost many times, left story lines incomplete and found numerous contradictions in the process of rewriting. Because of this, I had to rewrite and rewrite and rewrite. I can’t count how many drafts I dumped into the recycle bin.

My approach to “The Sin of His Father” has been the opposite. A few years ago I wakened with the story and pulled myself out of bed at 3 AM to outline in bold strokes. A couple of months later, I came to the desert and completed a detailed outline along with character, setting and scene descriptions. The actual writing hasn’t been enslaved to the road map, though. I’m amazed at how the characters continue to take me to unexpected places; twists and turns surprise me along the way. But with the outline I have an idea of where to go next. The scenic routes I follow find their way back to the main highway sooner or later.

My almost-daily writing routine has included a quick edit of the previous session’s work. Other than that, I have not allowed myself to look back over the entire manuscript. This has hastened the completion of the first draft, but who knows what awaits me when I set about revising.

Now I can see that this post has led me to a place I didn’t expect to go and I will defer talking about some of the specifics of editing. I’ll return later this week and get down and dirty with details, okay?