I don't tend to agree with Hemingway -- especially as a writer, most especially as a person -- but he does have words for character development that toll like a bell:

"When writing a novel, a writer should create living people; people not characters. A character is a caricature."

I think the moment that I knew that I was a writer was when I was twelve. I created characters in my head to run alongside the characters in books (what the kids these days call "fan fiction"), and the characters suddenly developed minds of their own. I drew them in sketchbooks and thought about their hobbies and decided their birthdates.

Actual photo of Cam's characters she created when twelve.

As I grew with these people in my head, they housed themselves in the corridors of my cranium, cozied up next to a failing hippocampus, walked beside me through my college campus, and voiced themselves in various ways. One boy told me that he liked Brand New when I listened to an album on a walk back to my dorm, nostalgic for an old hook-up who introduced me to the band. One girl told me that she would study to be an art therapist when she was old enough for college on my way out of the grocery store. Another boy came to me in a dream and, while I was walking to the cafeteria for breakfast, stopped me dead in my tracks just so I could know that his favorite food was ham and grilled cheese.

Creating characters is an oddly intimate, delusional relationship with people who do not exist. 

A month ago, I finished teaching my 7th graders how to create characters that are believable people. They had a series of fun (they better have found them fun, dammit) worksheets that helped with brainstorming their characters. One had them create Tweets that their protagonist would write in response to the stages of their Rising Actions. Another plastered a picture of the "What Do You Want?" scene from The Notebook and helped them develop their characters wants / goals. Another encouraged them to think of a flaw or error (a hamartia) to dissuade them from Mary Sue -like character. I've been trying to teach twelve-year-olds to create people in their heads, in their writing.

It's a strange request to expect of anyone: the ability to craft a human being out of thin air and arid imagination.

I remember the first time that I met non-writers who knew what I was talking about: actors. While I'd been involved in theatre in my high school, I solely appeared on stage for the sake of hanging lights and building platforms: the glamorous life of the techie. Such was the case in college, with barriers between techies and actors solidly cemented, until one day an actor friend explained that he carried around a notebook with him at all times in case a character spoke to him.

I couldn't believe it: someone else had characters in their heads that spoke to them at inopportune times? Someone else created music playlists to listen to, changed their interests / hobbies to fit their character, bought clothes that reminded them of their characters?

Here's the thing: if you want to create three-dimensional characters, you have to become a bit psychotic. More like a lot. You have to know the 90% oceanic icebergs of each of your people, even if your writing only reveals that 10% These people need to become your friends. Even your villains -- especially your villains. You need to be asking them those uncomfortable first Tinder date questions: where are you from? who's your celebrity crush? what do you do for work? what do you want? what do you need? who did you vote for? are you gluten free? what's your social security number? 

You need to know their speech patterns, their fidgets, their relationships with others, their deep dark secrets...

But why?

Because if you don’t, it shows. If you don’t push yourself to think of your characters beyond their interactions with their environment and interactions with others, you leave them hollow men. You have to know backstories, personalities, wants, and needs in order to know character motivation, in order to know why and how your characters interact with others and their environment. 

Let me close with one last example: currently, I’m working with an actress on a film project, and her character wears an excessive amount of bracelets that purchased while traveling. When I wrote this character in my film script, I thought that it would just be a weird quirk. Now, it’s so much more: my actress thinks that her character engaged briefly in self-harm and uses the bracelets to cover her arms, and my actress is coming up with a story for every single one of the bracelets. Will the audience ever know these details? No. But by knowing her character to this degree, my actress will personally feel the biting sting when a cute boy calling her bracelets “tacky”. She is bringing my flat depiction to life. She is making this character a living person.

How will you do the same for your own characters?

Read the more from Cam Best on Floodmark.

There’s a story inside of you crying to get out… but you don’t know how it wants to speak. Does it want the fragmented barking of poetry? The snapping back-and-forth of a play or a screenplay? The roar of prose? The snack of flash-fiction? 

You’ve bitten off more than you can chew - you’re sure of it this time.

When you become a writer of various platforms, part of the labor is deciding which way to share a story. I’ve dabbled with all of the previously mentioned genres, and no doubt there are more to try. But how do you know which fits best?

Well, it entirely depends on what you have to say.

The simplest route is to write, of course. Write without pausing to paragraph break or indent a line… maybe without even punctuation. Christen yourself Faulkner and run like The Sound and the Fury that you are. [Run Ons, Faulkner, Run Ons!] 

Photoshop courtesy of Cam Best.

Sometimes, the writing will find its voice: it will shout “Poetry!” or “Prose!” or the like, and you’ll be able to start revising.

Other times might not be so lucky…

Should that be the case, what I’ll do is let the words stew. Write until the words fail you, then put your laptop or notebook on the stove burner and cover it with a lid … 

Please don’t actually do that.

When you’ve left it alone for long enough, reread it. If no format jumps out to you, now is the time to brandish your axes.

Hack off the legs of dialogue. Sever the toes of dialogue tags. Cut up the character description, the scenic description, the character actions, the environmental actions! Dismember the bastard!

Now what do you see?

If your story’s instinct is to drive forward with dialogue, you’ve likely got a play or screenplay on your hands. I find that both formats allow me to create more “raw” dialogue that doesn’t need to be cushioned and supported with the bra of character and scenic descriptions. It is all natural. The story speaks for itself [get it?] 

Telling the two apart is tricky. WIth my screenplay experience, I feel much more protective over the characters. I want to describe their backstories, I’m already specifically visualizing the story…  I allow myself to be much more creative in my scene directions in screenplays because I often direct my own film projects and laugh at my own jokes.  As for plays, to me, those scene directions manifest as instructions for movement. 

My screenplays also have much shorter, episodic scenes; my plays are typically one setting, one scene. Of course, my style for plays isn’t the same as yours, so take a look at your own writing to identify those distinguishing features.

If your story’s instinct is on character description and evolution, it might focus more towards prose. 

Dialogue might trip you up in this -- it might be necessary to first distinguish between spoken dialogue and internal dialogue. A paragraph heavy with spoken dialogue could suggest a play… a paragraph heavy with internal dialogue suggests prose. Prose tends to boast character more than the others, whereas characters in plays tend to… play nicely with others [my puns are on fire today. Or, as the kids say, lit. Imagine: lit literature… Lit lit!]

Prose allows for layers to unfold over and over for the reader, whereas plays are filtered through the director’s lens and displayed to the spectator. With your audience in mind, prose encourages frequent revisiting, tasting the various spices in a dish. But no platform encourages reinterpretation more frequently than poetry.

Poetry is more than eager to roast the other platforms. It certainly would never stoop so low as to dialogue! And character development? Why, only if your childhood memorabilia of a music box in the deceptive shape of a trombone is a character… 

My own poetry likes to boast its way into epic stories, blending spoken word poetry with traditional. So when I’m trying to decide if I want a poem to read for three minutes into a microphone versus thirty seconds into an ezine, I have to decide how complete my story will be. Traditional poetry will focus on snapshot moments and contain more blank space than blank verse. Spoken word will tell a story in a manner far different from prose, varying in various components. My spoken word poetry focuses greatly on sound: alliteration, assonance, consonance, you name it. It must be heard out loud. But it has a greater spectrum of emotions in those five hundred or so words, more than a short story or piece of flash fiction would reasonably have. Believe it or not, spoken poetry’s voice isn’t just a scream into a microphone.

There are many elements of writing to consider when selecting a genre: character presence, environmental presence, emotional variation, brevity of the moment of the story, dialogue… Experiment with different formats until you find your piece’s voice, for it will speak.

Flow chart courtesy of Cam Best.

Read more of Cam's work on Floodmark.

Writing well-established, multidimensional, and interesting characters can be a challenge for some writers. It requires patience, insight, and a very specific type of insanity. Creating a good character requires the same sort of awkward, illogical mental gymnastics that actors use to become another person. As a writer you must place yourself, fully, in the mind of each and every one of your characters. Honing your character creation skills is a life-long process and now is always the best time to start. There are several strategies and habits that can help you do this. They can be helpful for beginners as well as experienced writers. 

Let me start by making one thing clear: well-written characters are the single most important element in fiction. Every story is essentially about characters. No story is about an event or a social/political/environmental/economic situation. All that is setting. Your story isn’t about a war; it’s about soldiers. It’s not about a hospital; it’s about doctors and/or patients. No story is ever about things that happen. Stories are about the people that things happen to. Characters are what your readers will respond and relate too. Don’t tell me that Joe died tragically. Tell me who Joe is. That way, when he dies, I’ll actually give a damn. Who your characters are and what they want will be the main driving forces that propel your story forward. What happens to them along the way is not nearly as important as how they respond to it.

A good place to begin is to create dossiers for each of your main characters. Do this before you even begin writing your story. Start simple. What is your character’s name? How old are they? What is their favorite color? What do they look like? What do they want? Include details that seem unimportant. Don’t worry if you’re not sure about something; your character’s dossier will change as you discover them more. Nothing you write is set in stone. Unless you write it in stone. Which is weird. Don’t do it. Unless that’s your thing. Live your life. 

Include a background story/ bio in each of your character dossiers. What has happened to them so far? How has it shaped them? These dossiers should take time. Don’t write them all in one day. Allow yourself time to mull over your character. How is their past / personality going to shape the story? Every time you add something to one of the character dossiers you should reconsider everything you have already written. Does a specific event change how you see the character? Should their appearance be adjusted? Does it change how they fit into the story? Maybe something you discover about a character will shift their dynamic with another character. One person’s dossier can effect another’s. Once you really know each of your characters, you can drop them into the story setting and know exactly how they will react. The story will almost write itself. Almost. 

The question is how do you discover a character? How do you know what they want? Obviously, a good amount will be uncovered as you tell yourself a background story about them. It is important, however, to cultivate an interest in and understanding of social psychology. By this I don’t mean that you should take classes or read books on psychology. If you want to do so, go right ahead. I’m sure it will help. There is a more direct and rewarding method though. Make yourself a student of human nature. Interact. Introduce yourself to new people. Ask people how they feel and think about things in their life. Be social. Be observant. Take time to objectively observe your own thoughts, actions, and motivations. Actors do this same sort of thing. They spend hours and hours getting into the head of their character. As a writer you have to do this for each of your characters. Reading helps too. Consider the motivations and thought processes of the people you read about. But for understanding human nature, nothing beats authentic human interaction. In your day-to-day interactions, be always aware of and attentive to how people are feeling/thinking. What actions do those thoughts and emotions eventually lead them to? Take an interest. As an added bonus this will make you a better friend and a more social person. You’re welcome. Literary advice and personal improvement. We’re a full service website.

As you build your understanding of human nature, there are a few exercises you can try to expedite your character creation process. Set up generic situations to insert your characters in. Create as many as you like (I usually create at least seven). These situations should be emotionally, mentally, morally, and physically challenging. Think of them as personality obstacle courses. Once you have thought up these situations write a short story about each character going through them. These short stories won’t be part of your final story (unless you decide you really love one of them). It is important that all the main characters are sent through the same situations. As you create these short stories and decide how each character handles them, you will uncover something about who you want that character to be. Since all the characters are presented with identical situations, you will also learn how they compare to each other. What do they have in common? How are they different? This will effect how they interact with one another. 

Another good exercise is to choose a specific trait in each of your characters and then reverse it. If they are brave, make them secretly cowardly. If they are kind make them callus. Turn one of their traits in an unexpected direction. Give them something that clashes a bit with the rest of their personality. This gives characters internal conflict and helps to make them multidimensional. If all your character’s traits are too consistent, they become archetypal, flat, uninteresting, and unconvincing. People are not simple. Give your characters some complexity. Maybe it’s a simple as: the gruff mercenary used to be a kindergarten teacher. Maybe it’s a huge as: the priest no longer believes in god. The bigger the gap between their overall character and their conflicting trait, the more intense their internal conflict will be and the more interesting they will become. Be careful though. It is good to have multidimensional support characters but if their conflict become too important, they will begin to eclipse the protagonist. If, as you develop your support characters, one of them becomes more interesting to you than the protagonist, consider changing the spotlight. I have changed which character is the protagonist many times in my own stories.  Whichever character you find most interesting, your reader will likely find them the most interesting too. 

There is some additional work that needs to be done on the main character. There are many ways people define the lead character or protagonist in a story. Personally, I prefer the theory that whichever character learns/fails to learn a lesson is the main character. Let me explain. In a sense, every story is about a lesson, something the protagonist needs to learn. By the end of the story they will either succeed in learning this lesson and be victorious or fail to learn it. This is the theory that makes the most sense to me. If there is not personal growth at stake, then there is nothing interesting about the protagonist or their journey. As you develop your protagonist, look for gaps or instabilities in their identity. Look for something about them that needs to / is in danger of changing. Something they can learn. Your protagonist should never be the same person at the end of the story as they are at the beginning. This is true for all characters but it is especially true for the protagonist. Or, if they do end up the same as when they started, it should be because they came close to changing and chose not to. They failed to learn the lesson presented them. Even in stories like this, however, there is still some change in the character. They are now cemented in their ways. The piece of them that was unstable or uncertain is now settled. For better or worse. 

Generally, a character’s journey should follow these basic stages: they begin in one place (metaphorically). As events unfold, their identity decides how they respond and how they move forward. Their desires or obligations drive them forward.  Along the way their perceptions and predispositions are challenged. They must decide whether to embrace these changes or to cling to their old ways of thinking. (Note: remember that these are the stages of the protagonist’s mental / emotional journey. They are not the stages of the story as a whole. Though they closely correspond, these two things are not exactly the same.) 

There is of course no one way to craft a story. There are no absolutes and no strict rules about how a person’s journey should unfold. Always challenge accepted strategies and find what works for you. These are only a few suggestions about how to get to know your characters better. Be strange. Be unexpected. Just be sure that you are doing so in order to be true to your story and your characters. Don’t be different just to be different. Be different because you genuinely see an interesting new way to tell stories. A word of caution: human beings have been telling stories since we were squatting around camp fires and hunting with sticks. It is the oldest of all art forms. You are taking part in an art that is fifty thousand years in the making. Over the millennia, we have refined and perfected strategies for telling stories that are interesting, valuable, and emotionally rewarding. The common design of story, shape, and character development is a careful distillation of the creative genius of every storyteller that has ever existed. If you think you have a better way of doing things, go ahead and explore it. That is the only way art evolves. But remember what it is you are challenging. The collective creativity of the entire human race. Past and present. I do not say this to discourage you but to excite you. If you have an original idea, then you have a chance to say something in a new way, to do something that has never been done since the dawn of time. Which is pretty badass. So be brave, be sincere, and have fun! 

Read more great work from Padraic on Floodmark.

It’s time to put on your robe and wizard hat because we’re diving into the realm of sword and sorcery for this writing prompt. If you’re not familiar with Dungeons & Dragons, the original tabletop fantasy role-playing game, that’s okay. That just means you aren’t a nerd. 

At the beginning of every game of D&D (which can take weeks on months over the course of multiple meetings), every player creates a character, an alter ego for them to inhabit as they slay dragons, explore dungeons, and vanquish evil. You choose your species – will you be a mysterious elf or a violent orc, a benevolent halfling (the non-trademarked term for a hobbit) or a demonic tiefling? You also choose your profession, a.k.a. your class. You can be a magician – a sorcerer, warlock, or wizard. You can be the agent of divine will – a cleric, druid or monk. If you prefer to wave a sword around, you can be a fighter, paladin, or ranger; or, if you prefer axes to swords you can be a barbarian, or a rogue if you prefer daggers. You can also be a bard if you want to wield the power of…well, music.

If that sounds like too much trouble, pay a visit to "Who the Fuck is My D&D Character".

There you are! Rather than slogging through the actual process of creating a character from scratch, this site gives you a basic character, simple but complete.

The format is simple – adjective, species, profession, homeland, backstory – but the combinations can be humorous, thought provoking, and fantastic.

These might not be the sorts of characters you would actually show up to a serious game of D&D with, but they could definitely serve as the protagonist for a short fantasy tale.

If you are working on a story with a large cast of characters, this site may be able to generate ideas for minor characters, albeit with a little bit of tweaking.

Many of these character ideas raise some questions that you, as the writer, are invited to answer. What was the argumentative rogue’s “accident”? What’s in the overemotional barbarian’s sealed letter? An entire adventure could spin out of one of these questions.

Depending on the character idea that strikes your fancy, your tale might be a comedy…

…or a tragedy.

Your tale may feel intensely real…

…or somewhat wacky.

Your character may be flawed…

…a victim of circumstances…

…or deeply troubled, but it is ultimately your decision as to how these characters struggle against and overcome adversity.

Prompt

Take a look at the images in this post, all of which came from"Who the Fuck is My D&D Character". If none of them strike your interest, go to the site and it will randomly generate a character for you. Once you find a character that inspires you, write a short passage that –

1. Introduces the character to your reader, 
2. Makes the character’s history clear, without necessarily stating it explicitly,
3. Illuminates the character’s role in the fantasy setting of your choice.

Bonus hard mode: don’t browse through the site. Just pick the first randomly generated character it gives you and start writing.

Who knows, with enough writing this could provide the seed for a fantasy adventure novel!

Read Vernon's work on Floodmark here.

A discussion of common pitfalls in writing dialogue and expositional methods.

Talking. It seem like the easiest thing in the world. We do it all the time. Some of us do it way too often. So why should it be so hard to make characters talk? Writing convincing and intelligent dialogue is one of the biggest challenges in fiction. A great deal of the dialogue I have read from my fellow writers (and written myself) feels strained. Not quite believable. It can sometimes be hard to tell why your dialogue isn’t quite working, which can be frustrating, to say the least. This is why I thought it would be a good idea to talk a bit about the problems I most often see in people’s dialogue writing as well as how to avoid them. Dialogue writing is a complicated task and there are many ways a writer can go wrong but there are three main areas where I often see writers struggling. The three cardinal sins of dialogue are what I call: Dumping, Flat, and Open Book dialogue. 

The first of these, Dumping, is the worst and most common of these three. This type of dialogue is when the writer tries to dump too much information into a character’s speech. Trying to force expositional material into conversation is dangerous at best. It’s a sign of impatience on the author’s part, trying to get the reader up to speed as quickly as possible. This style of dialogue almost always leads to overly direct exposition and characters who are not believable. No one, in real-life conversation pauses to not-so-subtly explain the situation. It is very difficult to make this sort of speech sound authentic and true to you character. Background information can be slowly and carefully revealed through subtle hints in dialogue and narration. Think about who your character really is as a fully-formed person. Would they really say what you are writing? Is that like them as a person? 

One of the oldest tricks to dealing with the exposition problem is to create one or more characters (usually the protagonist) who are outsiders, new to the situation. This can be a quick fix for overly expositional dialogue.  It is by far the easiest way to overcome Dumping dialogue. There are however one or two problems with this approach. The first is that this is a rather tired method. It is an old and well-used trick that may be a bit too cliché for you or your readers. The second problem is that it is restricting. Once you decide to make a character an outsider, that will help shape who they are and everything they do. Characters are the center of any story. Their desires and experiences are what propel the story forward. Changing the background or situation of any significant character will necessarily change nearly every aspect of their behavior and by extension, their story. 

The only fool proof way to avoid Dumping dialogue is patience. Approach exposition and characterization in a piece-meal fashion. Take your time. You don’t need to tell the reader everything right away. Letting the backstory come out naturally over time. If some small piece of the story-so-far fits comfortably into a situation, go ahead and include it. But if there is any doubt in your mind as to whether you are being overly direct, then err on the side of caution. Nothing is cluckier sounding or more tedious to read than huge information dumps that dispel all mystery at once. The wondering, the putting it all together is not only part of establishing the situation but an important tool in revealing who your character is. It is also an effective method of creating intrigue in your reader. Curiosity is a powerful motivator and it can keep your readers hooked. 

The second most common cardinal sin of dialogue is Flat Dialogue.  It is born from and perpetuates flat characters. It can be tempting, once you have an interesting idea for a plot to stop and think up realistic and complex characters, but this step cannot be overlooked or rushed. It is the most important part of fiction writing. Fortunately overcoming Flat Dialogue is somewhat easier than overcoming Dumping Dialogue.  It is as simple as intimately knowing who and what your characters are. Before you begin writing anything, sit down and create a dossier for each character. Include everything. Physical appearance, personality quirks, favorite color, detailed backstory, and bio. Keep working until you know your characters at least as well as you know yourself.  

The third and final cardinal sin of dialogue is Open Book Dialogue. This is when your character has a bit of an over-share problem. When they say absolutely everything they are thinking in a certain situation. In real conversation people are often indirect and mysterious. They lie, hide things, or just plain avoid certain things.  This, like Dumping Dialogue, usually comes from impatience. If you do have a character you feel you know and are excited about, you want the reader to know them too. You want to show exactly how they feel and what they think. Be patient. Be subtle. It is far more interesting and convincing to reveal your characters by what they don’t say. 

Notice all of these problems and solutions are closely tied with who your characters are. That is because what we say is closely tied with who we are. Your character cannot have convincing dialogue unless they themselves are convincing and fully-formed. Before you can honestly write for a character you must know who they are. As you read (and a writer should always be reading), pay special attention to who the characters really are. How are they formed? What motivates them? What are the different aspects and dimensions of their identity? Develop your understanding of people, what they do and how they think. A good writer needs to understand human nature. So live, know yourself, know others, be brave, be sincere, and have fun! 

Read Padraic's work on Floodmark here. 

 A Guide to Effectively Interweaving Thought, Action, and Dialogue in Narrative Fiction

Just write what the person is thinking. Or saying. Or doing. Easy, right? Wrong. Interweaving dialogue, internal thought, and narrative action is one of the trickier and more essential challenges of prose writing. 

The challenge is to create a situation for the reader which is at once: exciting and interesting, authentic and diverse. A paragraph made up entirely of interior thought might begin to drag and make the reader feel out of touch with the actual events going on. Too much dialogue and the reader won’t feel immersed in the conversation. Don’t just write two talking heads in a vacuum. Give them motion. Action. Let the reader know what they are thinking as opposed to what they are saying. Sometimes the best way to create tension, provide exposition, or establish a character is to juxtapose what they think versus what they say. What don’t they want the other character(s) to know? Why? Suddenly your reader is interested in the situation and the character. A good paragraph should flow back and forth between narration, thought, and dialogue. This is not as simple as it sounds.

The key to interweaving these three types of prose together effectively is to make the transitions seamless. The reader should hardly notice the change. It should all flow together. Think about the way you experience the world; do you see everything you’re going to see, then think everything you’re going to think, then do everything you’re going to do? Most likely not. Real life is messier than that. It all sort of happens together. As a writer it is your job to recreate that interplay between thought, action, and speech. 

Take these example paragraphs:

“Masen stared out over the ice. His breath hard and slow. Against his ribs he felt his heart beat quicken. Revving up. Preparing. He exhaled and his breath turned to fog. The sight of it moving against the moon was oddly familiar. It was comforting in a way. At least some things - the simple, fundamental things - hadn’t changed. Even now. His shoulders tensed and relaxed and tensed again. He felt anxiety pulsing all over his body. Rising and ebbing away. Impatient.   

The sky was black. Completely starless. Jagged, skeletal trees surrounded the frozen lake. Claws encroaching. He wondered what this place might have looked like before. The trees full of life. Green everywhere. The water violent blue and full of motion. But nothing moved now. The air itself seemed still. A held breath. Waiting.   

Looking back Mason could see his footprints through the deep snow. The long walk to the lake. He could run. Turn around and head back the way he’d come. He could disappear. No one would know. His leg twitched. Begging him to turn around. He was reminded of getting out of bed in the morning. His whole body aching to stay. His mind racing. Scrambling for a way out of what had to be done. And then pulling the covers off without his conscious will. As if he had been possessed by the unshakable necessity of his situation. He closed his eyes and turned back to look over the lake. Steady. When he opened his eyes again he was no longer alone.”

The first sentence puts us behind Masen’s eyes. Next we feel what he is feeling. This subtly transitions us from what he is seeing to how he is feeling. Then we move back to what he is seeing. And then we immediately hear what he is thinking about what he is seeing. This is all tied together with the single action of taking a breath. In a few sentences we have some vague idea of where Masen is. We also have some idea of the situation he is in. He is nervous. He feels his world has drastically changed. 

The next paragraph opens with more visualization. Then transfers into thought as Masen reflects on what the lake may have looked like before. This reinforces the idea that a great deal has changed in the recent past. Notice how ideas about background can be subtly introduced without the use of overly direct exposition. There is no need for a character or even a narrator to dump an awkward speech about what’s going on. We learn about the backstory as we learn about the character. More importantly we learn about it through whichever character we are getting to know. This forges a bond between character and reader. How the reader feels about the character will color how they interpret information coming from that character. If they learn something from the point of view of a character they see as unreliable, they are less likely to believe it wholeheartedly. This creates a very real interaction between the character and the reader. This is why it is so important to have fully fleshed out characters. They are the lens through which you reveal your story, setting, and fellow characters. 

Also notice how the thoughts of the character are written directly into the narration. There are no quotation marks and no italics. No need for any of that. People’s thoughts are not as neat, crisp, and logical as their words. Thoughts do not need to be separated out. Thoughts are messy and often include visuals as well as words. The best way to handle them is to leave them in the narrative voice which has more freedom than a single, confining line of: 

“I wonder why my thoughts always come out in one or two easily transcribed lines," Joe thought to himself. 

Remember not to call up thoughts and memories too randomly. A certain amount of randomness is OK, good even. After all, we think pretty randomly. But try to avoid sticking memories where they don’t really belong like: 

“Racing away from his pursuers, Jack thought of a flower he had seen earlier.”

Or worse still

“Racing away from his pursuers, Jack thought of all the events which had lead him here in a conveniently linear way. And it went something like this…”

Avoid cutting away to thoughts too often. This will leave your action suspended and the audience losing interest. Soon, any tension you have built up in the current scene will dissipate. Obviously if you are building a frame story an extended flashback is all but unavoidable. Flashbacks are not bad, they should just be used with caution. If you are creating an extended flashback it should cut away from a situation that the audience is sufficiently curious about. How the character got here should be at least as interesting as what might happen next. That way the reader’s interest is fueled by the present situation rather than distracted by it. If you are creating a scene with one or more smaller flashbacks, then it is important to keep the audience engaged in the current moment. Keep the flashbacks small and piecemeal. Continually update the reader about what is happening. Unless your character stops what they are doing and just thinks about the past, something will be going on as they think (the same goes for dialogue). As characters are talking or thinking, describe how the situation is unfolding. Even if nothing monumental is happening. People will be playing with the buttons on their shirt, pouring a drink, shifting from foot to foot. These tiny details are the lifeblood of convincing and captivating scenes. Luckily, people think much faster than they act so a single action can cover a paragraph or two.

Avoiding the over use of thought and dialogue is important. But it is just as important to avoid using too much action. Prose can and should have longer stretches of narration than thought or dialogue but unless you are writing the novelization of a Michael Bay movie, your reader is going to want to get to know your characters. Let what they are thinking show. Remember, no book is ever about something that happened. Books about who things happened to. At the end of the day all stories are essentially about people. The book you are writing is not about an invasion by lobster-shaped aliens. That is just the setting. The story is actually about Joe Charming who single-handedly fights off the aliens and gets the girl. This is another reason why well written characters are an absolute MUST in good writing. If you don’t have the characters, you don’t have anything. And if the characters only exist in your mind and you never introduce your reader to them, then you still don’t have anything.  

Remember to string events, thoughts, and words together in a semi-logical way. 1. Joe looks at his shoes (Action). 2. Joe thinks about tripping during the last race he ran (Thought). 3. Joe reties his laces for the fifth time (Action). 4. “Nervous?” Joe’s friend asks. “No.” he lies (Words). 

Writing this way requires hard work, time, and practice. But so does anything else worth doing. Not taking the time to interlace action, thought, and word effectively is lazy writing. Remember that as writers we have a sacred duty. We are the scribes, the transcribers of all that it means to be human. It is our job to capture how people live, how they think, how they dream, what they do and who they are. And in that job there is no room for laziness. So write and write well. And as always remember, be brave, be sincere, and have fun!

Read all Padraic's work on Floodmark.