How to Write Real People

No one wants to spend their time reading characters that aren't believable. We have enough people who can't hold our interest in real life—writing them into your stories is a disservice to a faithful audience. Making characters three dimensional takes planning and consideration, and even if you're not careful, they can slide back into flat-dialogue-speaking-feelingless stick figures.

So how do you write real characters into existence?

#) Study people. You'll understand how to make the "fake" thing if you have complete knowledge of the real thing. Watch people interact, watch them be alone. Study their mannerisms, their habits, their hobbies. And ask questions. Understanding the why behind the what always helps to write more whats.

#) Make friends. If only for the sake of your writing, make friends with your characters, even the villains. In real life, you're honest with your friends, and you see their flaws. Do it in your writing, so you can give them believable flaws (nobody really likes sheer perfection) and lovable foibles.

#) Let them go. One of the delightful things about creating characters is that once you've given them life and personality, they'll start making their own decisions. When they do that, don't try to force them back into the mold you've created for them. Let them do their own thing, and when they suffer for bad decisions, don't try to patch it up for them right away. Let them be real people, who mess up and get mustard on their clothes and sing off-key.

#) Practice. I include it in every list because it's really the most important thing to do in writing. Stop reading this and go write up some real people.

We like to read us about people who remind us of ourselves—if you can master creating them, you'll be miles ahead of all competition.

How I Beat Writers Block

Classic writers block takes two forms: 

1. Getting up to a certain point then not being able to continue. You've written long and hard, and suddenly, at the end of the sentence, you can't think of what comes next. It doesn't matter how hard you try, the villain won't pick up the gun and the heroine stays home in her pajamas. After hours of staring at the screen, you decide maybe you'd make a good chef (writing is for pale bookworms and nervous journalists with big glasses, after all), so you buy a cookbook from Amazon and start googling french cooking terms. 
    
2. Nothing to say. You've sat down to write, and you've written forty-five first sentences—and you don't like any of them. None of them catch on, each one more flaccid than the last, and every time you come up with something maybe even a little good, the burst of inspiration dies out like a shooting star landing in the ocean. Dead. Completely. Sunken to the dark seaweed-y depths to live with bottom dwellers and pale fish with large eyes. You get it.

I don't know of any diehard methods to beat writers block, but I can tell you what I do: Write. About writers block. I write about how I despise it, how it makes me feel worthless and miserable, how it robs me of all inspiration and love for writing that usually comes so naturally. I write about how frustrating it is to want to say something and not be able to, like the boy who wants to ask the pretty girl to dance but he just... can't... get... the... words... out... there... Pretty soon, I've written a paragraph. If I'm feeling particularly spiteful (which is rare—I may have ditzy spells, but I'm not vindictive by nature), I'll have a page. Suddenly (while my brain was learning french and my fingers were flying with wrathful vengeance against something so small and obnoxious), the heroine has put on her super-suit, the villain is holding up a bank, and the shooting star is resurrected in blazing glory.

It may not work for everyone—but it's better than staring at the screen in doleful misery. 

Maybe it will work for you.

Nuance

Nuance gives interactions depth. The change of tone, the raised eyebrow, the subtle shift in posture—all of them indicate attitude and feeling. It's what makes story interesting, movies gripping, and real life easier to interpret. Without nuance, face to face interactions lack a certain emotion that we depend on to understand what's really going on. Even stranger to stranger interaction has subtle nuance, whether discomfort, disinterest, or delight.

Nuance differs from person to person, but some things are universal. Do you look up to the sun with your eyes closed when you go outside? Are you constantly picking at things with your fingers? Do you lean in when you're listening, cross your arms when you're upset, yawn when you're bored? Subtleties help us process interactions—without them we can't tell what the other person is thinking, unless they come straight out and say it. Was he leaning out because he wasn't listening? Why didn't she nod? What is all the yawning about?

In the same way, writing nuance into your story clues your readers into what's really going on, and triggers the imagination to help tell the story and fill in the tiny missing pieces. Without nuance tips, we won't know the tone of the story.

How do you write nuance into a story?

#) Understand what nuance is. You can't write it unless you understand it. Fortunately, it's an easy thing to learn. Eighty-five percent of social interactions that you witness are full of nuance—and once you start looking for it, it's everywhere.

#) Read for it. Find popular writers (both current and classic) and read their work. Do they use nuance well? Poorly? At all? 

#) Practice. This is the dead horse that I'll flog forever, when it comes to writing. The only way to get better is to practice, even when you don't feel like it, even when you have nothing to say. Look at the objects on your desk and write a story about them having a conversation. If your desk is empty use your shoes. If you're not wearing shoes, write it about the wall and the paint. If you write in a gazebo, maybe you're in a public park and there will be people walking by... You get the picture.

Nuance is invaluable to writers. Perfect the art.

Build It

Building requires work and planning.

Building a building takes an architect, and blueprints, and construction teams, and hundreds of other things that I don't know about, because I wear glasses and use a computer keyboard, instead of a hardhat and a shovel.

Making a cake takes a recipe (or some plan, at least), ingredients, an oven, and some previous knowledge about baking (don't put the egg shells in, mix it enough or not too much).

Building a relationship takes time, and energy, and sacrifice. Friends don't become friends overnight, and once they get there it's still work. 

Making a story means creating characters, formulating plot, setting the stage. It doesn't happen without a fair amount of thinking and planning.

Sports teams don't become champions overnight, an ice rink doesn't freeze in one minute, Rome wasn't built in a day.

Putting the work into building something is worth it. It is an accomplishment, and achievement, an exercise of will. Sometimes there is a reward for completion, but often, finishing is its own reward. It is the ability to step back and say, "I made this," and to recognize that perceived value aside, it is good because you made it.

Build with the value of the finished product in mind. It's worth it.

Short

Get carried away by creating.

Sunday Fabulous

Sleeping later than the weekdays.Cinnamon rolls for breakfast. Fall colors raging rampant. An entire afternoon with nothing to do but exist and be together. Bursting organ (instrumental, not anatomical) choruses. Sunday best. Out for walks. Resting. Reading. Eating whatever whenever. Afternoon naps. No responsibilities or obligations. Sunday dinner. Ice cream. Fruit pie.

All the things that make Sunday fabulous.

Scribbled Insights

I have a lot of scraps of paper taped up around my desk, full of scribbled insights. I've gathered them through the months, and put them up to remind myself of the things that are important in life: making wise choices, loving people, living for God. One of them says, "Our default assumption is that people who choose their words carefully are quite smart."

It needs no explanation, and lines up with a proverb.

"Better to be thought a fool than to open your mouth and remove all doubt."

Also self-explanatory.

When you're in a creating position, think carefully about what you say and make. It pays off in the long run.

The Impressions

Sometimes it's really hard to put more than two words together and come up with something meaningful. The self-imposed pressure to do something that matters takes a deadly toll on already feeble inspiration, and it's gloomy and raining outside and I don't want to walk home to lunch. This morning I ran to then on a track. As soon as I got there, I saw the old man running back and forth, about a half length of one of the long sides of the track. I would round the last curve of the track, and he would be running towards me full speed (for him, at least), teetering on his old legs, swaying back and forth at a mesmerizing (and concerning) pitch. As I got closer I started to move over on the track so we wouldn't collide, but right before I reached him he abruptly turned around and ran the other way. I passed him and kept going, and the scenario repeated itself as many times as I circled the track.

I spent my run thankful that my knees didn't hurt, and thinking about why that man, who had the whole track to run around, was using only a tiny section. I saw the bicycle on my first lap around, but didn't put it together until the third or fourth lap. He was running that short piece of track to babysit his bike, which was standing tall and proud on a kickstand next to the fence. And he had a bike lock on his bike, unused, and a coat draped over it, like the covering of a proud and chilly racehorse.

He was running his short laps to watch his bike, and although I tend to shy away from philosophics (which is not a real word), I wondered why he wasn't using the lock, instead running 30 yards back and forth to watch it. Maybe the dark had something to do with it, maybe it was an expensive bike (I didn't stop to look at it, after all, he was right there), maybe it was actually a trap and he wasn't as feeble as he appeared to be, maybe it wasn't his bike at all and he just really likes running 40 paces back and forth. And back and forth. And back and forth. And back and... You get it.

It really doesn't matter very much, but it made an impression on me, and hours later, I'm sitting at my desk, glad that the rain didn't ruin my shoes on my walk home for lunch, and thinking about that guy who just kept running back and forth.

Write about what makes an impression on you. Maybe someday you'll realize it mattered more than you thought.

Don't Copy This

There's currently a case in the Supreme Court about... Cheerleader uniforms. According to columnist Brent Kendall, of the Wall Street Journal,

"In a vigorous debate on Monday, the high court spent an hour considering when the design elements of clothing can be eligible for copyright protection, an issue that required the justices to consider the qualities that make a cheerleading uniform what it is."

I need news condensed into simple terms, so if I asked, here's what's happening: Someone had a great design for a uniform. Someone else duplicated it. The first guy felt like he got ripped off, because he wasn't getting credit or money for his ideas. He was unhappy. Very, very unhappy.

I'm not law-savvy enough to know who is right in this argument. I do know that imitation is "one of the sincerest forms of flattery (see this kid's halloween costume)," but that getting copied feels like a rip off.

While I am a big proponent of seeing something that worked well for someone else, borrowing ideas, and sharing creativity, I recognize that duplicating someone else's work without crediting them is, in loose terms, stealing.

But it's hard to be creative on your own. That's why it's so important to work in unison, to create surrounded by other creative people, to make things that matter for important causes. If someone else does something amazing, share their work. Don't copy it. Use their idea to start your own project, but make it different, make it you, and give them credit for the original.

We go farther together than we go alone.