- Home
- Improving Your Writing Skills & Marketing
- Character Development
Character Development
- By John Patrick Lamont
- Published September 8, 2009
- Improving Your Writing Skills & Marketing
John Patrick Lamont
John Patrick Lamont is author of The
Worst Kind of Lies, the first novel in his Sum of Life Trilogy. His
novels deal with corporate corruption in the insurance industry. To
learn more about his writing, read reviews and download excerpts,
please visit J. Patrick
Lamont or Sum of Life
Books
So, you have a killer plotline idea that you’re confident will sell a million books You may even have a title that will jump off the front cover and grab the attention of anyone who sees it.
So, you have a killer plotline idea
that you’re confident will sell a million books. You may even have
a title that will jump off the front cover and grab the attention of
anyone who sees it. That’s great! You’re way ahead of the
majority of people who dream of writing the Great American Novel.
Now, as you grasp your pad of paper or boot up your computer, where’s
a good place to not only start bringing it into reality, but also
adding elements for sequels and even spin-offs into other marketing
products like games, tee shirts and action figures? Perhaps the best
place to start is in-depth character development.
Stories are
about people and events. Sometimes written works will wander into
detailed descriptions of the book environment, costuming or technical
and mechanical explanations, but successful stories always return to
the characters. Some authors start with basic sketches and allow
their people, animals or artificially intelligent machines to evolve
as the story develops, while others write detailed biographies and
short stories to flesh them out. Whatever process you use, by the
time the first draft of your manuscript is finished, if even the
minor players in your tale are not believable, your story may fall
flat, losing your audience.
By definition, fiction is
something feigned, invented or imagined, the phenomenon of suspension
of disbelief is required for the story to come alive in the mind of
your reader. Your cover design or the story synopsis on the jacket
may have developed expectations, but before the first words on page
one are read, the book is like a blank canvas. The mind behind the
eyes gazing upon your words is allowing you to win their trust that
the next hundreds of pages will be an entertaining fantasy worth
setting reality aside for a period of time. If your characters seem
real to them, no matter how much your imaginary world challenges the
beliefs and understandings of your reader, the fragile suspension of
disbelief will hold their interest.
Great imaginary people in
literature have captivated the attention of millions of people for
centuries. Only a small percentage of those alive today wouldn’t
immediately recognize the names of characters from works by Twain,
Dickens, Fleming, Rowling and many others. Like actors, once firmly
in the mindset of the general public, the characters become bankable.
They not only sell more books beyond the initial publication, but
also transcend the original story and create a demand for sequels or
products to fulfill other areas in our lifestyle where we require
imagination and inspiration.
No matter what the original
intent of the author for creating the work from which the characters
sprang, once they become marketable, not only do they help
communicate the author’s vision, but they also help fulfill the
financial needs of the author to support the continued existence of
the books. Fiction sparks our imagination and helps us evaluate the
principles of justice and morality in our societies. Like parables,
great literary works with lifelike fictional characters gives us a
base from which to measure our real world. If we can dream up or be
inspired by people who are better than ourselves, then perhaps we
have the capacity for improvement.
(Originally published at
GoArticles and reprinted with permission from the author, John
Patrick Lamont).