How to Write a Genre Story: Character Introduction: Verisimilitude

This post continues my mini-series about how to introduce a character. I’ve already written about Exaggeration, Unusual Position and introducing characters in Action. 

Today I’m covering Verisimilitude and later this week--I’m aiming for Thursday--I’ll close the series off by writing about Empathy. Here are links to my previous posts in this mini-series:

How to Write a Genre Story: Character Introduction: Exaggeration
How to Write a Genre Story: Character Introduction: Unusual Position
How to Write a Genre Story: Character Introduction: Characteristic Entry Action

(Here is an index to all the blog posts in my soon-to-be written book: How to Write a Genre Story)

Verisimilitude

Verisimilitude. No, that’s not an exotic disease.

If a character has verisimilitude then they act believably which means that they act in a way that is consistent with who they are, with their core attributes. By the way, I’m getting much this information from Jim Butcher and his wonderful article, Characters. Jim Butcher calls verisimilitude the “V-factor.” 

He writes:

“The most exotic character in the world becomes nothing more than an annoying cartoon figure if he doesn’t behave in a consistent and believable manner.”

As an example, Butcher mentions Jar Jar Binks. As you likely know, Jar Jar was first introduced in the first of the Star Wars prequels, The Phantom Menace. 

It seems as though the character of Jar Jar checked most of the right boxes. He definitely had exaggerated and unusual traits and he was introduced in a way that helped make him memorable. But then WHY were Star Wars fans' reactions to him so mixed? Jim Butcher thinks that it is because, at least in part, Jar Jar didn’t have a consistent and believable manner. To paraphrase Butcher, the V-force was not with him. (Sorry, couldn’t resist!)

How to give a character verisimilitude

I think there are two things that make a character feel real.

First, as we have seen throughout this mini-series, you give the character tags and traits that illustrate who they are. Further you make at least one or two of these traits exaggerated, unusual. 

Second, a character’s V-factor has to do with HOW you communicate a character’s emotional reactions. That’s what Jim Butcher focuses on and that’s what I’ll talk about, below. Here I just want to note that if this sounds similar to the pattern of a sequel, I would agree. This is the very same pattern. And it is enormously important.

Think of when you’ve encountered a sudden setback. What happens? Well, myself, I’m hit with a wall of pure, raw emotion. There’s no thought, not yet. It’s sort of like when I touch a hot stove (and, yes, I have been that idiotic, ‘Gee, I wonder if it’s hot yet.’) My hand started to move away from the burner before I felt the pain. Then I had a reaction which was, “Wow, touching a hot burner was a really bad idea.” Finally I made the decision to not do that again.

That’s perhaps a silly example but think of any sudden, negative, shock you’ve had. A significant other suddenly breaking up with you, hearing that you’ve been betrayed, and so on. Human beings have a reaction to those sort of things and it happens in a particular order. If that order isn’t right your readers probably won’t notice it but, still, it won’t FEEL right to them.

So. Jim Butcher lays out the three stages:

1. Emotions
2. Reactions
3. Decisions

In one of Jack Bickham's books he gives an example of a person coming home from work and, as they usually do, he calls out, “Honey I’m home!” But he is met with the silence of an empty house. Puzzled he looks around and spots a piece of paper on the hall table. He walks over and looks at it.

It’s a note from his wife. She tells him that she has been having an affair with the grocer for the past year and that she has left him.

What is his first reaction? EMOTION. A wave of emotion, of pain and regret. He’s not thinking about anything. There’s a chair nearby and he slumps into it because he doesn’t want to fall down. 

Then he REACTS. Then he’s angry. How could she? How could she lie to him like that? How could she betray him, deceive him? She had told him she loved him, and all that time…

But what should he do? He could try to get her back, try to track them down. He could hire a private detective to find them. Perhaps the grocer had pressured her, perhaps he had blackmailed her. Even if not, perhaps he could win her back. But does he really want to do that? Perhaps he should let her go her own way. 

The man presses bloodless lips together and makes a DECISION. To hell with her. He will scrub her from his life, from his memory, from his heart.

You see the pattern. If we had the decision before the emotion, it wouldn’t be credible or if the man had the reaction after the decision that wouldn’t make sense. You might be thinking, “Well, yeah… Did you really have to tell anyone that? Isn’t it obvious?” And, sure. On one level it is, but it is something that writers can get wrong and then the character doesn’t feel real.

Summary

When an event important to your character occurs, have your character react to it in a way that makes sense (see above) AND in a way that makes sense for them, that is true to their core characteristics. Those two considerations are equally important.

Well! That’s it for today. I’m trying to keep to a schedule of putting out a blog post on Monday and publishing my interview with a marvelously interesting writer on my YouTube channel on Tuesday. Tomorrow I will upload my chat with a singularly fascinating individual, Lydia Moore.

I hope you have a wonderful week, I'll talk to you again on Thursday. Good writing!

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Other posts in this extended series (I'm blogging a book):
How to Write a Genre Story: The Index

Where you can find me on the web:
Twitter: @WoodwardKaren
Pinterest: @karenjwoodward
Instagram: @KarenWoodwardWriter
YouTube: The Writer's Craft

Blog posts you might like:

How to write a blog post

How to write a 'Choose your own adventure story'

6 scenes any love story must have

Writers: How To Get Rid Of Fear

“I must not fear. Fear is the mind-killer. Fear is the little-death that brings total obliteration. I will face my fear. I will permit it to pass over me and through me. And when it has gone past I will turn the inner eye to see its path. Where the fear has gone there will be nothing. Only I will remain.”

—Frank Herbert, Dune

Fear is real. It’s that hard fist that twists your gut, that grabs hold of your heart and squeezes. It’s an elevated pulse and the inability to catch your breath.

Everyone’s number one fear is different. Perhaps you might be terrified by the thought of receiving a one star review. Or of your mother/father/grandmother/child discovering you write erotic fiction. Or of publicly putting yourself out there, doing the work, publishing your writing, and failing horribly. Or ... I could go on forever.

Beating The Fear

Here are a few things I do to deal with fear that work for me:

1. Recognize that fear is an emotion.

Often my fear is just a feeling of untethered doom. I’m not afraid of any one thing, the fear just flows through me grabbing the things I’m currently most anxious about and blowing my natural hum-drum concerns WAY out of proportion.

2. Start shutting off the fear by shifting from emotional mode to analytical mode.

This is true for me: the more fearful I am the less rational I am.

I’ve found that strong emotion and analytical thought don’t happen at the same time. If I’m in the middle of an anxiety attack I’m not thinking rationally and vice versa. Which makes sense. If I’m having a fight or flight response the blood is being directed toward the bits of me that are good at either fighting or fleeing. And, sad to say, none of those bits are inside my noggin.

But it’s often difficult to make that transition from run away emotion to analytical thought. Here are a few questions I ask to help me shake the fear, to help me take back control:

3. Name your fear.

By “name” I mean write it down. Be specific. Often fear is just a feeling of untethered doom, it’s not cognitive at all. Force yourself to pin down exactly what you’re afraid of. What are you afraid of losing? If what you fear comes to pass, what would that state of affairs look like?

Sometimes I have quite literally been afraid of nothing. After writing my fear down I realize that even if it came to pass it wouldn’t significantly damage me or anything I care about.

Keep in mind that fear is a shapeshifter, a chameleon. It’s more of a feeling than a thought. As I said, for me it’s often a feeling of doom that wraps it’s black tendrils through me and follows me wherever I go.

Often we don’t really know what we’re afraid of, or the fear shifts, takes on different forms. Since we can’t pin it down it lurks in our head and takes on innumerable forms.

Fear has physical effects that are themselves harmful. It is very difficult to be emotional—and fear is one of the strongest, primal, emotions there is—and thoughtful at the same time. The very presence of fear makes it more difficult to think clearly.

Fear feeds anxiety. Write down what you’re afraid of, pin it down. Be explicit. Detailed. As soon as you see it you can start thinking about it rationally and the fear will begin to lose its power over you.

4. Do something.

In general, doing something is better than doing nothing, even if that something is simply reciting an affirmation like Frank Herbert’s “I must not fear.”

Do nothing and your fear will probably win. If you do something then the fear might still be there but maybe it won’t. If you keep trying, if you keep working at it, you will find something to banish the fear.

Don’t let fear paralyze you. When that happens the fear becomes an endless loop feeding itself, continually growing stronger as you grow weaker.

5. Do something that will make what you fear less likely.

Do something practical that will mitigate the consequences if what you fear comes about. For example, my number one fear used to be that I wouldn’t be able to support myself with my writing. What did I do when the fear hit? I threw my energy into writing and publishing!

6. How likely is it that what you fear will come about?

My fears are generally rational in the sense that they _could_ happen, what I tend to lose sight of is that it is improbable in the extreme that that exact thing will happen.

When you write down your fear be sure to make it specific. Detailed.

Don’t just write: I am scared I will be a failure.

Write: I am scared that after all the years of work I put into my manuscript, after all the money I spent having it edited, that I will publish it and everyone who reads it will hate it and leave a one star review.

There are LOTS of ways to be a failure and it’s easy to give that fear power if we don’t pin it down exactly what we’re afraid of. After we write it down our rational mind can go to work analyzing it and (this has been my experience) it immediately starts to lose it’s power over me. If that doesn’t happen then I’m usually not being specific enough.

7. What can you do to make the fear less likely?

Fear is often a reaction to change or potential change. Change is scary, but it doesn’t have to be. Often change is both good and bad. The trick is to optimize the good and minimize the bad. Ask yourself: what can you do that would make it less likely for what you fear to come about?

For myself: Write more. Publish more. The more one writes and publishes the better one becomes at both. Professional writers aren’t those who have no fear, they are people who have learnt to write anyway to, as Steven Pressfield says, Do The Work.

8. The worst case scenario rarely happens.

When I’m stressed I imagine a worst case scenario. And that might be okay—after all, it’s not a bad idea to prepare for the worst and hope for the best. What I find I have to keep firmly in mind is that this worst case state of affairs isn’t my current state of affairs _and it may never be_.

I want you to imagine something. Imagine a state of affairs, one not as bleak as the worst case scenario your mind/brain/soul is fixated on. Now realize that this future is possible. Perhaps it is just as likely as the bleak one that has been gnawing at you.

9. Every day do one thing that brings you closer to your goal.

Ask yourself: What could I do that would make my fear less likely to come true?

Every day do something that brings you closer to your goal then write it down what you did in your writing journal. Then, at the end of the month, look at what you did that month.

Look at where you were at the beginning of the month and where you are now that the month has come to an end. Realize that you have made progress toward your goal. Realize that you _can_ achieve your goals!

10. Embrace Failure.

If you’re not failing you’re not trying and if you don’t try you’ll never win. Simple as that. To banish fear we must act. We must fail to win.

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Every post I pick a book or audiobook I love and recommend it to my readers. This serves two purposes. I want to share what I’ve loved with you, and, if you click the link and buy anything over at Amazon within the next 24 hours, Amazon puts a few cents in my tip jar at no cost to you. So, if you click the link, thank you! If not, that’s okay too. I’m thrilled and honored you’ve visited my blog and read my post. :-)

I’m re-watching the TV show Supernatural. I love that show! Though I love the Sam and Dean characters, they aren’t the stars of the show, the monsters are. This is a monster book for writers: Writing Monsters: How to Craft Believably Terrifying Creatures to Enhance Your Horror, Fantasy, and Science Fiction by Philip Athans with an introduction from the H.P. Lovecraft Historical Society.

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That’s it! I’ll talk to you again on Wednesday. In the meantime good writing! Don’t let fear win.

How To Put Emotions Into Words

Just now +Adam Zielinski posted a marvelous pictorial representation of how emotions are structured; he posted on the Writer's Discussion Group, one of the communities I belong to. I immediately popped the graphic into my "writing resources" folder in Evernote and went in search of more. 

But then I thought ... wait! I should share this on my blog. 

A Wheel Of Emotions

The wheel can be found here. Thanks go to Adam Zielinski.

Categorizing Emotions, Wikipedia Style

Here is a classification of 48 emotions in terms of whether they are:

- Negative or Positive

- Forceful or Passive

And so on. Here's a link to the article: Contrasting and categorization of emotions.

Plutchik’s Wheel of Emotions

You can see Plutchik's wheel in the post I linked to, above, but over at ThisIsIndexed.com Jessica Hagy wrote an interesting article and, as well, drew her own visual representation of the wheel.

That's the first of three sketches she did, you can read her article here: Plutchik’s Wheel of Emotions.

And that's it! Tomorrow I'll either talk about Michael Moorcock's writing method or I'll share one of the other projects I've been working on. 

I hope you have a good writing day.

Photo credit: "One of these blacks is not like the others..." by Laura D'Alessandro under Creative Commons Attribution 2.0.

Describing Character Reactions And Emotions: She Smiled, He Frowned

If you're anything like me, you've had the experience of trying to find another way of writing "she smiled" or "he frowned". It can be maddening!

Which is why I was thrilled to discover Janice Hardy wrote a blog post about alternate ways of describing character reactions/emotions. (By the way, if you haven't read Janice's blog, The Other Side Of The Story, I highly recommend it.)

Janice Hardy's article is well worth the read, but here are a few of her tips:

Other Ways Of Expressing A Character's Emotions/Reactions

1. If this is a first draft just write "She smiled"

If you're writing a first draft just write "she smiled" or "he frowned" and move on. You can tidy things up on the second draft. Chances are, a lot is going to change from the first to the second draft, just concentrate on laying the foundation of your story.

2. Express the reaction through synonyms

For instance, instead of writing "She smiled" you could write "She grinned" or "She beamed" or "She laughed". All of those communicate pleasure/happiness.

3. Express the reaction through internalization

Ask yourself: Why is the character smiling? If she realizes a cute guy likes her you might do something like: Sue tried to look at Rob without being obvious. He is kind of cute, she thought.

4. Express the reaction through dialogue

Mary nudged Sue, "Hey! I think the cute guy in the corner was staring at you."

5. Express the reaction  through movement

Janice Hardy suggests, "Her lip twitched," or "her eyes sparkled," rather than "she smiled".

8. Express the emotion through subtext

Here is an example from The Italian Job. John is on the phone with his daughter.

John: I'm sending you something.
Stella: Does it smell nice?
John: No. But it's sparkly.
Stella: Does it come with a receipt?

In other words: Is it stolen?

Janice Hardy has a lot more to say on this topic, and you can read it here: Alternative Ways to Describe Character Reactions
 

Useful Links: How To Write Emotion

I like to do background reading when I write a blog post and, today, I came upon a few articles I didn't use but they're great so I want to share them with you.

How To Describe Emotions - Gives great pointers.
Emotion Thesaurus: Relief - 15 ways to express relief.
List of Human Emotions - What the title says!

"She smiled," is a tricky one. Characters smile a lot so this phrase is easy to overuse. What alternatives have you come up with?

Other articles you might like:

- Tags, Traits And Tells (Podcast)
- Podcasting
- Good Writing: Using The Senses

Photo credit: "The Hidden Beauty!" by VinothChandar under Creative Commons Attribution 2.0.