At the very least, a character sheet for each main character will help you remember their traits and how they affect the story. Otherwise, it's entirely possible to have one of your characters fall out of -- well, character. For example, one of the themes in my writing is how pacifism has always been a minority position in the US. Therefore I have a lot of pacifistic characters living at the ecocollective that houses many of my novels, and other characters who are not pacifists but have agreed to non-violent rules to live in the collective. And then there's Gideon, who was brought up by a Quaker mother, but couldn't resist throwing a punch from time to time. I have to remember which ones are which to be consistent; thus, character sheets.
Character sheets also keep authors consistent from book to book. Case in point: One of my favorite books, one that makes me happy-weepy to read, is Tea with the Black Dragon, by R. A. MacAvoy. One of the protagonists is Oo Long, a mysterious Eurasian man who is more than he seems. Without giving away the plot, Oo Long, besides being the name of a tea, translates to "Black Dragon". One of my least favorite books is Twisting the Rope, the sequel to Tea with the Black Dragon. My reason for disliking the latter book is because the character of Oo Long changes drastically with no explanation. In fact, his skin is described as "black" in the latter book. At the very least, the author needs to explain why a protagonist has changed color.
The first time I saw a character sheet was 30-some years ago, long before I started writing novels. It looked much like this: (Dungeons and Dragons, 2017).
Sorry for the mouse print. Anyone who has played an RPG recognizes this sheet, or something much like it. (My character was a female half-elf wizard with extreme beauty and maxed-out charisma. Hello, wish fulfillment!)
More pertinent to the discussion -- this character sheet does a pretty good job for writers despite its obsession on quantifying character skills and its focus on fighting. I could see this working for sword and sorcery or even urban dystopia with fight scenes.
This next one I looked up on the Internet, a veritable treasure trove of character sheets. I love this sheet:
This sheet has so much detail, it would almost work as an intake assessment form in case management -- all it's missing is the mental status exam. I think I could use this form while discussing with my husband the fine points of a character over a three-hour coffee date. On the other hand, I have a novel with 65 characters, for which I have at least partial character sheets. Imagine filling this doc out for 65 characters!
The third character sheet is what I use, because it's electronic and because it's bundled with my storywriting/formatting software, Scrivener:
I prefer the simplicity of this document -- I can fill this out in 20 minutes or less and get back to writing. My favorite part of this document, however, is that I can drag and drop a picture to remind me of what the character looks like!
If you were to ask me, though, which character sheet/method is the best, I would not answer with Scrivener's document, although it's my favorite so far. As with many other things in life, the best character sheet is the one you'll use.
As always, sources:
Dungeons and Dragons (2017). Character sheets. Available: http://dnd.wizards.com/articles/features/character_sheets [September 6, 2017].
Lerner, T. and Walker, K. (2017). The epiguide.com guide to character sheets. Available: http://www.epiguide.com/ep101/writing/charchart.html
Scrivener [Computer software]. (2017). Retrieved from https://www.literatureandlatte.com/scrivener.php.
I find this very interesting. Character development is a critical part of all books.
ReplyDeleteThese are things that I have noticed from reading. If the writer is neglecting in that area the story the reader does not develop a relationship with the characters. Eventually the reader can become bored quit reading because there is little or no emotional invesinvestment in what happens to the characters. Another pitfall is when there are too many characters in one book. The reader does not want to keep a genogram to keep track of every character in a book.
When characters are well developed you remember them forever. They always dwell in your memory living in an ivory pillar beloved and immortalized.
This is Lanetta
*chuckle* I have to keep a family tree for the Luke Dunstan family, because the founders (Luke and Su) are for all purposes immortal, and so have a lot of time to engender children. Luke and Su had a child; Luke fathered a child with a mortal woman; those children found partners and in one case had a child. And because Archetypes (Luke and Su's race) are born adults, the full-blooded child is 6000 years old and the step-child is 33. Whoa fun!
DeleteBut yes, genograms are much harder to read for me than character sheets would be (what does that dotted line mean again?) But a writer like William Faulkner with his generations of a southern family would really benefit.