![[CWW Title]](../CWWTitle.gif)
|
(Introduction - 31/27/01) Topic for #workshop: Robin Lee Hatcger on "Creating Characters That Breathe", 10pm ET Log file opened at: 3/27/01 18:58:03 #workshop: WTYates MBananas RobinLee @iUniverse WTYates: We will get started in a few minutes. wordgrl43: hi..sorry. I was checking out the other chat :) MBananas: Christian writers chat will be starting shortly with Robin Lee Hatcher as our guest. wordgrl43: not familiar with Hatcher wordgrl43: or am I MBananas: Hi, Peggy! WTYates: Hi, Peg... mcb: : Didn't she write Whispers of Yesterday? MBananas: She is excellent writer. Peg: Hi, all... MBananas: You will enjoy it. Yes she did wordgrl43: how exciting WTYates: Robin Lee Hatcher, winner of the Christy Award for Excellence in Christian Fiction and the RITA Award for Best Inspirational, is the author of 38 contemporary and historical novels and novellas. Published by Tyndale, Zondervan, WaterBrook, Multnomah, HarperCollins, Avon, Silhouette, and Leisure, there are more than five million copies of her books in print in fourteen countries. KiwiElle: Sorry, I've been a bit distracted the last few minutes.. winds are picking up here, quite unusual.. and there was a tornado on the west cost of the South Island in the early hours of this morning.. and tornadoes are very rare in New Zealand MBananas: Maybe I should hush and let Robin answer. <vbg> mcb: I just finished reading that MBananas: Kiwi, you can get a log if you have to leave. WTYates: See, Robin, we reach around the world! RobinLee: I love the 'Net. KiwiElle: Thanks, Marcia, I will do that if I need to... :) WTYates: I'll wait about 1 more minute... KiwiElle: Robin, our library has copies of your "coming to America" series in the old format... I have no idea if they will get the new ones in or not MBananas: Peggy, I'm enjoying your letter in our newsletter. You've been getting my attention. Peg: Thanks, Marcia... I hope I get the desired results. kitane: Evening all Peg: Hi, Kitane... Snizzlew: Hi Peg: Welcome, Snizzlew :) MBananas: Welcome, Snizzlew KiwiElle: Hi Snizzle and Kitane Snizzlew: thank you Peg: Robin, I haven't greeted you... Welcome! RobinLee: Thanks, nice to be here. Snizzlew: Warm Fuzzies and salutations to all Peg: ::::snuggling into those warm fuzzies::::: KiwiElle: Robin, I love your HeartMatters list, I'm so pleased you started it up :) |
|
WTYates: Welcome to the Christian Writer's Workshop! Our guest tonight is Robin Lee Hatcher, author of a lot of books! :) She will discuss how to make your characters come alive. MBananas: Care to elaborate on Heartmatter? WTYates: We will be under protocol tonight... WTYates: Type a ? to ask a question... WTYates: Type a ! to make a comment (does not require a response)... MBananas: Welcome guest. Robin Lee Hatcher is our guest tonight. WTYates: PLEASE type / or ga when you are done... WTYates: I will call on you in turn... WTYates: Peg, will you open in a word of prayer, please? Peg: Father, we thank You for Your presence tonight. Thank you for bringing us all together. Bless Robin as she shares with us tonight, that we may each take some blessing from her. In Jesus' name, Amen. MBananas: Amen. WTYates: AMEN! KiwiElle: Amen RobinLee: Amen kitane: Amen WTYates: Robin, would you like to make an opening statement before we open the floor to questions? RobinLee: Ok. WTYates: The floor is yours... RobinLee: Since the workshop is officially about creating characters who breathe, that's where I will start. But I don't mind answering any questions about writing. The first thing I writer must remember is that a great plot with poor characters will fall flat and can't be resurrected. But great characters can carry even a weak plot. So it's important to put lots of work into making your characters come alive to your readers. One way that I do that is to write first person autobiographies, starting from the day the character is born and going to the moment the book opens. These bios are "stream of consciousness" writing. Remember when writing was fun, before you started getting serious about publishing? Well, that's what this is. You are writing for fun, discovering who these people are, getting underneath their skin. Okay, that should give us something to talk about. ga kitane: ? WTYates: kitane... kitane: Bios on major characters or do you do one on all of the characters in a book?/ RobinLee: Any character who has a significant role. The more they will be "on the stage" in the novel, the more in-depth the bio. I start with the hero and heroine and other major protagonists, then add whenever I discover a character whom I didn't know would play a significant role. WTYates: Peg... Peg: How much of 'you' (or 'me') should be in the characters you develop? ga RobinLee: Hmm... There is, of course, a part of the author in every character she creates. (I'll use the feminine pronoun for the author throughout -- no offense, Bill.) But the author must be careful not to make every character a mirror image of herself. The most important tool a novelist can acquire is the ability to empathize with all people. A woman must be able to put herself into a man's thoughts. An adult must remember what it was like to be a child. The rich must be able to empathize with the poor, the alcoholic, the drug addict. Become an observer of the human race, and you will create "real" characters. ga Snizzlew: ? WTYates: (None taken.) mcb: ? WTYates: Snizzlew... Snizzlew: Please explain (again, I need a refresher) protagonist and antagonist and can a story have more than one of each Snizzlew: thanks / *Peg* weird RobinLee: Well, in simplest terms, your protagonist is your main character and/or your hero/heroine. RobinLee: The antagonist would be your villain or your hero's foil. Peg: ? RobinLee: Yes, you can have more than one. My work in progress has six view point characters. They are all protagonists, really, and yet to some degree they each play the role of antagonist at one time or another. ga WTYates: mcb... mcb: I loved the diary in 'Whispers'. I'm using actual letters in a book I am working on. How did you keep both characters' stories so strong and their stories stayed separate until the end?/ RobinLee: Well, I almost hate to tell you this because readers have thought I did this so "brilliantly" as one put it. But the truth is, I wrote the diary first. Then I wrote the contemporary story. Then I divided the diary up, so many pages between each chapter. And that's how it worked out. It was a God thing. ga WTYates: Peg... Peg: Creating a believable antagonist seems a bit formidable. How do you do it? ga RobinLee: You must remember that a villain is the hero of his own world. He thinks what he is doing is right, no matter how evil it is. Taking it to a truly evil extreme, I'll use Hitler as an example. He didn't get up in the morning and say, I think I will do something evil today. He got up and said, I think I will prove the superiority of the Arian race by killing those who aren't like us. And no matter how vile and wicked your villain/antagonist, you need to give them good attributes too. ga Peg: ! WTYates: Peg... Peg: That's a great 'description' "a hero in his own world." That really helps put things in perspective! ga WTYates: ? mcb: ? WTYates: WTYates... Snizzlew: ? WTYates: How do you decide on the flaws of your characters?/ Peg: <ooh, good question!> RobinLee: Usually that comes from doing the auto-bios. By understanding the character's motivation for everything he does, it also gives me his flaws. I've read that by the age of 5 or 6 a child has experienced every emotion known to man. Therefore, by looking into my character's past, I can understand how he will react in any given situation. It also tells me how that reaction can be positive or negative. ga WTYates: mcb... mcb: Have you read the book 'Heroes and Heroines' and if so did you find it helpful?/ KiwiElle: ? RobinLee: Haven't read that one so can't comment. RobinLee: ga WTYates: Snizzlew... Snizzlew: Besides the bios, is it also good to make a timeline? *** Signoff: Snizzlew (QUIT: ) RobinLee: I was going to ask what snizzlew meant by timeline, but she's gone. RobinLee: ga WTYates: KiwiElle... KiwiElle: How do you determine what your characters look like? ga WTYates: ? Peg: ! RobinLee: My characters are entirely in my head. I never cut photos out of magazines or anything like that. It just isn't how I work. They become very real people to me. I see them very clearly. Who they are just determines what they look like in my mind. I do, of course, try to mix it up so I don't have a book full of blue eyed blondes. ga WTYates: WTYates... WTYates: Do your characters ever surprise you? Do you ever have to rewrite their bios?/ RobinLee: I never rewrite their bios, but they often surprise me. I am a "write by the seat of my pants" kind of writer. I don't make outlines. Writing a novel is a discovery of where my characters decide to take me. Surprise is a big part of the process. ga WTYates: Peg... Peg: I think a 'timeline' is a table, or schedule of pre-determined events as they happen, or are to happen, in your story. ga WTYates: Is that what you meant Snizzlew? RobinLee: Snizzlew, I didn't answer your question because I wasn't sure what you meant by timeline. Could you elaborate? Snizzlew: Yes, kind of to line everybody up to see what they were doing when, sorry got kicked off.... / Snizzlew: to see if they are all where they are supposed to be when...I guess I'm saying.../ RobinLee: No, I don't have a table to compare where each one was, pre-story. However, that's sort of an internal instinct with me. If it would help you, by all means, it makes sense. Peg: ? RobinLee: I have a lot of different devices that I use to keep my ducks in order. That just isn't one of them. ga WTYates: Peg... Peg: Let's take a 'what if'... Peg: Take a famous 'flawed character' Scarlett O'Hara. She was selfish, self-centered, etc. How could/would you turn this person around into a caring individual? :) ga RobinLee: Peg, I don't think I can answer this. Probably because Scarlett is Scarlett, and I'm not sure I would want to change her. And yet she did change at the end of GWTW, didn't she? In that last little bit, she had an ah ha moment (slap the forehead) and realized that it wasn't Ashley she loved but Rhett. Peg: Well, I'm not sure she did. She still put if off until 'tomorrow'. Anyway, I guess that was an unfair question. WTYates: ? WTYates: WTYates... WTYates: But it brings up another. Do you plan the changes in your characters?/ RobinLee: To some degree, yes. In my work in progress, in the spiritual perspective, I know who will accept God and who will reject. That of course is the ultimate change or refusal to change. I know which character is going to give up and walk away from a marriage, and which one is going to make an enormous sacrifice for others. But a lot of that comes to me during the course of the writing. I didn't know it when I began to write. I've learned it as I've gone along. ga WTYates: ? WTYates: WTYates... WTYates: There was a short discussion on the FCW or CWFI list recently about character 'tags'. That is, things a character says or does that are distinctive 'markers'. How much is too much? RobinLee: Tags should always be used very sparingly. Just enough to give flavor. In my novel, In His Arms, my heroine is Irish. She has a very distinctive voice, but it is done with a particular turn of phrase more than an attempt to write the Irish dialect. Beginning writers (I did this too) often make the mistake of writing dialect. Very few can do it right. It's far better to pick one word and use it consistently rather than to try to do many words. i.e. m'lady rather than my lady. ga Snizzlew: ? Peg: ! WTYates: Snizzlew... Snizzlew: How much mystery should you leave the reader to guess about your characters? Or should you? ga RobinLee: Hmm. There is a fine balance between rushing to tell the reader everything in the first chapter(s) and not telling them enough. The best way to learn that is to study the best novelists today. Most new writers err on the side of telling too much at the start, thinking the reader has to know everything. As the writer, you will discover a vast amount of things when you write those character bios. However, most of it will never make it into your novel. It's there to help you understand what makes your character tic. (Tick?) WTYates: (Tock!) RobinLee: I wouldn't think in terms of "mystery." That makes it sound like you are trying to hide things from your reader. Think more in terms of peeling away thin layers to reveal the truth beneath. ga WTYates: Peg... Peg: Never mind... subject passed... Peg: ? WTYates: Peg... Peg: :) how effective/ineffective is flashback in getting a characters 'past' or other part of their person into the story? ga RobinLee: Flashbacks are tricky, but I don't think they are necessarily bad. However, we live in a postmodern world that is all about the "experience". Readers want to experience things "now" not be told about it. And a flashback, even though not in past perfect tense, still has a flavor of telling. You need to keep the reading experience in the "now" for today's postmodern readers. If you use a flashback, use them sparingly and only when necessary. ga WTYates: ? WTYates: WTYates... WTYates: Last question... What are the most common errors in characterization made by beginners? Do you have any recommended books to help in developing characters?/ RobinLee: Most common errors in characterization: making characters one dimensional; making them all sound alike or talk with the same voice; forgetting that a novel is about change, that characters need to change and grow and if they don't, show how that negatively impacts their worlds. As for a book on characterization, the best I ever read was Fiction is Folks. Can't think who the author is now and it is long since out of print. Self-Editing for Fiction Writers is a good book for establishing voice, etc. ga MBananas: website for Robin? WTYates: Robin, thanks for a great session tonight!! RobinLee: You're welcome. Hope I was able to be of help. WTYates: Visit Robin's site at http://www.robinleehatcher.com kitane: Thank you Robin for sharing your insights on characterization Snizzlew: thanks for all the information!!!! LColeman: Great job, as always, Robin. WTYates: If anyone wants the free CWW newsletter, email me at billyates@billyates.com. Peg: Robin, thank you so very much! KiwiElle: Thankyou, Robin, that was very helpful :) WTYates: The transcript of this workshop will be posted on the CWW web site later this week. WTYates: http://www.billyates.com/cww/ WTYates: Peg, would you close in prayer for us? RobinLee: Peg, as a side note, I was in my 30's before I realized Scarlett wasn't wonderful. <g> Peg: Lord, thank You so much for bringing Robin Lee to our workshop. We thank you for all she has brought to share with us. Now, be with each of us as we go our separate ways, and keep us safe, we pray, in Jesus' name ... Amen! WTYates: AMEN!! RobinLee: amen kitane: Amen MBananas: Amen! Thanks, Robin. I found it helpful. LColeman: Amen MBananas: Goodnight all. WTYates: Thanks to Robin and thanks to all for a great session!! Peg: Wonderful!!! I counted, at the max, 17 !!! PJ506: Amen! Thank you! kitane: I hope everyone has a peaceful night, night WTYates: Yep!! WTYates: Lots of new names tonight. Peg: Yes :) PTL ! DixieMRN: :O) LColeman: Don't they still call GWTW a tragedy? LColeman: Not a romance Peg: Lynn, I never heard that! Truly? WTYates: That's cause they burned Atlanta... RobinLee: I wouldn't call it a tragedy or a romance, Lynn. RobinLee: I think it's a story of survival at all costs. Peg: Agreed, Robin. LColeman: Thought that's what I read it's genre was but I could be wrong RobinLee: Well, thanks again for having me. I'm calling it a night. Peg: I wonder, if Margaret Mitchell had lived, what a sequel would be. WTYates: Thanks again, Robin! DixieMRN: GWTW is basically a 'war story' imho WTYates: I've got to run, too. WTYates: Night, all! DixieMRN: night Peg: Night, Bill! Great chat! KiwiElle: Yes, I have to go too... great workshop, CWW team :) Log file closed at: 3/27/01 20:06:20 |
![[Top button]](../resources/go_top_btn.gif){kind=small}
Return to top of this page
![[Home button]](../resources/home_btn.gif){kind=small}
Return to CWW Workshops Page
Return to CWW Home Page