Saturday 11 October 2014

Hints on character and place in fiction

These are some of the handy hints from our free writers’ toolkit . We’ll be running a few more over the days to come but the full guide can be downloaded from the home page of our website at www.inscribemedia.co.uk
 



A sense of place

It is crucial if you write about a place that the reader can see it.

You have choices: do you write rich and vivid prose to paint a word picture or do you keep it minimalist - describe a tree in a park and we all see a different tree and a different park? Perhaps we only need to say it is a tree in a park?

Whatever you do, do not make it too long, you do not have a lot of words to play with in a short story.

If you seek to describe the setting, and the reader does need something to focus on, seek to use the following components:

1 Physical characteristics - what does it look like, any quirks which bring it to life?

2 Use your reader’s senses - what does the place smell, taste, sounds like?

3 What does it feel like to be there?


A sense of being

Creating characters

You can create the finest landscapes, the greatest stories, the most remarkable writing but you can not make your stories live unless you have characters. They are your vehicle to tell the story.

Characters have jobs to do within the story, making things happen, imparting information, allowing other characters to react to them etc

They should also be realistic (unless in over-the-top comedy where stereotypes can sometimes work) - your reader should feel that your characters can actually walk into the room.

When creating a character, describe what they look like and how they move, speak, react, dress etc but also try to get into their head - how do they think?

Keep secrets, reveal the character as the story progresses.

John Dean

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