Author Nancy Lamb has published two books on writing fiction with Writer’s Digest Books, The Art and Craft of Storytelling: A Comprehenisve Guide to Classic Writing Techniques, from which we present an excerpt this week, as well as The Writer’s Guide to Crafting Stories for Children. She is a master at explaining the elements of fiction that authors need to consider in drafting and revising their stories (and has applied them to Her Gentlemen Callers, a new ebook she’s recently released that involved a major revision of an earlier work she enjoyed rewriting after her many years of writing experience). The excerpt we present this week (with permission of the author) is valuable to personal essay and memoir writers as well those writing fiction. In creative nonfiction as well as fiction, the author needs to build into the writing a reason others will care about the narrator and what happened and how things resolved. Even Nancy’s last two recommendations in the excerpt below, ones about breaking from the truth, will have all writers understanding the importance to readers of following the main character’s choices and how they impact her life.

When you approach your characters, remember it is not only the hero who must stand out. All the characters in your story — major and minor characters — should occupy a unique place in your own imagination in order for them to occupy that same status in the reader’s imagination.

A Matter of Authenticity
Before you become too involved in writing your story, take the time to do everything you can to establish the essence of your character in your own mind.

A strong character doesn’t behave the way you want him to. A strong character behaves the way he should. Every time you write a new scene ask yourself if your hero’s action is authentic.

If you’re writing about a woman who is excruciatingly shy, she can’t walk into a party where she doesn’t know anyone and introduce herself to the nearest stranger. Not going to happen. A shy woman can’t do this unless she’s been preparing for this bold step for months.

Almost nothing yanks readers out of a story faster than when they feel a character’s actions are inauthentic. If readers can’t believe in or don’t understand your hero, they have absolutely no reason  to invest in your story. That doesn’t mean they must share similar lives. But it does mean that they must share common feelings. Keep in mind that the actions of the character must be organic; they must grow naturally from the heart and mind of that character. Once you’ve established this foundation, you can move forward into your story with confidence.

The Fundamentals of Character
Readers like to identify with the characters they are reading about. If your reader can’t empathize with the character in some way, you risk losing your audience. You don’t establish this connection by trying to mirror the average experience of the average reader. You establish this connection by telling us what is unique about the character and plunging her into a specific situation.

In Diablo Cody’s coming-of-age movie Juno — about a sixteen-year-old-girl’s surprise pregnancy — the character is drawn with such wit, insight, and skill that the viewer cheers for her from the opening scene to the final credits.

June is a brave, scared, sassy, defensive, smart, vulnerable, assertive teenager who isn’t afraid to be herself. She is, as her boyfriend’s mother brands her, “different.” And she summons the courage to do what she must to survive.

Here, the age of the viewer doesn’t matter. Approximately one eon separates me from a sixteen-year-old girl (praise the Lord). But I remember those years. At that age, I was too scared to be impudent, too eager to fit in, and too insecure to be different. In fact, there is little that my teenage self and Juno have in common. But that didn’t keep me from becoming engrossed in the movie and rooting for the survival of this teen who is, in fact, a soul sister of Holden Caulfield — just as memorable in her voice and perspective; just as universal in her vulnerability.

With that scenario in mind, your hero can live in the desert, rescue stray dogs, be an alien, or pan for gold in the Yukon. It doesn’t matter where the hero lives or what he does. As long as the emotions and responses of the character are authentic, the reader can still create a bond with him.

There isn’t a person alive who hasn’t, at one time or another, felt like an alien. There’s not a person alive who hasn’t been embarrassed in front of his peers, disappointed in the face of hope or embroiled in conflicts with friends. The themes are familiar and the feelings these circumstances evoke are universal. No matter where they take place or under what circumstances they are played out, readers can relate to them.

How To Create Unique Characters
It’s easy to write about common emotions. Anger, sadness, and joy are familiar and accessible to any reader. Make every effort to dig deeper when you envision people you want to write about. We don’t live in a black-and-white world. Neither should our characters. Paint your character in both bright and muted shades. Look for conflicts. Look for subtleties. No need to hammer on a point. Readers are smart enough to pick up on your clues.

Validate Confusion
Seek out the confusion in the feelings of your character, the unconscious emotions that drive a person to behave in one way or another.

One of the easiest ways to do this is to create a character who faces a bewildering, equally weighted choice. Because choice not only creates agony, it eliminates possibility.

Choosing defines who we are and generates consequences we’re destined to carry throughout our lives. At its extreme, the choice is life and death, a situation William Styron carried to the most excruciating limit in Sophie’s Choice. In the novel, Sophie Zawistowska arrives at Auschwitz with her two children, a son and a daughter. At the point of entry, a sadistic doctor forces her to choose which child will go to the gas chamber and which child will go to the concentration camp. Life or death, no going back. And there’s no forgetting that scene. Ever. Watching her child walk toward certain death because of a choice she made brands Sophie’s soul forever. The guilt from that one moment not only impacts her dark, anguished and self-destructive behavior throughout the story, it also drives her at last to suicide.

Honor Emotions
In all your characters, it’s crucial to honor the emotional underpinnings that support and drive their behavior. This isn’t just because the character should behave in a believable way. It’s because a reader’s emotions must tie into the character’s emotions if you want to create a memorable story

In Gone with the Wind, who would Scarlett O’Hara be without passion backed up by a will of iron? Like the collective psyche of the antebellum South, she is spoiled, she is vain, and she is selfish. So why should we care? Because she is a woman who will not be defeated. She does what she must do to save herself, her family, and her beloved Tara. And she does it with a passion so fiery, so invested in outcome that we cheer for her success in spite of her glaring flaws.

How did Margaret Mitchell accomplish this? By creating emotions that match the drama of the story measure for measure. Futher more, the conflicts playing out in Scarlett — her ambivalence about the men in her life, her fierce determination to overcome any obstacle and pay any price — enlist the reader’s sympathies.

In fact, how can you not cheer for a woman who shakes her fist at the fates and declares, “As God is my witness … the Yankees aren’t going to lick me … If I have to steal or kill — as God is my witness, I’m never going to be hungry again.”

When we read this book, Scarlett’s emotions become our emotions. And because of that, we support her from the opening line to Frankly, my dear, I don’t give a damn.

Celebrate Inconsistency
Contradictions make characters more interesting. This applies to heroes as well as to villains. No one is entirely consistent in thoughts, feelings, or behavior. As much as I’d like to have you believe that I’m a woman with a great memory, a loving nature, and a generous spirit, if you paint me into a corner, I’ll cop to the fact that I can also be a woman with a lousy memory, a reclusive nature, and a cranky spirit.

So, instead of ignoring the contradicitons in characters, use them to your advantage. It is after all, the intrigue of opposites that makes a character interesting.

For instance, when analyzing the historical character of T.E. Lawrence — the man on whom the film of Lawrence of Arabia was modeled — Lowell Thomas talked about how Lawrence worked hard to maintain his privacy after his return to England from fighting in the Arab Revolt during World War I. He even went so far as to live under assumed names. And yet, Thomas says, this extraordinary man “had a genious for backing into the limelight.”

In David Lean’s movie, the dashing British Lieutenant, played by the dashing Peter O’Toole, is repulsed by violence … and yet he is also drawn to it. He’s depicted as a tormented man who shuns war, but once he is involved in the revolt, he becomes a strategic and ruthless warrior, willing to do anything to achieve victory.

It’s no wonder that this historical character was a natural for transformation into an epic film. Lawrence is handsome; he is shy. He is fierce; he is tender. He is brutal and he is remorseful. It’s the contradiction, not the consistency, that makes his character one of the most memorable in film history.

Ignore the Facts
Lots of us have written about characters who mirror people we know in real life. Depending on what kind of person inspires you, this process can either be enlightening or inhibiting. If we’re intent on reflecting the reality of someone we know, there are two primary issues to keep in mind.

1. Ignore the opinions of others
Often when writers create a character, they are inhibited by the fear of what the real-life person that the character is based on — or those people who read the book — will think about what they have written. It would be foolhardy to create an exact duplicate of someone you know. But you should not be inhibited by what others might think or say. The writer’s craft is full of risk. Creating characters is one of them. As Anne Lamott once said, “Write as if your parents are dead.”

2. Ignore the truth
As I mentioned in chapter twelve on creating plot, learn to ignore reality in order to find the deeper truth. This means you might have to discard or transform what you know. Just because the person on whom you’re modeling your character wouldn’t say or do something, this doesn’t mean your fictional character wouldn’t say or do it.

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 [And this to me means, as non-fiction writers, we do well revealing inner thoughts as well as our outer thoughts and behaviors! –Ed.]