How to Create a Character Profile

Have you created character profiles for the main cast of your novel?

While not all authors use character profiles, many find them a very handy tool for keeping track of their characters – and for developing and fleshing out those characters in the first place.

Done well, a character profile can help you harness your creativity and really dig into who your characters are. 

Sometimes, though, writers treat character profiles as a form-filling exercise, coming up with their character’s eye color, hair color, first job, etc without investing any of this with a deeper meaning.

They might diligently complete character profiles for every character in their novel – even the bus driver who only has a walk-on part in chapter five – but they’re not any closer to having any real insight into their characters.

So what should go in your character profile … and how should you use it?

What to Include in a Character Profile

Firstly, not every character in your novel needs a profile at all.

Characters who have a minor role (like your protagonist’s mother, who only appears briefly a couple of times) don’t need to be fully fleshed out. Of course, you might want to make some brief notes about them … but this definitely doesn’t need to be an entire profile.

Your main characters, though, should have individual profiles. That probably includes any viewpoint character. If you have an antagonist then it’s worth creating a profile for them too (after all, even if your main character just doesn’t “get” where the antagonist is coming from, you should).

It’s entirely up to you how you structure your character profiles. In general, though, I’d suggest that:

You don’t focus too much on physical details.You may want to include things like hair color and eye color if you’re ever likely to mention them – but you can leave them out if they’re not going to be relevant. The same goes for height and build: unless they’re unusual and significant, you don’t necessarily need them at all.

If you are including physical details, think about how they relate to deeper aspects of your character. For instance, in Harry Potter, the fact that Harry has green eyes is significant because it’s the physical characteristic that links him to his mother.

You spend some time exploring deeper questions about your character: things like “what’s the mistake they regret most?” or “in what situations would they lie?” or “what false beliefs do they hold?” These sort of questions will result in a much richer, more real character than a simple list of physical characteristics.

The first ebook I ever bought online, back in around 2007, was Holly Lisle’s Create a Character Clinic. This is still one of my favorite resources for character creation: it goes far beyond the typical “character questionnaire” to dig deep into what really makes characters tick (and it includes lots of examples, too).

If you’re using a template or questionnaire that you’ve found online, don’t feel that you need to complete every single part of it – especially if it’s a long one! Focus on the bits that are most impactful or that help you to imagine your character more fully: if you do decide to fill in the rest, you can simply do it at a later stage.

Don’t get hung up on creating the “perfect” character profile before you begin writing – because it’ll almost certainly change as you go along.

Which brings me on to…

Why Your Character Profile Will Need Updating Regularly

If you create your character profiles during the pre-writing phase of your novel, you’ll almost certainly find that your understanding of your character shifts as you write the first draft.

Perhaps the thing you thought they sincerely regretted from their past turns out to be something they’re actually quite proud of – at least initially.

Perhaps you realize that it makes much more sense for them to have grown up somewhere rural, not in a city.

Perhaps you change them radically: maybe you merge two characters together, or you change a character’s gender or age. (Or their name: a lot of my characters end up changing names part-way through the writing process as I figure out a name that’s a better “fit”.)

Your character profile definitely isn’t set in stone. It’s fine to change your mind and rework it – but do make sure that you actually update it to reflect the changes you’ve made during the writing process.

Otherwise, it can be very confusing several chapters later when you want to bring a character back in but you can’t now remember if they’re supposed to be 35 or 25, or whether they’re tall with dark brown hair or short with strawberry blonde hair.

Character profiles can be a great tool for creating and fleshing out interesting characters for your novel; they’re also a useful working document that you can use to help you stay on track and keep things consistent during the writing process.

If you’ve never created a character profile before, why not give it a go today?

Sumber

Read More

KASAM

Read More

Tips menulis Novel: What's yout Novel's Log Line

The term log line (also spelled log-line and logline) is usually associated with movies, but the wise novelist will learn how to write one.

In the context of writing (as opposed to measuring a ship’s rate of speed), a log line is the succinct summary of a story. According to the Wikipedia article,

The log line first came into use and was recognized as a separate form during the old studio days of Hollywood. The studios had script vaults in which they stored screenplays. Readers wrote a concise one line summary of what the script was about either on the cover of the script, on the spine of the script, or both. The log line on the spine of the script allowed people to read the log lines of scripts that were stacked without having to unstack them.

Some of the examples of log lines given on various sites are “movie tags” rather than true log lines. The difference is that a movie tag is an advertising hook used to intrigue a viewer, while a log line is a selling tool intended to persuade an agent or producer to read a manuscript.

Here are two movie tags I found offered as “good examples of log lines”:

To enter the mind of a killer she must challenge the mind of a madman. – The Silence of the Lambs
On every street in every city, there’s a nobody who dreams of being a somebody. – Taxi Driver

An effective log line will contain these three essential elements:

the main character
what the main character wants
what must be overcome for the character to succeed

In other words, an effective log line will include protagonist, goal, and antagonistic force

These log lines from the Internet Movie Data Base meet these criteria better than the examples of the same movies given above:

A young FBI cadet must confide in an incarcerated and manipulative killer to receive his help on catching another serial killer who skins his victims. – The Silence of the Lambs
A mentally unstable Vietnam war veteran works as nighttime taxi driver in a city whose perceived decadence and sleaze feeds his urge to violently lash out, attempting to save a teenage prostitute in the process. -Taxi Driver

But even these log lines are less than effective as selling tools.

Both state the protagonist. The one for The Silence of the Lambs also states the protagonist’s goal, but it fails to include the antagonistic force: the killer’s hypnotic influence on her mind. The one for Taxi Driver states neither the protagonist’s goal nor the antagonistic force.

The most important element of any story is the protagonist’s goal. Once the main character has a goal, the story ensues from the obstacles that come between the protagonist and that goal.

Screenwriters are advised to write the log line before writing the script. That’s probably good advice for the novelist as well.

If you need a log line to serve as a starting point for a novel, or just want a little amusement, check out Brian Stokes’s Random Log-line Generator.

Read More

translation: practise - novel

BSu,

Michael Corleone stood on a long wooden dock in Palermo and watched the great ocean liner set sail for America. He was to have sailed on that ship, but new instructions had come from his father.

He waved goodbye to the men on the little fishing boat who had brought him to this dock, men who had guarded him these past years. The fishing boat rode the white wake of the ocean liner, a brave little duckling after its mother. The men on it waved back; he would see them no more.

The dock itself was alive with scurrying laborers in caps and baggy clothes unloading other ships, loading trucks that had come to the long dock. They were small wiry men who looked more Arabic than Italian, wearing billed caps that obscured their faces. Amongst them would be new bodyguards making sure he came to no harm before he met with Don Croce Malo, Capo di Capi of the "Friends of the Friends," as they were called here in Sicily. Newspapers and the outside world called them the Mafia, but in Sicily the word Mafia never passed the lips of the ordinary citizen. As they would never call Don Croce Malo the Capo di Capi but only "The Good Soul."

BSa,

Michael Corleone berdiri di dermaga kayu yang panjang di Palermo dan ia sedang menyaksikan kapal laut besar bersiap untuk berlayar menuju Amerika. Seharusnya ia berada di kapal itu, namun instruksi mendadak dari ayahnya membatalkan rencananya.

Ia melambaikan tangannya pada orang-orang di atas perahu kecil yang mengantarnya kembali ke dermaga, orang-orang yang menjaga dirinya selama beberapa tahun terakhir. Perahu kecil itu kembali dengan mengikuti buih putih yang ditimbulkan kapal laut besar, penuh keberanian seperti anak itik yang mendatangi induknya. Para pria di perahu itu membalas lambaiannya. Ia takkan bertemu mereka lagi.

Dermaga ini ramai dengan lalu lalang buruh dengan topi dan pakaian baggy khas mereka, membongkar muat kapal-kapal yang tiba, dan memuatnya ke dalam truk-truk yang ada di dermaga panjang ini. Para buruh itu cenderung pendek namun  memilik badan yang kekar, mereka terlihat lebih mirip orang Arab daripada orang Italia, mengenakan topi berlidah untuk menutupi wajah mereka. Diantara mereka ada yang akan menjadi pengawal baru setelah dipastikan kedatangan mereka tidak membawa masalah, sebelum bertemu Don Croce Malo, sang capo di capi atau bos dari segala bos “Friends of the Friends,” julukan baginya di Sisilia. Media dan dunia luar menyebut mereka mafia, tapi di Sisilia kata Mafia tidak dikenal oleh penduduk setempat. Karenanya mereka tidak pernah menyebut Don Croce Malo dengan “bos dari segala bos”, tapi dengan “orang yang baik hati”.

Read More