Character Reference

My daily routine when I was a young kid at school was to go home and watch the cartoons before it was time for supper. This was usually Popeye, Yogi Bear, Tom and Jerry, Roadrunner or Top Cat. I would laugh myself silly, and it was the perfect way to relax after a double lesson of math. My favorite animation character then was Top Cat. Inspired by the Sergeant Bilko TV series with Phil Silvers, TC ran his alley and gang of alley cats with cunning and style. I knew I would never be as cool as him.

I have retained a fondness for the animation character heroes of my youth, and love to watch the replays. Cartoons, on TV and in movies, are still my favorite things to watch. I'm sure I'm not alone in this, and I think adults gain as much enjoyment from Toy Story, Finding Nemo and The Incredibles as children do. In fact, adults probably appreciate them more, because the best story involving an animation character works on two levels. There is the story which appeals to the kids and there are the inside adult jokes going on too.

The animation character has evolved over the years, from the first monochrome squiggles to the computer produced images we see today. The Walt Disney Studio made the major contribution in the early years, creating the iconic animation character of Mickey Mouse, Pluto, Goofy and Donald Duck. Walt Disney had a flair for knowing what the audience wanted and he wasn't afraid to try new things. The movie industry was skeptical when Disney released the first full-length feature film for the animation character, with Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs. It was a success and the studio went from strength to strength, ending up with an empire of production companies and nine theme parks.

There is a huge industry surrounding the animation character, with merchandise and DVD's. Just as there are rows upon rows of action figures of Buzz Lightyear in the film of Toy Story, so there are real figures of Buzz Lightyear in the shops. The Disney theme parks give fans the chance to see their favorite animation character up close and personal. Children are thrilled when Mickey Mouse walks right up to them and says hello.

The biggest television animated hit of recent times is of course, The Simpson's. This dysfunctional family has captured the imagination of fans around the world. Homer, Marge, Lisa, Bart and baby Maggie are well thought out examples of an animation character, appealing to adults and children alike. The kids like the antics of Bart and can sympathize with Lisa. There are lots of cultural references in the programme for the adults to enjoy, and guests queue up to be immortalized as an animation character. They include Paul McCartney, Sonic Youth and The Who.

After a long day at work I was looking forward to a nice drink in peace. I opened the door and heard Fred's voice booming. All hope for a nice quiet drink was gone. Fred had apparently heard yet another incorrect reference to Japanese people writing Chinese characters and he was going off like the 4th of July, expressing his annoyance at people who were unaware of how different the characters were.

"When I write English," he asked, "What alphabet do I use?"

Somebody foolishly tried to answer, not understanding that all Fred's questions were rhetorical unless Fred wanted information about a train schedule or what time some place opened. Ignoring the poor fool who tried to answer, Fred continue, "I use the modern English alphabet. It may be a Latin-based alphabet, but it certainly is not what the Romans used. You can call it the Roman alphabet or the Latin alphabet or whatever you like, but it has changed."

I was not sure exactly where Fred was going with this, but I thought I knew where he was going. "The Japanese characters are the same. Although the characters, named after the Han dynasty, were once Chinese, they are not any more. In the years since Japanese writing embraced characters and added two Japanese syllaburies, times have changed. The Japanese government instituted character reform after World War II. And let's not forget China. Chinese writing has certainly not stood still in the hundreds of years since Japan first started to borrow Chinese characters. This is Japanese writing now and they are Japanese characters. They may have originated in China and they may have been Chinese in the past, but they are not any more. They are Japanese characters!"

Fred tended to repeat himself when he got worked up. I wonder if it was time to ask Fred if he had any problems with the word Chinese. After Fred slammed his glass down on the bar, I knew he had finished. So, I asked him if he had any problems with the word Chinese. He responded immediately with a loud "No!" He then continued, "Chinese is a perfectly good word, but it does not apply to things Japanese. Take a look at ramen. The Japanese call ramen Chinese noodles. They definitely were Chinese characters once, but they are very Japanese now. I don't know why Japanese love to preface things with Chinese when they are no longer Chinese. It just doesn't make sense."

And as usual, Fred was right. What once were Chinese characters are now Japanese characters.

As a child did you ever dream of getting a letter from your favorite holiday character? Ever dream of getting a personalized letter from Santa, congratulating you on being a good child all through the year and promising a special gift for Christmas? For sure all of us have gone through it, be it Santa Clause, Easter Bunny, Tooth Fairy or even the Great Pumpkin! Any child would be fascinated and excited to receive a letter from their favorite character. Now with the character letter business, you can fulfill a child's dream and expand his/her imagination!

Character letter business is a personalized venture where you would be writing letters to children (or maybe even to a few adults) on behalf of their favorite character. The letter writing doesn't have to be restricted to a given holiday season, you can continue it all year around. Children love getting a letter or a postcard in the mail, just imagine the amount of joy it would bring when they receive a personalized letter from their favorite character for the holiday season, for their birthday or for whatever the occasion maybe. The letters are keepsake treasures for them.

All you need to start off in this business is some creativity and a big dose of imagination. If you are a child at heart, love children and love the holiday seasons and the magical wonder it brings, this business is for you. You would need to market your services to the parents, grand-parents, aunts, uncles or anyone who has a special child in their life. When you receive the information and fun facts about the child, you can incorporate it to the letter. For example their favorite color, favorite snack, the pets name, favorite game, etc. To formulate more excitement, you can even add fun trinkets to your letters. Maybe some easy holiday recipes, fun craft projects or even holiday stories.

The character letter business is fun and exciting! You are getting paid for doing something that you love. There are many advantages in this venture. You would be working from the comfort of your own home, which provides you with more time to spend with your family. It provides you with more flexibility. In addition you can have the satisfaction of your achievements and owning your own business.

Before starting off you should decide which characters you would bring into play for your venture. Would you be only using holiday characters like Santa Clause, Easter Bunny, and The Nice Witch? Would you be using year round characters such as The Tooth Fairy, or a special Friendship character? Or would you rather create your own characters? The choice is up to you. Depending on the time and energy you can commit to the business, decide the number of characters that you would use. It is always better to start off with a few characters and add new ones as your business gets more established.

The basic equipment required for this business is a reliable computer and a printer. Depending on the characters that you have selected for your business, you can select the stationary that would be required. And then select the best trinkets that you can include with these character letters.

Even though you are starting off with a small home business, it is very important to have a business plan. A business plan should be considered as a map for your business. As your business grows and expands you can refer to it to manage your growth and change. Deciding on a name and licensing your business is the next step. Once everything is sorted out, you should market your business. Having a solid marketing strategy is the key to a flourishing business. With your best effort and lots of imagination, you can make your business successful.

Part One: Desire and Fear

Creating convincing characters that are believable takes time and discipline. Creating dynamically real individuals without imposing your own thoughts and impressions upon them is not easy to do, but this step is often the difference between a novel or screenplay that sits in a closet and one that finds its way around town and into the hands of audiences. Spend time with character development - building your characters before they enter the world of your story - and you turn the process of writing your manuscript into an easier and more enjoyable ride. You also get the added reward of a finished product that agents, publishers, producers and readers can truly be excited by.

There is no magic to character development. You can create living, breathing people, monsters, animals and settings by following a few, simple steps. In the end, you will have created three-dimensionality that breathes life into your story.

As a former executive with LA Film Lab Entertainment (a literary development and production company), I have learned that good writing isn't a gift. Talent equals discipline multiplied by time, and you must practice (daily) the art of development to master your craft.

Here is a proven framework to assist you in creating rich and complex characters. The complexity that you desire comes through:

1) Labeling their desire essences

2) Labeling their fear essences

3) Getting specific about their past

4) Labeling their behavior

5) Raising their stakes

6) Not meddling in their lives

7) Letting them play.

Ask provoking questions in line with these steps, answer them thoroughly, and then repeat the process to provide constant individual growth in your characters that mirrors life.

In this series of articles, I will guide you through the seven steps to successful character development. In this first part, we'll work through the first two steps: your characters' desires and fears.

1) Label the Desire Essences of each of your main characters

The first key to deepening your work comes from finding the major motivators in the lives of your characters. What drives their actions and reactions? Do their desires stem from specific experiences? We all have deep-seeded aspirations that spur our choices, thoughts, acts, and responses. These stimuli are what differentiate us from one another and we will refer to them as "Desire Essences." Some examples of Desire Essences are the desire to: be intellectually brilliant; be socially famous; hide from the world; belong to a group; be loved; party wildly; or end your suffering and die.

Desire is at the core of every being. We naturally aspire to be, do, or possess something that is just beyond our reach. Desire can be simple or deeply passionate. Write down the ten most important desire essences of each character! Once you have explored this component of your character's psyche, you are on your way to mastering their voice.

2) Label the Fear Essences of each of your main characters

What lies at the root of each of your characters' darker sides? For every desire they possess, they should also exhibit the antithetical fear of failing at attaining that desire. These fears will battle their aspirations for control over their behavior. Understand and then label the darker sides of your characters. This step is imperative to creating the dimensional and imperfect characters you are after. Some examples of Fear Essences are the fear of being: stupid; ordinary; socially exposed; rejected by a group; loathed; boring; or having to face life. Write down the ten most important fear essences of each character.

In the next installment of this four-part series, we'll work on developing the backstory behind these essences that creates the foundation for your characters' present lives. We'll also delve into their behavior and explore ways to build characters that are exciting, dynamic, and unique.

In the meantime writers, keep your rear in the chair, your fingers on the keys, and your writing reaching for the stars.

The use of a main character is neccessary in any story, so that one may have a point of view for basis. This point of view allows the reader to be more knowledgeable about what is going on in the character's head. It gives insight to thoughts and feelings of the character and lets the reader know when the character is feeling pain or is just plain exhausted. It would be unnecessary to have more than two main characters to be used as reference and it is really more difficult for the reader to be able to distinguish between the thoughts of more than one person, let alone more than two.

Readers must be able to locate a happy medium when reading and writers have to be able to provide that happy medium. In classic detective writing, it is important to create a main character, the detective. The detective can be formal or informal but it is important to establish his attitudes and morals. The character is almost as important as the story that it helps to tell. If a character was produced that had no background, the reader would not understand completely why the character did what he did. Common phrases of the character are also helpful to have on hand because that is a trademark of the character. Think of Sherlock Holmes, what is one phrase that is best remembered of Doyle's oh so popular detective? "Elementary, my dear Watson, elementary." People commonly use that phrase even now, in this day and age, in a kind of silent homage to the character. Despite the fact that Doyle never actually had Holmes utter that phrase.

This detective can be crazy or just a little off in the head. It doesn't matter as long as the character is well brought out and foreshadowed. Such characters must be able to be imagined by the reader so that they may hold the reader's attention during even the slowest period in the book or short story. There is no supernatural power that can be used by the character because that is completely against the rules in the classic detective story. These stories are modest, simple tales of crimes that have been committed by someone unknown. The crime must be solved and the detective must be the hero at the end of the story. The detective cannot, however, commit the crime that is being investigated. No matter how interesting it may seem to put that into the story, again, it is against the rules of the classic detective fiction story. The character must be winning, genuine, and have minor quirks that normal or slightly abnormal individuals have. Make the character as real as it can be.

If the writer chooses to make a second main character, this character should be able to flow evenly with the other main character. Such is the use of Watson in Doyle's tales of Sherlock Holmes. Although Watson may not be a main character exactly, he is definitely a main supporting character whose thoughts and feelings are aware to the reader.If one can effectively create a winning character and a winning storyline, the rest will be history.

Board games very often are about a particular story and feature different characters that we all have come to know and love. There are very few of us who wouldn't recognize Rich Uncle Pennybags from Monopoly, some of the beloved faces from the children's game Candy Land, or any of the iconic characters from the classic detective game Clue. The characters featured with a game are often extremely valuable to enhance the mood and theme of the game, and because of the intense popularity of these games, these characters have become a lasting part of today's pop culture.

The mascot of Monopoly, now referred to as Mr. Monopoly instead of Rich Uncle Pennybags, has been widely used and featured with nearly every incarnation of the game since 1946, when he made his first appearance on that edition's game lid. We have seen him around frequently since then, and although he is not a playable character within the game, seeing Rich Uncle Pennybags brings a response of familiarity out of most people. Whenever a board game character becomes referenced in outside media, we can be assured that they have become a part of typical pop culture. Rich Uncle Pennybags has been referenced in everything from The Simpsons to Ace Ventura and that character belongs to the world now.

The Candy Land characters also provide us with a familiar sight. The game has been popular since 1949, when faces such as King Kandy, Gramma Nutt, Lord Licorice, and Mr. Mint became a part of board game canon. Their familiar faces are learned by young children, who grow up to associate good times with the game and those characters. You would probably have a difficult time to find anyone who wouldn't recognize any of those characters and be able to associate at least one of them with Candy Land.

Clue, however, provides some of the most memorable characters in the most lasting way. With Clue, players play the game as the characters themselves, compared to these other games in which the characters are just a feature in the game. In this classic detective game, six memorable suspects take the center stage, in which they try to figure out which of them committed the murder of poor Mr. Boddy, who is a pretty memorable character himself, despite never making an appearance himself. Miss Scarlet, Colonel Mustard, Mrs. White, Mr. Green, Mrs. Peacock, and Professor Plum constitute these iconic suspects, and by playing as one of them during the game, their place in today's culture becomes affirmed.

One of the interesting things about Clue, however, is the multiple editions that it has produced and the ways that the characters change slightly in each. Since its conception in 1949, each edition has produced a makeover of both the game board and the characters, giving them a slightly different appearance each time. The story behind each of the characters changes as well. The game adopts a situation that can fit many different particular stories and because of this, the characters in the game can be rich and lasting, able to survive through shifts in culture and popular view. The characters have done this, however, for it is pretty safe to assume that any of us who have ever accused "Colonel Mustard in the Library with the Lead Pipe," has known what they were talking about.

If your readers don't care about your characters, you're sunk. Readers don't necessarily have to like all of your characters, but they have to care about what happens to your main character, or there's no reason for them to keep reading.

Which means you have to care about your characters, and you have to know them, maybe even better than you know yourself. To create characters that live and breathe on the page, you must first create characters that live in breathe in your psyche. This is why you need to know much more about them than you'll ever have to include in your completed story.

One way to achieve this authentic character history is to put your main character(s) in as many real-life situations as possible. And because thinking is only the first stage and can only get you so far, write these situations out, considering all sorts of details.

When you can imagine your character in different places and with different people, beyond people and places your story requires, you make your fictional people exponentially more realistic within the confines of your own story.

Start by deciding on the basics: your main character's date of birth and favorite things (such as food, color, activity, place, song, movie, book, friend, family member, possession, game, animal/pet, amusement park ride, season). Remember: these are details you'll want to work out, even though they may never need to be discussed in your story.

The basics is great place to start, but to create the most vivid, memorable characters, you'll need to stretch your imagination and go beyond the basics.

The following exercises will get you started in developing rich, believable, interesting characters. Choose the exercises you're most drawn to, and really let yourself go—don't worry about polished sentences or grammar or mechanics. (You can't plumb the depths of your imagination when you're worried about comma placement.)

STRENGTHS/WEAKNESSES: List emotional, intellectual, and physical strengths and weaknesses for your character. Include any special talents or aptitudes. Get your hands on an IQ test and take it from your character's perspective, not yours. (Tricky, but fun and worthwhile.)

DINNER AT OUR HOUSE: Imagine a family meal at your main character's dinner table. Write a short descriptive scene revealing the average evening meal at your main character's house.

Now revisit that meal scene and add tension. (After all, tension makes fiction go 'round.) Perhaps the school principal called Mom that afternoon and therefore Mom has some serious lecturing to do (or some serious disappointment to relate). Or maybe Dad lost his job that day and -- over meatloaf and green beans -- tells the family that they'll have to be uprooted (again). Perhaps the teen daughter brings home a dinner date who only Mom (an undercover detective) recognizes as a convicted felon.

The point is: think of an emotionally-charged piece of information that will make this meal very different from the one above. Write this scene, paying attention to specifics.

WHAT WOULD S/HE DO? Imagine an ethical dilemma that your character finds himself/herself in. Maybe your character was offered a job promotion or a large bonus based on a task s/he didn't carry out alone. Does s/he tell the truth and share the credit with the colleague or keep quiet about it and bask in the glory solo? Choose a moral quandary, plunk your character it in, and write a short, thorough, descriptive scene. Be sure to tap into your character's thoughts, fears, conflicts, and ultimately how s/he arrived at the final decision.

DEAR DIARY: Write three diary/journal entries from your main character's point of view, fully in his/her voice and in his/her head. Make the entries occur on different days and have them deal with different events and emotions. Try to include a whole range of feelings -- joy, sorrow, rage, uncertainty, anxiety, to name a few.

DOCTOR, DOCTOR: Write up your character's last physical exam report, as it would be written by the family physician. Include all relevant details, along with any physical complaints the character might mention.

Then write up some clinical notes from a psychologist who has been seeing your character in therapy. Perhaps your character has discussed his/her worst fear with the doctor. Reveal as much background to that fear as you can: when and why it began, how it's manifested, how your character struggles to cope with it.

DEAR AUTHOR: Your character writes you (the author) a letter, instructing you quite specifically in how s/he wants to be portrayed in the book. Make your character's personality come through loud and clear in this letter. Try to set yourself aside as you write it.

JOB APPLICATION: Get your hands on a job application (or create one of your own), and fill it out from your character's point of view. Include work history, schooling, references, as well as the character's statement explaining why s/he would be perfect for the job.

Always remember to have fun with these. The minute you're not having fun, stop. The looser and more relaxed you are when you try these exercises, the more you'll get from them. You'll discover things about your character you never thought you knew, which translates to a more fully realized, believable person alive in your story.

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