A Character Development Exchange

I've had a very humorous exchange with a writer from Albuquerque, NM, who's read my book, Growing Great Characters From the Ground Up.

Though he said I could refer to him as "the loser who I could even FEEL the sobbing between the lines...", that's much too harsh. Therefore, he'll henceforth be known as my fellow writer (MFW).

He wanted to know why he knows so much about his character, yet:

...it feels like Jo sits with me in my room as I write but doesn't want to say a word to me...I suggested couples counseling to her but she just sits and stares at me...

And indeed, he provided some very specific, marvelous details about Jo.

So what gives? How can we know everything about our character, yet the character doesn't take flight?

Here's an answer via a partial of our exchange:

Me: What's Jo's defining detail?

MFW: OK Great question - Defining Detail - What is her Defining Detail? god, I think—

Me: Notice that phrase, "I think..." That tips you off that you don't yet know. The goal is to be so sure that if a random person tapped on your shoulder in the grocery store and demanded to know your character's defining detail, you could spit it out.

MFW: ...she is scared, but yet masked with this independence/courage/toughness—

Me: That's a start. But if you were in front of an audience of 100 people and said, "Okay all. How many of you are sometimes scared, yet hide your fear behind a tough exeterior?" how many hands would go up?

My guess is about 98.

The defining detail is meant to take your character out of that pool of general human emotions and instead point to that one millisecond of time when your character's thinking changed in a significant and permanent way. The kind of change that forever after affects — and predicts — what she does and why she does it.

The cool thing about defining details is that they are unique to that individual. No other person in this 6-billion+ world can claim to have experienced that very moment in that particular way.

So keep digging deeper until you see everything about that moment. It's the toughest task of character development. The good part is that from then on you'll know what the character will do in any given situation and why she'll do it.

A Suggestion

The suggestion I'd like to throw out to MFW and everyone else is this:

Think of a single moment that changed you significantly. Write down everything you remember about the situation, including the time of day, day, date who was around, the reason you were there, whether there were any notable smells or sounds, etc. Write down what about that moment flipped the switch in your brain.

Did someone do or say something?

Did you see something that caused you to make a connection you'd never made before?

What did you start doing differently because of that moment?


If anyone would like to share a moment that defined you, I'd love to hear the how and why.

Thanks, MFW, for being such a great sport. We writers too often muddle around, not wanting to bother anyone, when what we should be doing is asking, learning, asking, learning.

Happy writing!

Cliche Buster: Popular Terms and Their Origins

Today's question:

What's a cliche?

But First, the Problem (the Real Problem)

For most of us, cliches are a constant thorn in our sides.

If we know cliches are evil, as those in our critique groups point out via such comments as "Cliche alert!!!!!" underlined five times in red, why do we use them?

Because we don't know what they are, or rather, we do, but only vaguely.


The Definition (the Real Definition)

As the Wikipedia page for cliche points out, a cliche is:

...a saying, expression, idea, or element of an artistic work which has been overused to the point of losing its original meaning or effect, "played out", rendering it a stereotype, especially when at some earlier time it was considered meaningful or novel.

Not long ago, GGW member Ara Hagopian gave us a great example when discussing the phrase "an albatross around his neck" that came from Samuel Taylor Coleridge's The Rime of the Ancient Mariner written in 1798 (post from May 23 - 30).

Back then, an albatross was considered a sign of good luck. When the mariner shot the albatross trailing his ship, he essentially cursed the voyage. As punishment, his fellow sailors hung the dead bird around the mariner's neck. The point was to shame the perpetrator, rather make him endure a burden he didn't deserve, which is often what people mean when they use the phrase nowadays.

To which most of us say, "Yes, yes, we know."

To which I say, while we understand cliches on an intellectual level and recognize them when they're pointed out, they still slip into our work, meaning the definition is still unclear.

Therefore, here's the definition I use. A cliche is:

...any phrase or idea that comes too quickly to mind.

The Cliche Game

To understand what I mean, right down the first thing that comes to mind when you read the following. (Hint: most cliches occur when we're attempting to describe someone or something.)

1. It was raining __________.

2. Look at all those wrinkles. He must be old as _____.

3. The girl's father made her and her boyfriend get married in a hasty ____.

4. I'm so certain this will happen you can ____ I plan to invest, too.

5. I came to the doctor and he just gave me a clean ____.

6. She was a ___-haired, ___-eyed cheerleader.


If you answered—


1. raining cats and dogs

2. old as dirt

3. shotgun wedding

4. bet your bottom dollar

5. clean bill of health

6. blond-haired, blue-eyed


— you understand.


The Solution (the Real Solution)

One solution is to stop using cliches. The problem with that is that they often pop to mind so readily and slip in so easily, we don't even know they're in there. Either that or we mistake them for "colorful language."

Therefore the real solution is to read through lists of them. Thankfully the internet makes that easy via sites such as ClicheSite.com. While reading, you'll inevitably find yourself saying, "That's a cliche? And that and that?"


A More Entertaining, Albit Time-Consuming, Solution

An even more amusing fix is to find out where those cliches come from, an exercise that can help us remember the phrase or idea, and therefore avoid, such overused elements.

And what better way to discover the origin of cliches than via Charles Panati's Extraordinary Origins of Everyday Things, one of my favorite books.

For example, the phrase pressure cooker to describe a situation so tense that a violent result seems imminent, came from the fact that when the kitchen steamer was introduced in the 1680s, it:

...bombed — figuratively and literally. Not only did the majority of Londoners not take favorably to the idea of steamed pike and pigeon, but those who purchased a digester and attempted its recipes often ended up with the evening's meal on the kitchen wall.

Another example — from which dirty look, withering glance, if looks could kill and to stare with daggersderive — relates to the evil eye, at one time thought to be an actual skill:

In ancient Rome, professional socerers with the evil eye were hired to bewitch a person's enemies... By the Middle Ages, Europeans were so fearful of falling under the influence of an evil glance that any person with a dazed, crazed, or canny look was liable to be burned at the stake. A case of cataracts could spell death.


Talk about a real can of worms!

Happy writing!