The Write Way: Tips & Advice for Writers

Style and Character

Do you have style and character? Do your characters? A lot of writers tend to depend a little too heavily on using stereotypes when creating characters and this is not a good practice.

It's not that stereotypes are wrong - what?! Yes they are! Stereotypes make your characters flat, boring, dead and predictable. Stereotypes are lazy tools writers use when they can't be bothered to describe a character and give it life.

No one wants to read about a character who is so boring, the author didn't even like them. Using stereotypes shows an author who hasn't invested time defining who their character is or is not.

Without that definition, a character becomes a cardboard cutout rather than a flesh and blood person. Which you really don't want if you want readers to suspend their disbelief and care about what you have to say.

I realize that doing character backgrounds on every individual is a lot of work. It requires time, good record-keeping and the investment of a lot of energy figuring out who your character is, where they are in their lives and what they are capable of doing.

However, if you choose to not do these things, anyone who does any amount of reading won't stick around long. They will know you haven't developed your characters enough for them to have any depth. It tells the reader that although you expect others to invest time and money in what you've written, you haven't done so yourself.

If you don't care about the characters in your story, why should anyone else? It's like planting a garden with a bunch of different seeds but not taking the time to read the care guidelines for the plants you've chosen. If you get a few that grow, how are you going to know how to care for them if you don't know how to nurture them?

Characters in your story are the same. You can't nurture a characters' growth if you don't know what makes them tick. They'll never get to where they need to go and in return, neither will you.

Writing anything of any importance, either for yourself or others is much like going to school. It's a process of learning through doing and in this case, the doing is the writing and the learning comes from how your thoughts become sentences on the page. It really a 'process' that has a lot more to do with who you are, than who or what you are writing about.

You've probably heard it many times over the years from many sources, but in this case, writing is at the top of the list - practice makes perfect. It's something that cannot be stressed enough. If you take time to read something you wrote, say five or ten years ago, you will see how your characters and your writing have changed.

Keeping a writing habit will always benefit you and your writing. In a few months or years, you will have evidence that your practice has paid off. Reading and writing regularly will make you a better writer, and your readers will thank you for it.