Note: This is the first instalment of my creative writing 101 course. It’s simple and was originally intended for children. If you have experience writing fiction, it may be a good reminder of the basics (but there are no advanced techniques here).
What's your favorite movie?"
"Captain America."
"What is it about?"
"It's about a young man who wanted to join the army but was very skinny and weak. Then one day a scientist conducted an experiment on him and turned him into a super soldier. With his super strength, he was able to fight the Nazis in World War II."
I don't know what your favorite movie is 📽️. But if I ask you, you'll surely start telling me about the main character, just like in the example of Captain America.
Without a character, there is no story. 🤷
The readers of your short story (or novel) will connect with your story through the main character, and that's why this is the first step we're going to take in this course: creating your character.
TIP: Your character doesn't always have to be a person. It can be a dog or a cat, or a pair of siblings, or an alien, or a robot...
Your characters:
Must have a conflict or problem to overcome.
Must grow and change throughout the story.
Must be active, not passive.
Must have a desire or motivation.
Must have complexity and contradictions.
I'll explain these five things in more detail.
1. The Conflict ⚔️
Remember I told you that without a character, there is no story? Well, without conflict, there is no story either.
Imagine a story or a movie where the character has a normal life where nothing extraordinary happens... where they have no problems to solve. Too boring, right?
Steve Rogers' (Captain America) problem was that his body was very weak, and he wasn't accepted into the United States Army. That was a physical problem.
But there are other types of conflicts we'll talk about in lesson 3.
2. Character Arc 🎓
Every character must change or grow as a person by the end of the story. That's what we call the "character arc." At the end, the characters are not the same as they were in the beginning.
One of my favorite examples (since we're talking about Marvel superheroes) is Tony Stark or Iron Man.
When we first meet him, he is a selfish and arrogant guy who only cares about himself. But by the end of the Avengers saga, he is a completely different person, willing to sacrifice himself for others without thinking about himself.
Your main character should learn something during the story: to be brave, or to share with others, or to value their family.
3. Initiator 🏃♀️
Your character should not be a victim. She should not remain still and not make decisions (there are some characters like that in published works, but I don’t recommend them for a new fiction writer).
Those passive characters who are incapable of acting (even after hesitating for a while) leave a bad impression on the reader. They will make readers hate the story.
A good character will decide to act and do something to solve the conflict or achieve what they want. They won't stay in bed all day waiting for something to happen.
4. Motivation💭
Your character must have a strong motivation to act.
Maybe it's the desire to become a professional football player or the need to escape from a dangerous place.
There has to be a strong desire to achieve something that motivates them to take action.
For example, Steve Rogers intensely desired to be in the army and tried to enlist several times, even changing his name and risking his freedom.
5. Deep Personality 🧠
Human beings are complex in the way we think, feel, and act.
Sometimes we contradict ourselves, sometimes we have a dark side, and sometimes we do unexpected things.
Your main character should be the same. That's why you need to take the time to develop them.
A very interesting example (also from the Marvel Cinematic Universe) is the character of Thanos. He is not the main character, but the villain!
Nevertheless, he is a very complex character.
Although he is the "bad guy" of the movie, his motivation is not the typical desire for power or money. His motivation is to bring balance to the universe.
And although he kills millions of people, he loves his daughter.
His conviction is that his purpose is to improve the universe, even if his methods require ending the lives of many living beings.
TIP: Not all your characters need to be deep and complex, but at least your main character should have a defined personality.
Time to Read
Now let's learn how to introduce your character to your readers through two fascinating stories: "Coraline" by Neil Gaiman and "The 9 Lives of Alfred Merchen: The Secret of Oppenheimer" by Diego Pineda.
We'll read the first few pages of these two books to see how the authors (yes, I know one of them is me, and I shouldn't be talking about myself in the third person...) introduce their characters and their environment.
Just in the first paragraphs, we start getting to know the characters: their likes, passions, where and with whom they live, and how they relate to others. And if it's like this in a book, even more so in a short story, where everything needs to unfold in fewer words.
In these two stories, we see that something happened that took the character out of their normal life and brought a conflict, which starts the story.
TIP: The first sentence or paragraph of your story is super important. That sentence or paragraph serves to capture the reader, generate mystery, curiosity. You promise the reader that if they keep reading, they will find out something.
Coraline
Coraline discovered the door a little while after they moved into the house.
It was a very old house – it had an attic under the roof and a cellar under the ground and an overgrown garden with huge old trees in it.
Coraline's family didn't own all of the house, it was too big for that. Instead they owned part of it.
There were other people who lived in the old house.
Miss Spink and Miss Forcible lived in the flat below Coraline’s, on the ground floor. They were both old and round, and they lived in their flat with a number of ageing highland terriers who had names like Hamish and Andrew and Jock. Once upon a time Miss Spink and Miss Forcible had been actresses, as Miss Spink told Coraline the first time she met her.
"You see, Caroline," Miss Spink said, getting Coraline's name wrong, "Both myself and Miss Forcible were famous actresses, in our time. We trod the boards, luvvy. Oh, don't let Hamish eat the fruit cake, or he'll be up all night with his tummy."
"It's Coraline. Not Caroline. Coraline," said Coraline.
In the flat above Coraline’s, under the roof, was a crazy old man with a big moustache. He told Coraline that he was training a mouse circus. He wouldn't let anyone see it.
"One day, little Caroline, when they are all ready, everyone in the whole world will see the wonders of my mouse circus. You ask me why you cannot see it now. Is that what you asked me?"
"No," said Coraline quietly, "I asked you not to call me Caroline. It's Coraline."
"The reason you cannot see the Mouse Circus," said the man upstairs, "is that the mice are not yet ready and rehearsed. Also, they refuse to play the songs I have written for them. All the songs I have written for the mice to play go oompah oompah. But the white mice will only play toodle oodle, like that. I am thinking of trying them on different types of cheese."
Coraline didn't think there really was a mouse circus. She thought the old man was probably making it up.
The day after they moved in, Coraline went exploring.
She explored the garden. It was a big garden: at the very back was an old tennis court, but no one in the house played tennis and the fence around the court had holes in it and the net had mostly rotted away; there was an old rose garden, filled with stunted, flyblown rose bushes; there was a rockery that was all rocks; there was a fairy ring, made of squidgy brown toadstools which smelled dreadful if you accidentally trod on them.
There was also a well. Miss Spink and Miss Forcible made a point of telling Coraline how dangerous the well was, on the first day Coraline’s family moved in, and warned her to be sure she kept away from it. So Coraline set off to explore for it, so that she knew where it was, to keep away from it properly.
She found it on the third day, in an overgrown meadow beside the tennis court, behind a clump of trees – a low brick circle almost hidden in the high grass. The well had been covered up by wooden boards, to stop anyone falling in. There was a small knot-hole in one of the boards, and Coraline spent an afternoon dropping pebbles and acorns through the hole, and waiting, and counting, until she heard the plop as they hit the water, far below.
Coraline also explored for animals. She found a hedgehog, and a snake-skin (but no snake), and a rock that looked just like a frog, and a toad that looked just like a rock.
There was also a haughty black cat, who would sit on walls and tree stumps, and watch her; but would slip away if ever she went over to try to play with it.
That was how she spent her first two weeks in the house – exploring the garden and the grounds.
Her mother made her come back inside for dinner, and for lunch; and Coraline had to make sure she dressed up warm before she went out, for it was a very cold summer that year; but go out she did, exploring, every day until the day it rained, when Coraline had to stay inside.
"What should I do?" asked Coraline.
"Read a book," said her mother. "Watch a video. Play with your toys. Go and pester Miss Spink or Miss Forcible, or the crazy old man upstairs."
"No," said Coraline. "I don't want to do those things. I want to explore."
"I don't really mind what you do," said Coraline's mother, "as long as you don't make a mess."
Did you notice what the author did in the first sentence of the story? They told us about a door 🚪 that Coraline found, but that's it! Then they talk about something else, and we keep reading with curiosity to find out about that mysterious door. But it will be several pages before she finds it.
In the meantime, we learn many things about Coraline: where and with whom she lives, what she likes to do, and more.
TIP: Write down five things you learned about Coraline's character and how you discovered them. You'll notice the difference between "telling" and "showing." For example, the author never tells us that Coraline is curious, but they show it through her actions. Good writers don't tell things, they show them (there are exceptions to this rule, of course, but for now…)
Now let's read the beginning of my story to start getting to know Santiago and Sofía, the main characters. This first chapter is narrated from Santiago's point of view.
The 9 Lives of Alfred Merchen
In a crazy twist of fate, my grandfather came to live with us one December night. Although we didn't suspect at the time that those were his intentions, as everything seemed to indicate it would be just another one of his fleeting Christmas visits.
"Thanks for lighting up the street in my honor," he said with a wink, crossing the hallway toward the stairs.
Sofía looked at me with a puzzled expression, and I shrugged and made a face to indicate I was equally clueless.
It was an hour later that we understood the joke. It was the Day of the Candles, and the neighbors had lit rows of candles along the sidewalk in front of our house.
"Don't you think Grandpa is so funny, Santi?" my sister said.
I thought about it for a while without responding, captivated by the little halos of light in the street. Funny, no, rather strange.
Grandpa Alfredo was a mystery in every sense of the word. He didn't dress like an old man, but rather in jeans and a black turtleneck shirt, perhaps imitating Steve Jobs. His face seemed carved in stone, as the wrinkles on his forehead never moved. Plus, he spoke with a slight accent from nowhere.
Sofi and I were on the balcony connecting our rooms, as always, escaping the boredom of the house during the end-of-year vacations. I missed school and my friends. And I knew Sofi did too.
I couldn't wait to go back to studying, to work on robotics and software programming projects. Anything related to technology fascinated me. Well, and superhero movies too.
Unlike Sofi, who was an avid artist (or an art freak, as our English teacher called her). She always had more paintbrushes than dolls, and the few dolls she had ended up with rainbow-painted faces.
And all that passion for art and technology overflowed in school. That's why vacations were an agonizing passing of minutes: 89,280 minutes to be exact.
We didn't imagine back then that Grandpa's arrival would turn our vacations upside down and mark the rest of our lives like a meteor crashing into a city.
In just a few paragraphs, we already know quite a bit about these two siblings, and we're left curious about what will happen with their grandfather's visit. I promise you, it's something good, but you'll have to keep reading the story!
Hands-On
It's time to get to work and create the main character of your story.
1. Answer the following questions about your character. It's not mandatory to answer them all, but the more questions you answer, the more information you'll have about your character, and the better you'll get to know them.
Name:
Age:
Date of birth:
Place of birth:
Lives with (family, pets, etc.):
Passions or hobbies:
Physical description (overweight, skinny, tall, short, hair color, eye color, etc.):
What makes this character unique?
How do they dress?
What do they want to be when they grow up? (if it's a child)
Favorite food:
2. Write a scene where your character finds themselves in a new or difficult situation and show their actions, thoughts, and emotions without explicitly stating them.
For example, if your character's name is Charles and they are angry, don't say, "Charles was very angry."
Anger can be SHOWN like this:
Charles' face turned red. Suddenly, he stood up and slammed his hand on the table.
"I don't want to hear you anymore!" he yelled and then stormed off, slamming the door behind him.
Do you see the difference? If you perfect this technique of showing instead of telling, you'll be a much better writer than most beginners.
😀
Congratulations on completing the first lesson! 🥳
The next lesson about creating conflict in your story will arrive next week.