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| Photo credit: Flickr GraceOda |
Often, when writers are questioning, they intend to agents or publishers that the reader just does not connect with their work. There may be a million reasons for this, but when the connection is missing from your characters I found there is often a reason that you can point directly in the manuscript, and many times the reason is the lack of depth in the POV.
When reading the best books do not make you feel like you read about someone, they make you feel as if you are experiencing what the characters live. You feel their pain, you know their emotions, you hear their thoughts, you see what they see and feel what they feel and feel what they feel. Of course, you are not literally knows everything, but a great book will link feeling so deep that it's almost as if you are.
So how do you accomplish this with your characters? There are a few keys you can focus on to really deepen this respect:
- Show emotion. I wrote a whole blog post about writing effective emotion and the difference between saying and showing emotion, but the short version is this: whenever you see a named emotion ( "I'm so angry," "he looked sad," etc.) in your WIP, stop and think about how you can rewrite without naming that emotion. Think what emotion does your character feel physically, how it affects their thoughts and actions. Consider what feels experience and emotion rather than that: name, describe the place and leave the readers to put together the pieces. (PS: A true great resource that is a billion times easier is The Thesaurus Emotions Angela Ackerman and Becca Puglisi I can not recommend enough!)
- Reduce filtering. Similarly, I also already wrote a blog post on how (and why you should) remove filter phrases, but I'll give a brief summary here: filtering is a form of narrative, and appears in phrases like "I think", "I remembered," "I saw," "I feel", "I felt," etc. It is often unnecessary and adds a layer of distance between the reader and the character because you filter your character is experienced by writer-speak. by removing sentences whenever possible and just describe your experiences characters instead, writing becomes more immediate and helps to establish that feeling of closeness to the character (s) of POV.
- Get us into the head of your character's POV. what are you thinking characters? Why do they make decisions as they do? How do they come to one conclusion or another? in third or first person POV limited, readers should know what your POV character is thinking (and feeling) to any time. Even if readers disagree with the reasoning of a decision for your character or another, they should see the thought process of your character there on the page, so they never have to stop and ask them -Same, "but why do they that ?" this often requires slow while writing to think about what your characters think or feel like the events of their history is happening, but what is essential to get your readers to feel as if they really understand your characters.
So those are my top tips to get-your-characters to connect! Now I want to hear from you: what you are able to connect to the characters in the books you read?
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Having trouble getting readers to connect to your characters? Sharing some @Ava_Jae forging connection tips. (Click for tweeter)
How do you get your characters to connect to readers? @Ava_Jae Author shares some advice. (Click for tweeter)
