Award-Winning Author Ellen Jackson

BREATHING LIFE INTO YOUR STORY CHILDREN

Every writer wants his characters to be lively and interesting, and this is certainly true of the authors of children’s books. While there is no one way to do this, the following are a few points to keep in mind:

Use active, energetic words when describing your characters, especially your main character. Describing a character as angry isn’t as powerful as having her storm through the door, yell at her sister, and throw her backpack on the bed.

Have your characters think, act, and speak the way real children think, act, and speak. If your main character is sent to the principal’s office, don’t have her think, "Mr. Stevenson appeared disconcerted when he saw me." ‘Disconcerted’ is not a word a child would use.

Avoid having your main character sitting on the sidelines feeling sorry for himself. He can be frightened or unsure in the beginning of your story. But readers expect him to get up fairly soon and do something about his problems. Don’t disappoint them.

Never write about just one character. You need at least two, and those two must do something interesting together–dance, fight, run away, bake cookies, tickle each other, or explore a cave.

Give your main character both good and bad traits. Perfect people are boring. I once read a story from a student featuring Jennifer who was beautiful, brilliant, popular, athletic, and happy. The story problem? Jennifer was devastated by a B+ she received on a math test. Most readers wouldn’t have much sympathy for a girl like Jennifer.

You can deepen your story and show other facets of your character’s personality when others react to her. Have your other characters talk about your main character, look at your main character, and interact with her. What does Sarah's mother do when Sarah drops the carton of eggs?

The most important quality you can give your character is the capacity to care. The main character must have an investment in the outcome of the story. The easiest way to involve your young readers is to make the main character care about a desirable goal or a valuable relationship.

Don’t make your main character too complex. You may know him well, but don’t forget that he is a representation of a real, complex person–not the person himself. The parts of his personality you reveal are those that have a direct bearing on the story, but you don’t need to overwhelm your reader with information. If you tell too much, you risk losing your reader in a tidal wave of details.

Basing characters on people you know

Often beginning writers want to base fictional characters on their friends, family--and even their pets. But this may not be as easy as it seems. You may not know your cousin Josephine as well as you think you do. Perhaps you can describe Josephine’s behavior, but what about her motivation? Why did she take those plastic frogs from the toy store when she was ten? Do you really know her memories, thoughts, and secret desires? You can guess–but often you’ll be wrong. The result is that you end up with a character who acts superficially like Josephine, but doesn’t really resemble her in important ways.

Another problem is that real people can seldom be translated directly onto the page. When you stick to a literal description of a person, you leave out important elements that make her believable as a character. You explain too much or too little. Putting a real person in an imaginary situation usually produces a hybrid that doesn’t quite work as good fiction.

But feel free to use a real person as a starting point. Better yet, take bits and pieces from several people. Then embellish and expand, delete and discard until you’ve processed them through your imagination and changed them into a character completely at home in your fictional story world.

Making your hero unique

When you think about your main character, think about the qualities that make her unique and special. For example, perhaps you want to write about a girl named Mary who plays with dolls and has a mother, a father, and a brother who plays baseball–a generic girl with a generic family. Unfortunately, these kinds of stock characters are usually boring. Why not create a character named Jayna, an amateur astronomer and would-be spy who lives with her grandmother, a champion surfer and motorcycle buff?

You can add interest by making your characters stand out from the crowd. Does Marco collect old postcards? Does Rebecca like stories about the Loch Ness Monster? How does this characteristic affect the plot? There must be some connection between your characters’ personality traits and the eventual resolution of the conflict, but that connection must not be obvious.

Create Appealing Characters

People react to others in real life based on what they say and do, and readers do the same. They quickly form opinions about your characters. Each of your characters has his own particular personality–the main character may be friendly and outgoing, his sister may be quiet and thoughtful, and his best friend may be a mischievous prankster. By seeing how each character reacts to events, the reader decides how he feels about each of them. Your job as author is to guide the reader in a certain direction-- to encourage her to like the protagonist (or main character) and to dislike the villain.

A writer has a number of tricks up her sleeve to enhance character appeal. Here are a few:

Use humor. Children love to laugh. If you want to get the reader to like your main character, make her funny. If you can release your reader’s emotions with laughter, you open the door to other feelings as well.

Even young children have likes, dislikes, and problems. Make your main character an honest observer and give him problems your readers can sympathize with. For example, young children will sympathize with another child who doesn’t want to go bed, clean his room, or eat his broccoli.

Keep your main character’s behavior reasonable and proportional. If five-year-old Jeremy gets lost, he may have a reasonable desire to find his parents. If Samantha's dad pays more attention to her basketball-playing brother, the result may be that Samantha tries to excel at sports. Don’t have your main character brood for days about a minor insult if you want your readers to keep liking her.

Don’t make you your main character into a victim. Readers don’t like weak characters. Try to portray the main character as an active agent who shows courage, takes risks, and finds creative ways to solve his problems.

Give her a good attitude. When things go wrong, a likable character doesn’t complain or whine. She takes responsibility for her mistakes and even laughs at herself.

Your main character is usually someone who cares about other people. He has a sense of fair play, and he doesn’t gloat when he wins.

Often your main character is clever–coming up with a solution to a problem that even adults can’t solve. She doesn’t have superior knowledge, she simply tries harder because she cares. Another form of cleverness your main character may display is verbal cleverness. Give her a quick wit or an offbeat way of looking at the world.

Don’t make your main character too perfect. Give her a few fears or foibles to make her seem human. Is she always losing things? Is he afraid of the dark? Little imperfections such as these make your hero more lovable and reader-friendly.