How To Use Cars (and other forms of transportation) To Enhance Character Development.

I started writing my book "What Car Would Hamlet Drive? 2000 questions to ask fictional characters for students, actors, writers and readers of fiction" because I had a very hard time making small talk at social events. I feared I might have as much difficulty thinking up things to ask fictional characters as a writer. Along the path of compiling thousands of questions, I discovered that I have written a seminal book about Character - not definitive because every time I let anyone read the book they came up with a dozen questions I'd forgotten - but definitely seminal. And the book in itself is a great conversation piece, because people I meet have all kinds of ideas about questions to ask characters and all kinds of suggestions as to how the answers advance understanding of people, plots and stories. The following is an excerpt from the book.

Cars and Other Forms of Transportation.

A car is generally a statement about the person driving it. Car choices convey how the character thinks about himself – how he wants other people to perceive him. Car ownership often has history behind it.
* A character drives a Cadillac because he thinks they make him look successful.
* Another character would never drive a Cadillac because he thinks they are a reflection of being nouveau rich.
* A character would never buy a new car.
* Another character would never buy a used car.

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Keeping Character Pages

As I listen to (I've read and re-read and now have books on tape) the Harry Potter Series I am constantly amazed at how identifiable each of J.K. Rowling's characters are and the consistent reminders that she uses to remind us of who each character is. Luna Lovegood is dreamy. Hermione Granger has brown bushy hair. Ron Weasley often says "You're mental." Hagrid is "Too big to be allowed."

I remember listening to an interview with either Jim Dale or Stephen Fry - who are the actors who read the Harry Potter series - and the particular actor said that he had recorded the accents of each of the characters and reviewed them before each chapter and possibly before each segment. We have a recording studio in the back of our house where music is made and I'm amazed at what my son-in-law can do with Protools.

Television series have notebooks filled with information about characters not only for the writers but for the actors and directors to review them for enriching their understanding of the character. It's impossible to hold everything in memory over years and years.

Character Pages are the same thing as recording accents and speech patterns except that you keep the visuals as well as the auditory. On Character Pages you write down preferred swear words, eccentricities, identifying habits and patterns, special things like physical features, or preferred clothing choices.

In Typhoid Mary - which will be the story I am working on for National Novel Writing Month - one of the characters will be very much like a woman I knew in Vermont named Constance Perry. She used to punctuate phrases with "Don't you know?" which has a wonderful old fashioned cadence in my ear. Typhoid Mary is known to have had a foul mouth - well in 1906 foul mouths are much milder than in 2010 - so how foul am I going to let her get without stepping out of period? Since National Novel Writing Month begins tomorrow I'm going to spend today creating and reviewing character pages.

Character Pages are begun as you outline and maintained as you write. With the advent of the computer you can always go back through the book or movie and add in bits and pieces that expand on the knowledge of each character.

Is it necessary to do all this work around writing? Absolutely not. It depends on who you are as a writer and how good you want your book to be.

Birth Order in Character Development

Birth order takes on numerous shadings of meaning in character development. These shadings are often very explicit. First children are often hyper-responsible and “good”. Second children may spend their lives being second. Even second in their graduating class at Harvard. Middle children can go in several directions and are often regarded as “mysterious.” If a first child owns the “good little girl” slot, then the other children will find a different slots to own. It’s rare that children raised together share the same character traits. Bad child, brilliant child, lucky child, psychotherapist child, independent child, each child comes with a whole set of beliefs and characterizations.

It is not necessary for any child in a household to take on negative characteristics simply because one or more of the “good” slots are already occupied. Good, brilliant, fun, lucky, sweet, kind are all characteristics that children can notably own.

If you start developing a character and you notice certain characteristics developing (because characters do tend to emerge on their own accord), check those characteristics against his birth order and personality and discover what additional personality traits you can give him. Then, as you develop him in his family setting, figure out his relationship in terms of birth order to the rest of the family.

If your character doesn’t act the way that fits his birth order, figure out the exceptions and make note of them. Some people act exactly the way the experts predict. Some people might have acted that way but something came along that interfered with that line of development. It can be fascinating to figure out what happened, how and why it had the effects it did on the character. Unpredictability, like conflict, makes for good story telling.

How does your character interact with his family from the dynamics of birth order? What role does your character play? What roles do the other members of his family play? Are there exceptions to the birth order rules? How did life change the rules? How does birth order impact the plot?

If you were going to use birth order in a term paper, figure out the birth order, either by the characteristics the author gave the character or because the author told you, discuss how the character you have chosen has character traits that prove his birth order. Or take a few traits that you didn’t find in the story and explain why you would have chosen to add these traits to the character and how that would have benefitted the story.

To find out the rules of birth order and personality go to:

http://www.birthorderandpersonality.com/

The Numerology of Character

In great literature characters have numbers in much the same way that real people have numbers. So I often start with numerology when I begin to think about writing a character. The character’s numbers will lead me toward his or her behavior patterns, attitudes, stress points and even conflicts with other characters.
Although he isn’t an eight – Ebenezer Scrooge – works the issues of the number eight which are power and money. His transformation takes place in the realms of power and money. Interestingly, the number of Scrooge (one - creative) and the number of “A Christmas Carol” (seven - spiritual) combine to make the number eight, which makes sense. The entire story is about eight issues.
Harry Potter’s birth numbers, on the other hand, combine to form a four, the number of work. And from the beginning of the series Harry has a job to do. Fours often have difficulty delegating their responsibilities. Harry’s friends tell him constantly that he doesn’t have to do everything himself. His name number is an eleven – a master number. An eleven is someone who takes on goals and challenges bigger than themselves – goals so big and challenging that they might even intimidate. Eleven adds up to two – the number of partnership – and Harry always partners with Dumbledore, Hermione and Ron.
In my soon to be released novel, Tranquility Initiative, the main character Cassandra Williams – a doctor from the CDC sent to investigate an outbreak of pulmonary anthrax in New York City is number 7. Spiritual but also intellectual, focused, scientific – a seeker of truth, an accumulator of knowledge, self-oriented, a perfectionist and a woman of great mental strength. That allows her to be incredibly effective despite the fact that she is movie star gorgeous.
Using numbers to explore the traits of characters you are inventing, or using numbers to explore characters developed by others, is great fun and can lead you into areas of understanding that would have eluded you without the numbers acting as a guide to consistency. They can help you make choices for the character or solving problems for the characters that would otherwise get in their way.