Let’s start with a premise: a kid has a math test on Monday. Exciting? Not really. But ask two simple questions, and you can add conflict.

• Why is it important to the character? The stakes should be high. The longer the story or novel, the higher stakes you need to sustain it. A short story character might want to win a contest; a novel character might need to save the world.

• Why is it difficult for the character? Difficulties can be divided into three general categories, traditionally called man versus man, man versus nature, and man versus himself. You can even have a combination of these. For example, someone may be trying to spy on some bank robbers (man versus man) during a dangerous storm (man versus nature) when he is afraid of lightning (man versus himself).

Back to the kid with the math test. Here’s what we came up with when I did this exercise in a workshop: If he doesn’t pass, maybe he will fail the class, have to go to summer school, and not get to go to football camp, when football is what he loves most. That’s why it’s important. Assuming we create a character readers will like, they’ll care about the outcome of this test, and root for him to succeed.

Our football lover could have lots of challenges—he forgot his study book, he’s expected to baby-sit his distracting little sister, a storm knocked out the power, he has ADHD, or he suffers test anxiety. But ideally we would relate the difficulty to the reason it’s important. So let’s say he has a big football game Sunday afternoon, and is getting pressure from his coach and teammates to practice rather than study for his test. Plus, of course, he’d rather play football anyway.

We now have a situation full of potential tension. Let the character struggle enough before he succeeds (or fails and learns a lesson), and you’ll have a story. And if these two questions can pump up a dull premise, just think what they can do with an exciting one!

Fears and Desires

As this exercise shows, conflict comes from the interaction between character and plot. You can create conflict by setting up situations which force a person to confront their fears. If someone is afraid of heights, make them go someplace high. If they’re afraid of taking responsibility, force them to be in charge.

You can also create conflict by setting up situations which oppose a person’s desires. If they crave safety, put them in danger. But if they crave danger, keep them out of it.
In my Mayan historical novel The Well of Sacrifice, Eveningstar never dreams of being a leader or a rebel. But when her family, the government, and even the gods fail to stop the evil high priest, she’s forced to act. In my Haunted series, Jon would like to be an ordinary kid, fit in, and stay out of trouble. But his sister constantly drags him into trouble as she tries to help ghosts without letting the grown-ups know what she and Jon are doing. The reluctant hero is a staple of books and movies because it’s fun to watch someone forced into a heroic role when they don’t want it. (Think of Harrison Ford as Han Solo.)

Even with nonfiction, you can create tension by focusing on the challenges that make a person’s accomplishments more impressive. In my book Jesse Owens: Young Record Breaker, written under the name M.M. Eboch, I made this incredible athlete’s story more powerful by focusing on all the things he had to overcome – childhood health problems, poverty, a poor education. I showed his troubles, and not just his successes, to help the reader understand just what he achieved.

Here are a few more tips on setting up conflict:

• What does your main character want? What does he need? Make these things different, and you’ll add tension to the story. It can be as simple as our soccer player who wants to practice soccer, but needs to study. Or it could be more subtle, like someone who wants to be protected but needs to learn independence.
• Even if your main problem is external (man versus man or man versus nature), consider giving the character an internal flaw (man versus himself) that contributes to the difficulty. Perhaps your character has a temper, or is lazy, or refuses to ever admit she’s wrong. This helps set up your complications, and as a bonus makes your character seem more real.
• Before you start, test the idea. Change the character’s age, gender, or looks. Change the point of view. Change the setting. Change the internal conflict. What happens? Choose the combination that has the most dramatic potential.

Some writers tend to start with plot ideas and then develop the character who’ll face those challenges, while others start with a great character and then figure out what he or she does. Regardless of which style you prefer, remember to work back and forth between plot and character, tying them together with conflict.

Chris Eboch is the author of the Haunted series for ages eight to 12, about siblings who travel with a ghost hunter TV show. See more of her writing tips at her blog, Write Like a Pro! A Free Online Writing Workshop: http://chriseboch.blogspot.com/ or visit her website at http://www.chriseboch.com.

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But the neatest thing about taking up karate when you’re a woman in her mid-40′s is that people don’t automatically expect it. If you’re just a casual acquaintance, you won’t know I’m working toward my black belt. And by the time I’m collecting Social Security, the possibility won’t even cross your mind. Unless you try to grab my purse.

In life most people become more complex as we get to know them. This should also be true for characters in children’s books. At a conference I recently attended, Lyron Bennett, editor for Sourcebooks Jabberwocky, called it “the slow reveal”. It means investing your characters with enough varied qualities that some can be withheld until called for in the plot.

The slow reveal is particularly important when writing a series. If J.K. Rowling had allowed Harry Potter to reach his full power as a wizard in Book 1, would fans have waited nine years and six more books to discover if he finally defeated you-know-who? But equally important is planting the seeds early on for who you want your character to become. From the beginning, readers saw Harry’s potential, and Rowling allowed greatness to surface in Harry when it was least expected. Those qualities expanded along with Harry as the series unfolded.

You don’t want to reveal everything at once in stand-alone books either. Picture books and easy readers, with their smaller word counts and straightforward plots, do best with characters who have one or two surprises up their sleeve. In Peggy Parish’s classic easy reader Amelia Bedelia, the child sees that Amelia is doing a bad job on her first day as a housekeeper because she doesn’t understand the list her employer left her. But even before Amelia begins on the list, she whips up a lemon merengue pie. What the reader doesn’t know is that Amelia makes the most delicious pies anywhere, which eventually saves her job at the end of the book.

Parceling out your protagonist’s strengths and weaknesses keeps the tension taut in a novel. In Gary Paulsen’s timeless Hatchet (ages 11-14), Brian, a city kid, is stranded in the Canadian wilderness after the his bush plane crashes, killing the pilot. Neither Brian nor the reader know if he’s got what it takes to survive on his own. Can he figure out how to start a fire? Yes, quite by accident. Can he fish? Eventually. Kill and cook a bird? How about live through a moose attack or weather a tornado? Brian evolves from reacting to his predicament and stumbling upon solutions to carefully taking control of his situation. But nothing Brian does is out of character. Though he must teach himself to live in the wild, he draws upon bits of information he learned from watching television or at school, and reserves of strength that were in him all along.

Even if you’re writing a single title, make your children’s book characters complex enough to carry on for several books, just in case. Fans loved Brian so much that Paulsen was persuaded to use the character in several other wilderness adventures. Picture book series (such as Mo Willem’s Pigeon books) or easy reader series like Amelia Bedelia generally grow because the protagonist’s quirks are open-ended and funny enough that readers don’t mind exploring them over and over in different circumstances.

The slow reveal works particularly well in mysteries. In this genre, the readers gradually get to know the victim (perhaps an honor student who is discovered to be running an side business selling test answers), and the villain (who may seem like a nice guy at the beginning of the book). Or, how about a first person narrator in any genre who appears normal and likable early on, but becomes less and less reliable as the story unfolds? Read Robert Cormier’s timeless young adult I Am the Cheese for a masterful example of a shifting first person reality. If you prefer a broader perspective, try Avi’s Nothing But the Truth: A Documentary Novel for ages 11-14, which looks at one incident from several viewpoints, gradually separating fact from fiction. So when you first breath life into your characters, don’t stop too soon. Add layers that can be exposed later on. These surprises will keep readers enthralled, whether you’re writing about a boy wizard, a demanding pigeon, or a ninja grandma.

Laura Backes is the publisher of Children’s Book Insider, the Newsletter for Children’s Writers. For more information about how to write children’s books, including free articles, market tips, insider secrets, the lowdown on children’s book publishers and much more, visit the CBI Clubhouse at http://cbiclubhouse.com

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he was born, grew up, and died.

Such writing merely offers readers lists – of facts, of dates, places, relationships, experiences and accomplishments, what I call laundry lists. Writing like this is dull. It doesn’t involve readers in the character’s life, because it doesn’t give readers the kind of inside information that allows them to get involved with the character. Laundry list writing doesn’t reveal the character’s inner person or tell what that person’s life was about. It doesn’t engage readers because it doesn’t provide the intimate information that brings the character to life, right off the page.

Readers live through your story by experiencing the events and dilemmas you present to your character. You want readers to experience the people you write about. For this to happen, you have to characterize your characters, whether they’re real or imagined.

CHARACTERIZATION
There are three primary methods of characterization: description, action and dialogue.

DESCRIPTION is narrative that simply tells your reader something about your character:

Keith was a tall, unhappy man with short brown hair.

The words and actions of a character, particularly when enhanced by description, can tell your reader a lot about who that character is. Here is Keith in ACTION:

Keith shuffled into the kitchen, ducking instinctively as he came through the doorway. The dishes were piling up and the floor needed sweeping, but he couldn’t find a reason to care about that right now. He pulled a beer from the fridge and sat at the table without opening it.

From this passage we get an impression of Keith’s height from the fact that he needs to duck through the doorway. His unhappiness is hinted at by his shuffling and his apathetic reaction to his surroundings. In a similar way, DIALOGUE can characterize by letting the reader see the character relating to someone else:

Beth clicked on the light and jumped when she saw him slumped over the kitchen table. “Jeez, Keith, you scared me half to death. What the hell are you doing, sitting in here in the dark?” “I don’t know. Nothing.” He ran his hand over his head, spiking his short brown hair. “Did you go to work today?”
“No.”
“You sick?”
“No.” Beth laid her purse on the table and sat down. “Now you’re really scaring me. Tell me what’s wrong.”

All three methods of characterization can be effective. How you use them, and in what combination, is a matter of your personal style and the needs of your story.

Characterization depends on creating word pictures of your characters. This is best done through showing the character, through his/her actions and speech, or through imaginative descriptions that create pictures in readers’ minds.

To create word pictures about your characters, you have to know them thoroughly. Do you know, for instance, your character’s job description? Where (s)he lives, the decor and furnishings? Favorite foods? Treasured possessions? Tastes in clothes, movies, music? How the character sees him/herself?

If you’re writing non-fiction, about a real person or persons, you may already know the answers to many of the above questions. But if you’re writing fiction, you’ll have to create this information. You’ll have to give birth to characters that are consistent, believable people with specific qualities and faults, with specific feelings and histories and needs and desires.

Your characters must seem like real human beings. They must be feeling, caring, striving, failing, winning, hurting. Above all, they must earn your readers’ respect. Readers have seen every imaginable plot, yet they have not learned how your character will handle adversity.

CREATING CHARACTERS Only stress reveals true character. Characters react to stress because of motivation. To ensure they act as you wish under pressure, you must construct their past to set up the desired reaction in the future.

Give them a biography, including a history. The more important the character, the more complete the biography. Print out this personal resume for each character and place it nearby. Include the character’s name, date and place of birth, physical description, age, address, occupation or primary endeavor, immediate relatives, friends and relationships with each. List every facet of their physical and emotional makeup. Build them from the inside out, including traits that set them apart and differentiate them from other characters.

In the history, list the dates and circumstances of pivotal events which have imprinted the character. Think action/reaction. Impact characters with a past event that explains why they react in a certain way to a present event. Not all past events need be revealed. However, as the author, you must know their history. Otherwise, you won’t know how and why your characters react as they must under pressure. If you take the above steps, you will end up with the intimate information that allows you to bring your characters to life.

The above article has been excerpted from the online class, Bringing Your Characters to Life, one of 17 classes offered by Patrika Vaughn, your Author’s AdvocateTM, on www.acappela.com

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