“Three-dimensional characters in novels require three dimensional emotions, for in real life no person is entirely one thing.”
-Brandilyn Collins from her book, Getting Into Character.
While there are many ways to color passions, for the sake of brevity, I’m only going to focus on one particular aspect. If you want to learn the rest, you’ll just have to read Brandilyn’s book.
One way to color passions is to set the passion against its opposite. Allow me to explain…
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In this chapter, Brandilyn makes an analogy involving a pearl necklace. What happens if you wear a pearl necklace against a white sweater? Will the necklace stand out? No, of course not. But what happens if you wear the pearl necklace against a black velvet dress? Now we’re talkin’. Suddenly, the pearls in the necklace pop! We notice them. Why? Because we set them against their opposite.
Let’s say we make a character in our story cruel. Maybe it’s an abusive husband who physically and emotionally abuses his wife. We write a scene where he flies into a rage because his wife shrunk his favorite shirt in the wash. Let’s say he’s so angry, he backhands her, kicks her while she’s on the ground, and leaves her crumpled on the floor, weeping. Okay, so we know he’s a cruel guy. What could we do next? There are a lot of possibilities. But let’s imagine this…
After slamming the door and storming out of the house, he finds an abandoned baby bird in a fallen nest near his driveway. Let’s say this husband bends over, coddles the baby bird to his chest, and gently pets its beak. Does this action take away from his cruelty? Actually, quite the opposite. We’ve just taken the pearl necklace and set it against black velvet. His cruelty toward his wife is magnified. This is one way to color passions. Pretty cool, huh?
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Question to ponder: What are your favorite of all time characters? Why? I bet if you look closely, it’s because this character had colorful, three-dimensional passions.
Thanks for the comments everybody! I'm glad the post was helpful! tomorrow I'm going to do my last post on GMC… I think it's going to be a fun one!
Erica… I've never read that book. I'll have to check it out. 🙂
Hi, Katie,
Favorite characters…I really love Alexander Kinloch in Dick Francis's To The Hilt. He's tough, a loner, strong of mind and body, and he's an artist whose mind is swirling with images of light and color, shade and shape.
well sheesh! You left me hanging! Did he rescue the baby bird?!?!?! ;0)
Ok, point taken. Great post, Katie! 🙂
I can't think of just one but I will tell you, you are correct they all came across as real. Thank you this was great! I need to inject this philosophy into my WIP.
ooh…i'll be thinking on this some…
Why yes….Edward does have pretty colorful passions! 😀
That's an awesome post, Katie! Anything to help us make our characters deeper and richer is great.
I thought about blogging after the chapters I read myself. Personally, I haven't read as many books on the craft as I should. oops… 😛
Great post…and great points by both you and Brandilyn. I find characters with contrasting passions like that fascinating. There are often specific psychological reasons for the difference, in addition to upping the tension. Hmmm…the places you could go…
Hey Katie! I am doing the same thing with Fire in Fiction by blogging about each chapter! It helps sooo much to keep it in my head.
Loved the contrast analogy! I need to get this book!
Hey Jody! The books I've been reading are amazing. It's fun to work my way through them nice and slowly. I don't move on to the next chapter until after I've blogged about them. Blogging about them helps to really solidify what I learned…. almost like writing a report for school, but much more fun!
I have been trying to apply all this stuff to my revisions for Velvet. I just finished the first round last night. I'm going to let it sit a couple days and then read through like a reader. In the meantime, I have two other books to work through. I'm hoping to pitch Velvet at the conference. We'll see!!
That's a great contrast, Katie! I was just reading Bell's pet-the-dog analogy, which I think is a very similar idea. The point is that we're trying to develop richer, deeper characters by giving them contrasting emotions.
Sounds like you're learning so much and making great use of your time this summer! Have you been able to start going back through any of your MS's and apply this wealth of info? Will you have one of your MS's ready by ACFW?