114: What to Do When Your Characters Feel Flat

 

Strong characters are essential no matter what genre you're writing in. And in order to create strong characters, you need to make sure your characters aren't flat. Learn how to spot flat characters in your novel and what you can do to fix them. 

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what to do when your characters feel flat

Hello, welcome back to your big creative life podcast. I'm Katie Wolf, and I'm recording this video, the audio of the podcast episode and the video in the video, you can see my cat behind me looking out the window, her favorite thing to do. I'm excited that you're here. Thanks for listening. I appreciate all the support with the new kind of rebranded updated podcast. It's been really fun to go through this process and create a slightly different version of the podcast, one that I think is going to be more helpful across all of your, you know, your writing, your creative practice your life, hopefully, that's the goal anyway. So yeah, if you have feedback about the podcast, don't hesitate to reach out. And of course, if you are finding the content valuable if you're enjoying the episodes, it always helps me immensely when you either leave a review, or you take a screenshot of the episode and then share it on Instagram and tag me that's an awesome way to show your support as well. So thank you.

 

It's like mid January as I'm recording this. And I was reflecting back. For some reason, I was just like really thinking a lot about my first book and the process of writing it, I was feeling a little bit like weirdly nostalgic for it when I was living in DC, in this tiny one bedroom apartment where I wrote most of the book sitting on my couch in the living room before work. And I don't know something about it. Like just when I was discovering all of these new things about writing like it. Yeah, it just like made me weirdly nostalgic. I don't really know why.

 

But it did get me thinking about my main character in that book. So for those of you who might be new and aren't familiar with my story, my first book was women's fiction. And it I got an agent off that book, but it went on submission right before COVID. And ultimately just didn't sell. So that book is currently sitting on my computer, I might rework it someday and come back to it. But it I would probably tweak it a lot to be like a psychological thriller, as opposed to women's fiction. Because that's really what I've discovered that I'm passionate about writing, at least at this point in my life. My writing journey is is psychological thrillers. So yeah, who knows, I may come back to the book at some point. But I just also reflecting on my main character and how my my own journey of writing her was, there were a lot of bumps in the road, because at various points through writing the book, I just felt like she was flat.

 

And that was feedback that I actually got from an editor that I hired when I was done with the manuscript before I started the process of querying that she was just kind of passive. And I needed to do a little bit more work to make her stand out on the page. So that's why I thought this would be a good topic for an episode because I know that this is something that that happens. Before we get into the nitty gritty of this, I do want to say, if you are just starting your manuscript, like you're just starting to write your your novel, and you really haven't gotten very far into it, don't stress if your character does feel kind of flat.

 

A lot of these things that I'm going to talk about in this episode are things that happened later down the road, like in the revision process, because for me, the way that I think about reading, the way that I teach reading, the way that I coach clients through writing, the way I write, is that the first draft is just getting a foundation down, it's you discovering the story, it's getting used to things, it's figuring out the characters, right, because even if you do a lot of work to figure out the characters before you start writing, they're going to change and evolve, and maybe go in a slightly different direction once you actually get into the story.

 

So it's the rough draft is you just getting the foundation down. And then when you're in the revision process, and you're kind of working on things, that's really the time to strengthen your characters. So I just want to say don't stress too much, if you're just getting started, and you're like, oh, shit, I've got to do all these things and make sure my characters are perfect. Don't worry about that, again, focused on just like getting the draft out, getting a feel for your characters as you're writing and then you can check a lot of these things in subsequent subsequent drafts as you're revising

 

And so feeling like your character is flat is this vague sort of worrisome feeling, right? It's like, oh, something's not working, but I can't really, I can't really figure out what they just feel off, they just feel passive, they just feel flat. And that's great that you have that instinct, if you have that suspicion that one of your characters, or maybe your main character, all of your characters might be flat.

 

But what I want you to do is to gather specific evidence in the manuscript that you can point to that shows that your character is a little bit passive or a little bit flat. That way, you can take it from something vague and kind of intangible to Okay, now here are passages and scenes, and conversations and specific points in the book where this character falls flat, that's going to be so much easier for you to solve that for you to do something about it, if you can gather that evidence and look at specific instances where your character feels flat. I had that sense with my main character in my first book, Leah. But it was nothing I could really articulate to myself, it was nothing that I could really pinpoint. Because I hadn't done this, I didn't go through and look at passages where she was falling flat. And I'll talk about specific, you know, things to look at in a second in step two. But I just, again, I just felt like this vague feeling. And I didn't know how to solve it.

 

Because even though something felt like it was off, I couldn't diagnose it effectively. So that is what you're doing, you're going on a fact finding mission, you're going hunting in your main script to pull out those passages. Now I'm going to give you a specific list of things that I want you to look for. If you are suspecting your character is flat, or maybe you feel like your character is in a solid place, you don't think that they're flat, but you just want to still go through this process. And this exercise to make sure that's a great idea. It's always good to, you know, to do some editing around your main character or character specifically, specifically to make sure that they're really appearing as you want them to on the page. So looking at my notes, here, I listed out some things for you. So you're gonna go down kind of a checklist of things for you to look at in your manuscript dialogue, their body language, their behavior, their inner dialogue, choices that they're making, their relationships, their goals, personality, and their strengths slash weaknesses.

 

Okay, dialogue, body language, inner dialogue, behavior, choices, relationships, goals, personality and strengths and weaknesses. There's some overlap. And some of those like, obviously, your personality can also be your strengths and weaknesses. But having this checklist and going through these things, gives you a really good fighting chance that you're going to be able to make sure that your character is strong and isn't flat. And I guess I should back up a step and kind of talk about what I what I mean by that. And maybe, actually, maybe it'll be helpful for me to give you a specific example of what I mean by this. So flat can mean just passive, not really doing much. They're sort of bland, they're sort of blah, they're kind of dull, they don't have much of a personality, that kind of thing. So I'm gonna give you a specific example of this from Hidden Lake from my first book, because I remember this so well. It was kind of an eye opener for me about something that I was doing a lot in the manuscript.

 

So my character lived alone in an apartment and she was struggling with alcoholism, she was drinking a lot. She was about to get fired from her job, she was just like, kind of on this path of self destruction, things were falling apart around her. And she was also kind of depressed and she would do this thing a lot where I would, I would write that she was about to do something, but then she decided not to do it because she didn't have the energy or she just like it was it was too much and so she just didn't do it.

 

And I remember the specific instance of this where she had made oatmeal for breakfast. And you know, when you make oatmeal and you put it in the microwave, sometimes it bubbles over and then it spills out onto the little plate that rotates in the microwave. And then if you don't wash it right away it kind of like crusts on it or any food, I guess, a sort of crusts and gets all gross on the in the microwave. So she made oatmeal and she noticed that that had happened, but she was just like, I don't, I don't feel like wiping it up. And so she just left it and she shut the door and she ate her oatmeal and ignored it. And my editor that I was working with made a comment about this and was like instead of having her think about doing something but then not doing it, have her actively do something.

 

So instead have Lia looking at this mess pulling out her bowl of oatmeal. I mean, like, I thought about wiping up the microwave, but then decided not to and went back to the couch instead. So instead of having that I would have something I don't I don't remember exactly what I changed it to. But it was something like, you know, I looked at the oatmeal crested on the microwave, and made the decision that I would worry about it tomorrow, I wasn't going to worry about it today, something like that, can you see the difference in those two things. In one, she's thinking about doing something and not doing it. And in one, she's making an active decision, she's actively like, I see it, I'm not going to do anything like, see, this is hard to talk about, because I'm already saying I'm not doing it.

 

But maybe a better example would be like, you know, I looked at the oatmeal crusted in the microwave, and slammed the door shut, before I went back to the couch, I could deal with it tomorrow, then she's taking an action. And she's not just like, uh, I'm not going to do that thing. And this came up frequently throughout the manuscript, where I would have her think about doing something and then not do it. And that's why my editor flagged it, she's like, she does this a lot, it makes her feel kind of passive, because she's just thinking about taking action all the time, but she doesn't actually take much action. So that was something I had to really just start paying attention to, in both the editing process, and then also in my own writing going forward. So that could be something that you look at in terms of, you know, if you think about the checklist I gave you like the behavior or the choices that your character is making.

 

So again, I think it's all about just gathering data and gathering specific examples of where it feels like something isn't working, because then you can create some way to solve it. Like for me, all I had to do was tweak that sentence or two, and it made her a little bit more active in that scene, so that she made a choice, she did a behavior, she did an action instead of thinking about it, but then just not doing it. And obviously, that's a tiny example, it doesn't change the story that much to alter that sentence or two. But over time, those things start to add up. And those are the kinds of things that can make a character feel flat. So what I was noticing in that scene, well, my editor noticed as well as just that, combined with all these other things contributed to this character feeling flat. So those were some of the things I looked at when I was revising my manuscript before I sent it out and queried because I wanted to.

 

I wanted to make sure that she was still a strong character, even though she was dealing with some depression and was feeling kind of like directionless in her life, she still, you know, was making some decisions. And she still was working towards something in the book, which all again just contributes to her feeling like more of a strong character. And that's more enjoyable to read. It's better to read about strong characters versus passive characters who are just kind of sitting around and not really doing much. So. Alright, go through this checklist, gather your data, gather evidence. And if you are still in the first draft, and you're just getting started, it's a good idea to go through that checklist and just kind of make sure that you're paying attention to those things. But just don't worry about it on the first draft, you know, get your story out, and then you can you can see how the character is on the page. Like if your characters portrayal on the page matches what you want or matches what you have in your head. Alright, thank you for listening. Good luck with your characters, no flat characters. That should be a hashtag or something. Hashtag no flat characters. We don't want them. Okay, see you next week. Thank you so much for listening.

Katie Wolf