Tag: point of view

Creativity Sessions writing process. Evening Satellite Publishing.

Character Sheet Template: My POV Character’s Details

On By Steven D'AdamoIn Fantasy, On StorytellingLeave a comment

Earlier the month, I discussed my current task to create character sheets for the main characters in my duology of novellas, Uprooted and New Earth. My goal with these is to fill out the flourishes of detail that I skimmed over when first writing these stories, to ensure my characters feel distinct from each other and can each be described consistently.

In that previous post, I listed what I thought would be useful details for me to pin down for each of my main characters. Because these stories deal with family trauma for a clan of extended family, there are a lot of characters. Not all of them will be as fleshed out as others, because some are more side characters.

What I ended up doing was using a basic character template for each member of the clan, and then trimmed it down based on how frequent or significant that character’s appearances are throughout the stories.

For today, I wanted to share the full character template for my primary, point-of-view character: Mikaela.

Character Sheet: Mikaela

Logline: “After her village is attacked, a woman must do everything she can to protect her family.”

Age: 29

Occupation/role: Herbalist and healer; Married to the clan leader with two children; caretaker for her mother-in-law

Physical: I actually don’t have a great description of Mikaela’s physical appearance, because she’s the POV character – it would be odd for her to describe herself, but I should be able to work in a few details naturally, such as the texture/length of her hair.

Clothing: A dagger made from a particular type of stone she wears around her neck tied with a leather cord. This was given to her by her husband as a wedding gift. This type of stone is rare, so this is a precious gift both in its value and its utility for Mikaela as an herbalist.

  • I’d also like to add one or two small details about the clothes Mikaela wears, so I will need to include those in my stories.

How Mikaela…

Thinks/feels about her life in her village: Mikaela likes her village, loves her clan relatives, and especially her clan-sisters, and believes they have everything they need to raise their children. She wishes she had some connection to her mother other than the herbalism Mikaela learned from her. She has not seen her own parents since she was married off to her husband and left the village she grew up in.

Gestures: sighs of exasperation; bites her bottom lip when deep in thought or anxious

What she wants: to raise her son to be a kind man like his father; to raise her daughter to be resilient and to pass her knowledge of herbs and healing onto her

What motivates her: Providing for her children and the rest of their family

What she fears: losing her family – Her husband or son getting killed in the hunt or a raid, her daughter being married off to a different village, never to see her mother again

Filling in the Gaps

As you can see, I have a couple of gaps to fill in for Mikaela’s character sheet, particularly in her clothing and appearance. Because she’s my main character, I wanted her character sheet to be the most detailed, but most of this information came naturally as I was writing.

I will not be going into this level of detail for every character. Even the four or five primary characters around Mikaela will not have this much detail, and the secondary and tertiary characters even less.

In any case, I’m looking forward to completing these and filling in the gaps in my writing as part of my ongoing revision process.

Let me know what you think. Would you take a different approach to character sheets?

Steve D

Book Review: DAUGHTER OF BLACK LAKE brings family drama to the Iron Age

On By Steven D'AdamoIn ReviewsLeave a comment

I listened to Daughter of Black Lake by Cathy Marie Buchanan recently and quite enjoyed it.

I was drawn to this story mostly by the setting, the concept of a fiction set in Iron Age Britain. Daughter of Black Lake is not a military story of Romans and druids and seething tribesmen, although these devices make their appearances throughout the story. Instead, this is essentially a family drama that switches point of view between a daughter and her mother as a girl, whose lives and those of the people of their village are intertwined across generations.

This POV switching feels unexpected at first, but you quickly settle into the differing viewpoints between Hobble and her mother, Devout, even though Devout is narrating a decade or more in the past.

They each tell their versions of events impacting their family, with Hobble able to “see” more than most people know. She is gifted as a seer.

The story follows them both as Devout comes to find love and choose her mate, and as Hobble learns the dangers that outside influences can have on her quiet village of bog-dwellers. This back-and-forth narrative is a really interesting way to see characters interact across generations, first as children and adolescents interacting with each other or their elders, and then as adults, trying their best to help their families and their village survive.

The setting is vivid with pre-Roman and pre-Christian rites, prayers, social structures, and behaviors that guide each character’s decisions. These traditions are then thrown into conflict with the encroachment of Roman soldiers into the region, whose very presence, though distant, hangs over the bog-dwellers as an ominous threat to their way of life.

Although I typically don’t get into village drama-style narratives, I enjoyed the story for what it was. The characters were well written and distinguished, and the story was compelling. Mostly, I just wanted to spend time in the boggy village of Black Lake. Buchanan’s description give just enough detail to paint a clear picture, and her world felt entirely accurate, even as an astute reader questions how much we really know about the traditions and beliefs of pre-Roman Britons.

I would definitely pick up another book by Buchanan set in the same era, regardless of the plot, just to be able to step back into this world.

Steve D

Exercise 7, part 2 and 3: The Mountain Lion Killing

On By Marcy ErbIn Creativity Sessions, Writers - Marcy Erb1 Comment

Last week, I introduced Ursula Le Guin’s exercise for chapter 7, which is her chapter on point of view. This week, she has us using the same story from last week (if possible) to explore less common POVs. I found I was able to use my story from last week and keep it going – so we are back in the campground with a freshly dead Mountain Lion.

To review Le Guin’s exercise instructions:
“Exercise 7: Points of View

Think up a situation for a narrative sketch of 200-350 words. It can be anything you like but should involve several people doing something. (Several means more than two. More than three will be useful.) It doesn’t have to be a big, important event, though it can be; but something should happen, even if only a cart tangle at the supermarket…

Please use little or no dialogue in these POV exercises. While the characters talk, their voices cover the POV, and so you’re not exploring that voice, which is the point of the exercise.

Part 1: Two Voices
POV was Third Person Limited, two versions, two different characters. (If you’d like to see what that looked like for my teeny tiny story, go here.)

Part 2: Detached Narrator
Tell the same story using the detached author or “fly on the wall” POV.

Part 3: Observer-Narrator
If there wasn’t a character in the original version who was there but was not a participant, only an onlooker, add such a character now. Tell the same story in that character’s voice, in first or third person.”
Steering the Craft, Pages 71-73

Continue reading “Exercise 7, part 2 and 3: The Mountain Lion Killing” →

Exercise 7: POV – The Mountain Lion Killing

On By Marcy ErbIn Creativity Sessions, Writers - Marcy Erb2 Comments

Ursula Le Guin talks about how points of view in fiction come and go in popularity, with first person and limited third person all the rage for the last 100 years or so. I had never thought of point of view as a “fad” (even if a relatively long lived fad), but I guess that all depends on your point of view!

Her goal with chapter and exercise 7 is to define and get you to experiment with different kinds of point of view, especially ones you are not comfortable with. The exercise starts out with the one of the POVs currently in style, limited third person, and then expands to other less common POVs.

For this one, I’m telling a tale that was told to me at a work happy hour. It was related as a true story, but you know how happy hour stories go…

Continue reading “Exercise 7: POV – The Mountain Lion Killing” →

Exercise 6, Part 2: The Old Woman

On By Marcy ErbIn Creativity Sessions, Writers - Marcy ErbLeave a comment

This is the second part of Exercise 6 from Ursula Le Guin’s Steering the Craft book.  To recap: Chapter 6 was about verbs, specifically dealing with person and tense. This serves as a prelude to chapter 7, which is a long (and intimidating!) chapter on point of view.  My take on this exercise has an old woman wandering around the remains of her house after a fire and remembering a different disaster that struck when she was a child.

The prompt: “Exercise Six: The Old Woman

This should run to a page or so; keep it short and not too ambitious, because you are going to write the same story twice.

The subject is this: An old woman is busy doing something – washing the dishes, or gardening, or editing a PhD dissertation in mathematics, whatever you like – as she thinks about an event that happened in her youth.

You’re going to intercut between the two times. “Now ” is where she is and what’s she’s doing; “then” is her memory of something that happened when she was young. Your narration will move back and forth between “now” and “then.”

You will make at least two of these moves or time jumps.

Continue reading “Exercise 6, Part 2: The Old Woman” →

Exercise 6, Part 1: The Old Woman

On By Marcy ErbIn Creativity Sessions, Writers - Marcy Erb1 Comment

Back at it with Exercise 6 from Ursula Le Guin’s Steering the Craft book. Chapter 6 was about verbs, specifically dealing with person and tense. This serves as a prelude to chapter 7, which is a long chapter on point of view.  I have to admit I procrastinated on this exercise – and I did so for a reason that surprised me! First, though, the prompt:

“Exercise Six: The Old Woman

This should run to a page or so; keep it short and not too ambitious, because you are going to write the same story twice.

The subject is this: An old woman is busy doing something – washing the dishes, or gardening, or editing a PhD dissertation in mathematics, whatever you like – as she thinks about an event that happened in her youth.

You’re going to intercut between the two times. “Now ” is where she is and what’s she’s doing; “then” is her memory of something that happened when she was young. Your narration will move back and forth between “now” and “then.”

You will make at least two of these moves or time jumps.

Continue reading “Exercise 6, Part 1: The Old Woman” →

Following that Narrative Thought

On By Steven D'AdamoIn Creativity Sessions, Writers - Steve D'AdamoLeave a comment

My writing pace has slowed down a bit in recent days, and for once, I don’t mean in pure word count.

Maybe a week ago I completed a longer chapter centered on one’s character’s POV. I knew how I wanted the chapter to go, it just took a lot of writing time and words to get there.

I’ve since moved on to the next chapter with my favorite character–Arden–and I think my writing style has shifted a bit. Continue reading “Following that Narrative Thought” →

Using Side Characters to Provide Perspective

On By Steven D'AdamoIn Creativity Sessions, Writers - Steve D'Adamo1 Comment

Perspective can be one of the most important aspects of writing an in-depth, detailed narrative, especially when world building is a big part of your writing.

World building is the reason I started writing.

So, that means sometimes I want to write about the story underneath the plot–the cultural or historical context, even if it just pertains to one character’s arc. Continue reading “Using Side Characters to Provide Perspective” →

Friday Write-Day: The End is… Outlined

On By Steven D'AdamoIn The Warden of Everfeld, Writers - Steve D'AdamoLeave a comment

Welp, I’m dumb. I spent the time creating a photo for this post and didn’t bother to upload before publication time yyyeeeeeeeeaaaaah!

Anyway. I like my new update-every-two-weeks so far. It feels fresh now. Continue reading “Friday Write-Day: The End is… Outlined” →

NaNo Re-Hash: The Little People Still Matter!

On By Steven D'AdamoIn Creativity Sessions, The Warden of Everfeld, Writers - Steve D'AdamoLeave a comment

cs-thought-bubble

I published an earlier version of this article, “The Little People Matter Too!”, way back in 2014, but since it only has 15 total views, I’ve decided to revisit it and update it a bit. This was among my first “Creativity Sessions” pieces, and I think its themes still ring true as I begin exploring a new story this November. I wil post more of these re-hashes through NaNo 2016 (and likely beyond) with some new insights and thoughts to share.

As I discussed last Friday, I have entered NaNoWriMo 2016 with a much more solid foundation to begin a new novel. While WoE: Memento was largely experimental, with ideas and narrative points coming to me as I wrote, I have been much more structured in my approach to the follow-up novel, The Warden of Everfeld: Legacy. Continue reading “NaNo Re-Hash: The Little People Still Matter!” →