{"id":396,"date":"2014-07-17T17:45:35","date_gmt":"2014-07-17T22:45:35","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.jamieaswenson.com\/studious-cat\/?p=396"},"modified":"2014-07-17T17:45:35","modified_gmt":"2014-07-17T22:45:35","slug":"character-driven-stories","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.jamieaswenson.com\/studious-cat\/2014\/07\/character-driven-stories\/","title":{"rendered":"Character Driven Stories"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"image<\/a>If you’re a writer – you know the drill. Write a character-driven book.<\/p>\n

I’ve been writing for some time now. I’ve been around. I went to Hamline University and completed my M.F.A. in Writing for Children and Young Adults. I contemplated character, wrote essays on character, read a zillion and one character-driven books and asked myself endlessly\u00a0– what makes a good character? Is it all in the name? The voice? In some dark secret that he\/she is carrying\u00a0from page one to the bitter end? Is the extreme characteristic – the BEST, the WORST, the MOST POWERFUL, the WEAKEST… Maybe it’s a talent that only he\/she possesses. Maybe he\/she is an outsider – thinks differently\u00a0than everyone else in the book. Is he\/she the hero? The only hope? The last of a line? The first?<\/p>\n

Characters are important. No doubt about that. Especially if you want to sell a book.<\/p>\n

Believe me – I write a ton of books that do not have character driven plots (much to my agent’s chagrin – Sorry, Sean) — BUT I have been thinking about writing a book with a real, honest-to-goodness character-driven plot. The NAME of said character will be prominently displayed in the TITLE. It will happen.<\/p>\n

So, with character in mind – it’s not surprising that when I heard Jill Davis of HarperCollins speak at a recent event – and she said that a strong character will be able to be printed on pajamas – or bed sheets – I took note. That makes sense – right?<\/p>\n

When I think about my books to date – I would say Frankie \"2468the truck from my book\u00a0BIG RIG could be awesome pajamas. Also, I would vote for Fred (the bear from my book BOOM! BOOM! BOOM!) as a charming sheet set.<\/p>\n

So if I have done<\/strong> <\/em>this – why is it so hard to do<\/strong> <\/em>this when I sit down to write? The main thing I am going to focus on is giving a character in the book an actual NAME. You roll the eyes (I see you)\u00a0– but seriously – I write a lot of sense of place poetry. There might be dogs, cats, fish, children – but they do not always have NAMES. Plus, when I read to the young folks, I tend to pick books that give kids an overall feeling – such as I LOVE SPIDERS by John Parker or ALL THE WORLD by Liz Garton. These are fantastic, poetic, lovely books for twos and threes — and they do not have named CHARACTERS. Still, they would make nice pajamas – or maybe wallpaper.<\/p>\n

What have we learned here? That editors would very much like a character to sell, and we, the authors would also like a character to sell. We also know that kids like characters (because they like pajamas with Curious George or Spiderman on them). So, with you as my witness – I am going to TRY to write some seriously character driven books – but I will very likely keep writing those other<\/strong> <\/em>books too. Because they are important and all fun to read too. Even if they don’t translate EXACTLY to a twin comforter set. hee hee hee …<\/p>\n

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If you’re a writer – you know the drill. Write a character-driven book. I’ve been writing for some time now. I’ve been around. I went to Hamline University and completed my M.F.A. in Writing for Children and Young Adults. I contemplated character, wrote essays on character, read a zillion and one character-driven books and asked … Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[168],"tags":[194,184,228,229,202,197],"class_list":["post-396","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-revision","tag-big-rig","tag-boom-boom-boom","tag-character-driven","tag-jill-davis","tag-picture-books","tag-writing-for-kids"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p3h4TT-6o","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jamieaswenson.com\/studious-cat\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/396","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jamieaswenson.com\/studious-cat\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jamieaswenson.com\/studious-cat\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jamieaswenson.com\/studious-cat\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jamieaswenson.com\/studious-cat\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=396"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.jamieaswenson.com\/studious-cat\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/396\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jamieaswenson.com\/studious-cat\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=396"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jamieaswenson.com\/studious-cat\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=396"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jamieaswenson.com\/studious-cat\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=396"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}