Writing Better Heroes, part one

One way to write better heroes is to be quiet and let them speak.

Dead characters don’t move and breathe and act heroic. I like to read novels that employ living, emotional characters who exhibit heroic qualities. But a hero doesn’t come to life unless the novelist listens to him.

In her popular non-fiction book, Getting Into Character: Seven Secrets a Novelist Can Learn from Actors, Brandilyn Collins teaches novelists to listen to their characters. I’ve read and studied this book a couple of times and plan to refer back to it as needed.

The title of her introduction is “Why Should a Novelist Care about Method Acting?” She builds a sturdy bridge over the gap between novelists and actors. We can learn from each other how to tell a memorable story. The seven secrets are ways to let the reader imagine they are watching the characters’ actions like they were watching a breath-taking scene in a movie.

The chapter on Inner Rhythm is one of my favorites. An actor can say the lines and do the movements, but still be so stiff in his role that nobody cares to watch. To be successful, a novelist must write a character’s words and actions according to the specific rhythms of that character as he encounters the scene. Actors and novelists must have insight into that character to breathe life into him. Inner rhythm is what makes the difference. There is a difference between the slow, hypnotic rhythm of a sleeping child as compared to the fast, tense breaths of a hero in trouble. The Inner Rhythms of the characters make their emotional words and actions believable. Hearing the emotion in the words is not the same as feeling it.

Also among the secrets is personalization, which is the way to uncover the facts about your characters and bring out their uniqueness.

This book is a gold mine of tips that bring life to the heroic qualities on the page. Every novelist should read this.