Notes from Draft 2: Going Deeper to Find My Character

Why I Don’t Finish Character Profiles Before I Draft

Photo by Anna Kharkivska on Unsplash

Hello friend, 👋🏾

In my writing news, I’m working on draft two of my Black witches manuscript and have been on the same scene/chapter for the past few days with no end in sight, which is not the norm for me.

One reason for the minimal progress is that I’m visualizing the scene for the first time. Which sounds odd since I wrote draft one as a screenplay; however, for this scene I’m starting in a different place than I did in the script.

In a film, you can just cut or fade from one scene to another and use establishing shots to give you a sense of place. But now that it’s prose, the transitions from scene to scene or chapter to chapter need more consideration as I think about pacing and setting and character development. In a script, it’s the director’s job to figure all of that out. And so now that I have to write it all, I’m realizing I don’t know as much about my characters as I need to.

A question that I get a lot as a plotter and worldbuilder is: “When are you ready to start writing?” My answer is that I try to get to drafting as quickly as possible because I learn about the characters as I write. I don’t want to fill out a character profile that is all just made-up information, that’s based on nothing but my whims. I would rather write a few chapters and then look at what I’ve written, look at who this character is, and figure out where I get stuck, and then stop and do some more character work—which is what’s happening right now.

So I’ve been looking at my “pre-production” worksheets and notes—all the work I did before the first draft—and I didn’t have detailed character profiles, which is my norm. I have lots of notes; I have Enneagrams for the main characters and notes on their backstories. I also have their Wounds, their Lies, their Fears, and their Secrets. These are the basics of character and what I need in order to start writing. But it’s not enough for draft two.

When it’s time to go deeper, that’s often when I head over to OneStopForWriters.com and work on full profiles of my characters. That’s also a great place to figure out Wounds, Lies, Fears, etc. through their various thesauruses, but the Character Profile tool is epic.

I also use that site to figure out character change arcs and dive more into their positive and negative traits. Then I can have a better idea of how the change is going to occur and what in the plot is making that happen. (I’m not an affiliate for them; I just really love their tools.)

Another technique I really like is the Sacred Flaw as defined by Will Storr’s The Science of Storytelling. A character’s flaw can also be their superpower... or at least they believe it is. It’s often a belief they created in response to some trauma or catalyzing incident where, in order to survive, they pushed through in an ultimately unhelpful way. Right now, my main character’s Sacred Flaw can be summed up with, “The best advice anyone ever gave me was that no one loves a loser.” Teasing out how that belief can go wrong is going to lead to a really nice character arc.

So right now, I’ve got the very basics of this character. And I have to go deeper and figure out what her experiences have been before the book starts. I know basically where she’s come from and her history. She’s a transracial adoptee. And so she’s grown up with white parents in a mostly white environment, and now she’s going to this HBCU. But what is “mostly white”? Because there’s a version of “mostly white” where your school is 70-80% white, and there’s a version where your school is 100% white except for you. And those differences affect people differently.

Her Wound is growing up as an outsider in her life. She was very loved and cared for, and she loves her parents and has a great relationship with them. But does she have siblings? I didn’t mention any in draft one, and now I think maybe she should have one or two.

Often people who are willing to adopt, if they can’t have children biologically, will adopt more than one. And if Ashe does have a sibling who is the biological child of her parents, that would affect her as well. Are they older, or was there a miracle baby that changed the vibe of her family? Any of these options could work, but what is the right choice?

Figuring that out requires more thought, brainstorming and noodling, but I find this easier if I can go through my first draft and look at how she acts, how she relates to the other characters, and then work backwards, figuring out how her family of origin molded her.

The video below shows me working through learning more about my main character in real time using the One Stop for Writers character builder.

If you’re not an Imaginary Best Friend and would like to see the magic happen*, be sure to upgrade!

*and by magic, I mean the incredibly messy process of creation.