Skip to main content

NaNoWriMo - Characters: Part Two – Beliefs

The thing which brings characters to life is often not any physical appearance at all. You can imagine your hero or heroine as looking like yourself, or like someone you really admire. But what readers best connect with is a character’s behaviour, their deeds and thoughts, and what inspires these said deeds and thoughts.

Deity, Society, Family

These are the character’s beliefs. They tend to fit into three categories:
  1.       Belief about or in a deity
  2.       Belief about or in society
  3.       Belief about or in family and friends

Each one of these will make a profound difference to their thoughts and their actions. So, if you have a character who is a follower of a military deity like Mars, they are likely to couple this with an attitude that human life can be readily given for a cause [belief one affecting belief two]. But if your character is a devout pacifist during a time of war, this will certainly put a strain on their relationships and beliefs about their family and friends [belief two affecting belief three].

I grew up playing Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay, and the hardest part was always remembering to pay homage to whichever deity your character happened to be loyal to. These little aspects didn’t just add to the character, they also gave back to the character.

Here are a few things to think about with characters and their beliefs:
  1.  Everyone believes in something – each of your characters, like everyone on this planet, will believe something about deities, society, and personal relationships. It’s what makes us humans. Your character's beliefs may be that there is no deity, or that society should be Thatcheristic and about one man and his family, but they still believe it. These things will ultimately determine how they live their lives.
  2. Beliefs are subjective – no two people, even those who believe in the same thing, believe the same things about that thing. For example, two of your characters might believe they have a duty to their friend to save them from a danger. One might belief that duty means they have to do something about their friend, but the other believes they should do something about the danger.
  3. Beliefs don’t exist in facts but in truths – Oh boy! This is becoming one of those philosophy modules that frazzled my brain at university. If something is fact you can’t believe in it, so neither can your character. They either know it or they don’t. BUT as soon as someone believes something (like, properly believe it) it becomes truth, although perhaps only for that individual. 

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

GUEST POST - "Hallo teachers! Would you like to write a book?" by Jessica Norrie

  The Magic Carpet  is available at  http://getbook.at/TheMagicCarpet I'm absolutely thrilled to share this gem of a blog by Jessica Norrie on the Crowvus Book Blog. It's personally relatable for me, too, as I'm teacher who also writes children's fiction. I just love all the comments made in this blog - they are so true! It's a delight to meet another author/teacher/soprano! Check out the links to Jessica Norrie's books at the end of the blog too! Hallo teachers! Would you like to write a book? Primary and English teachers spend their days with books. It’s not surprising many dream of writing their own. Some make the big time - think Philip Pullman, Eoin Colfer, Michael Morpurgo. Teachers start with several professional advantages: 1) All child and adult human life enters the classroom. Teachers overhear conversations, respond to different personalities, encounter heartrending or enviable household  circumstances. They see family and cultural likenesses and cont
Post a Comment
Read more

#IndieApril Craggy Blog: On the Hoof!

When people say they’re doing something “on the hoof”, it generally implies they’re making it up as they go along. When it came to writing my first book, I did so on the hoof in more ways than one. The photos that feature in Craggy the Coo Wants a Place to Call Home  were snapped all over Scotland, from the top of mountains to the surface of Loch Ness. But the words that accompany the pictures were largely concocted near my hometown of Langholm in Dumfries and Galloway. I’m relatively notorious in these parts for embarking on epic walks of 20-30 miles around the surrounding hills. And while most people would carry their phone to chart their route or maybe listen to music, I used mine to put words to my pictures. Having all the photos of Craggy’s travels on my iPhone meant I could weave a clear narrative together based on where he happened to be, and what could be seen in each image. So I would set off on a long walk armed with all I needed to create the verses and his direction of trav
Post a Comment
Read more

#IndieApril Craggy Blog: My Inspiration

When I’m asked who my favourite author is, I also tend to consider who my favourite writers have been at various stages of my life. When I was very young, Roald Dahl could not be beaten. Like many children, I found his sense of mischief combined with superlative storytelling and Quentin Blake’s glorious illustrations irresistible. In my angsty teenage years, I must have re-read JD Salinger’s Catcher in the Rye  about 20 times, dreaming of leaving boarding school and running off to the States with just a rucksack on my back (which I actually did for a year when I was 17. I wasn’t quite as rebellious as Holden Caulfield though. It was all above board.) But the writer who has stood the test of time with me most, and was taken from us far too soon, is Iain Banks. I love the twisty intrigue of Complicity , in which my hometown of Langholm has an early cameo. I adore the assault on the hypocrisies of organised religion that lie at the heart of Whit . In my teens, I was traumatised in a can’t
Post a Comment
Read more