Sarah Sundin, @sarahsundin
One of the benefits of driving the carpool was eavesdropping on my kids. Here is a conversation I overheard between my daughter and her best friend when they were in ninth grade.
BFF: “My mom is the WORST! She talks to our RABBITS! I am SO emBARrassed!” (Hear the angst?)
Daughter: “You think THAT’s bad? MY mom talks to her CHARacters! And they aren’t even REAL!”
Pause.
BFF: “You win.”
From the Greek . . .
While preparing to teach my women’s Bible study on Hebrews 1, I delved into the Greek meanings of the words in the text. I pulled up the phrase “exact imprint” and found the Greek word charakter (yes, autocorrect—with a K!).
My writerly brain perked up. Charakter! I know something about characters!
In The New Strong’s Expanded Exhaustive Concordance (Nashville: Thomas Nelson Publishers, 2001), charakter is defined as “‘a tool for engraving’ (from charasso, ‘to cut into’) . . . then ‘a stamp’ or ‘impress,’ as on a coin or a seal, in which case the seal or die which makes an impression bears the ‘image’ produced by it, and, vice versa, all the features of the ‘image’ correspond respectively with those of the instrument producing it.”
An Impression of an Impression
Isn’t this what we do when we write our fictional characters? We scratch them out with our pens, with the engraving tool of our computer keys. When we do it well, the image on the paper is the exact representation of the image in our minds. We have described the fullness of this person—body, mind, spirit, and soul.
But that mental character—unless we’re working with real-life characters—is also an impression. We construct the character’s die or stamp in our minds, taking bits and pieces from people we know in real life, stories we’ve heard, and our what-if imaginings. If this sort of person with this sort of personality and this sort of background were placed in this sort of situation, what would happen?
Making an Impression
How can we use this to craft even better characters?
Build your stamp well
Get to know your character well in your mind. Explore her personality, her upbringing, her family, and her stories. Listen to people’s stories—the events that shaped them, terrified them, uplifted them, or changed them. How can you use similar events to shape your character? How can you make it worse? What sort of memories can you plant in your poor character’s head to plague them at a crucial moment in your story?
Give your character strengths and weaknesses, quirks and flaws, hurts and secrets, fears and dreams. Then build a story that will challenge each of these at a deep level. Craft this stamp both lovingly and brutally.
Engrave well
In your mind, your character may be as real as your best friend, but how does she come across on paper?
Plant yourself thoroughly in your character’s head when writing each scene. Imagine every sensation—what she sees, hears, smells, and touches. How she feels inside, her thoughts, and her emotions. Imagine how SHE would react in this situation, given her personality and background—not how YOU would react.
Then show who she is through her words, actions, thoughts, and reactions. If stumped, study how your favorite authors do this, not to imitate their words, but their techniques.
Impressive!
With time and care, you can engrave characters who seem realistic to your readers. You will receive emails from readers who found themselves praying for your characters, looking for them on the streets, and bugging you to tell them what happened to that character after your story ended.
Now, go out and make an impression!
Numbed by grief and harboring shameful secrets, Lt. Adler Paxton ships to England with the US 357th Fighter Group in late 1943. Determined to become an ace pilot, Adler battles the German Luftwaffe in treacherous dogfights over France as the Allies struggle for control of the air before the D-day invasion.
Violet Lindstrom wants to be a missionary, but for now she serves in the American Red Cross, where she arranges entertainment and refreshments for the men of the 357th in the base Aeroclub and sets up programs for local children. Drawn to the mysterious Adler, she enlists his help with her work and urges him to reconnect with his family after a long estrangement.
Despite himself, Adler finds his defenses crumbling when it comes to Violet. But D-day draws near. And secrets can’t stay buried forever.
Sarah Sundin is a bestselling author of historical novels, including The Sea Before Us and The Sky Above Us. Her novels When Tides Turn and Through Waters Deep were named to Booklist’s “101 Best Romance Novels of the Last 10 Years,” and Through Waters Deep was a finalist for the 2016 Carol Award and won the INSPY Award. A mother of three, Sarah lives in California and teaches Sunday school. She also enjoys speaking for church, community, and writers’ groups. Please visit her at http://www.sarahsundin.com.