The Fiction Writing Maps: A Step-By-Step Guide To Characters

By Jackie St. James

Most people sit down to draft their first fiction novel without ever having done it before. That sounds crazy, but it's true. The truth is that mastery of the English language doesn’t guarantee mastery of the novel writing process.

Great writers do one thing differently than everyone else: they study novel writing. They learn how to translate ideas into words. They discover how to craft expertly designed characters.

Now you can, too.

The Fiction Writing Maps explains the process by peeling apart the layers of novel design to expose the nuts and bolts of writing. Then we show you step-by-step how to plug your own ideas into that framework. The Fiction Writing Maps do what no other writing resource does...

We show you how to write

If there was a roadmap for writing, what would it look like?
•It would guide the writer through character creation.
•It would be easy to use on a work in progress or from page one of a new novel.
•It would train your writer's eye to create perfectly designed characters from the beginning with less frustration and uncertainty.
•It would transform how you think about writing.

Welcome to the breakthrough resource for fiction writers
We've studied hundreds of novels, read thousands of character openings and distilled character creation to a straightforward process--complete with examples, tips and techniques in A Step-By-Step Guide to Characters. And we've gone one step further...by showing you exactly how to plug your ideas into the framework to write powerful prose.
No more wandering in the fiction writing wilderness.

Creating Fictional Characters
Create perfectly designed characters from the beginning by following the template for drafting fictional characters. Though every character is different, they all require the same fundamental framework in order to function in the novel. You’ll find the basics of that process inside The Fiction Writing Maps with examples and techniques in A Step-By-Step Guide to Characters.

Get The Scrivener Template For The Fiction Writing Maps
If you’ve ever tried to write a novel, you know how easy it is to end up with multiple drafts, documents all over your desktop and a muddled mess of a manuscript.
There’s an easy fix for that problem. It’s called Scrivener.

Organization From The Beginning
Remember the feeling of opening a huge box of crayons for the first time and seeing the perfectly pointed array of magnificent colors? That’s what Scrivener feels like when paired with The Fiction Writing Maps Template. This is where organization intersects with ingenuity to create inspiration. Everything is ready to go in a scene-by-scene setup inside of Scrivener’s fantastic software just in time for NaNoWrimo.

Write Fictional Characters
You’ll find the Basic Character Introduction outlined from The Fiction Writing Maps as well as templates from the book. Look at deeper characterization, parsing backstory and creating vignettes for the resources that will actually help you write.

Get The Fiction Writing Maps & Get Writing.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Jackie St. James
• Release date: Oct 24, 2018
• ISBN: 9780996415361

Jackie St. James

Jackie St. James is the author of The Fiction Writing Maps series. She holds undergraduate and master's degrees in English Literature & Writing Pedagogy. She lives in Texas with five chickens, three dogs, a teacup polar bear and a real life hero.

Book preview

Fiction Writing Maps

A Step-By-Step Guide To Characters

Jackie St. James

Copyright © 2018 by Jackie St. James

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other noncommercial uses permitted by copyright law. For permission requests, write to the publisher, addressed Attention: Permissions Coordinator, at the address below.

Jackie St. James/STC Heritage Press

2433 S. University Dr.

Fort Worth, Texas 76109

www.fictionwritingmaps.com

Publisher’s Note: Names, characters, places, and incidents are a product of the author’s imagination. Locales and public names are sometimes used for atmospheric purposes. Any resemblance to actual people, living or dead, or to businesses, companies, events, institutions, or locales is completely coincidental.

Book Layout ©2018 Jackie St. James

Ordering Information:

Quantity sales. Special discounts are available on quantity purchases by corporations, associations, and others. For details, contact the Special Sales Department at the address above.

Fiction Writing Maps: A Step-By-Step Guide To Characters/ Jackie St. James. -- 1st ed.

ISBN 978-0-9964153-5-4 (eBook)

ISBN 978-0-9964153-6-1

For Clint, who has more brilliant ideas in one afternoon than there are grains of sand on a beach.

"Everyone has one good story in them.

Getting it out of them is the hard part."

Jackie St. James

TABLE OF CONTENTS

INTRODUCTION

About The Maps

Defining The Problem

Parts Unknown

How This Book Works

What The Maps Are Not

Why The Work Is Worth It

A Word On Mentor Texts

Get In Touch @ Keep In Touch

CHAPTER ONE

THE FIRST DRAFT

Data

CHAPTER TWO

THE CHARACTER INTRODUCTION

The Short List

Character Sketch

Character Body Type

Gender & Age Range

Hair & Facial Features

Emotional State & Temperament

CHAPTER THREE

CONVEYING CHARACTER

Getting To Know Your Character

Quick Write First

Character Corroboration

Describing Emotion

Scaffolding Off Physical Traits

CHAPTER FOUR

MOTIVATING & ACTIVATING THE CHARACTER

Activating Character

Maslow’s Hierarchy

The Greatest Is Love

Fear Works, Too

CHAPTER FIVE

A NEW SPIN ON ARCHETYPES

Spinning Your Archetype

Mix It Up

Stretch The Boundaries

Hero or Villain?

CHAPTER SIX

CREATING HISTORY & PARSING BACKSTORY

Building Backstory

One Piece At A Time

Anecdotes

Time Travel

Classic Anecdote

Musings of Characters

Quick Transitions

CHAPTER SEVEN

MASTERING THE VIGNETTE

Searching For A Solution

Thinking Inside The Box

How Authors Use The Vignette

Building A Vignette

Bits & Pieces

Planning The Vignette

Mastering The Vignette

CHAPTER EIGHT

SYMBOLISM & CHARACTERIZATION

Symbols In Literature

Finding A Character’s Symbol

Historical References

Symbolism In Literature

What Does My Character Resemble?

Callie’s Outward Characteristics

Quick Write

Examples In Fiction

Final Thoughts On Symbols

CHAPTER NINE

HEROIC TRAITS

The Five Key Traits of Heroes

The Ordinary Extraordinary

Command Respect From Peers

Convert Difficult To Simple

Frail Human Nature

Willpower

Finding The Perfect Flaw

CHAPTER TEN

THE WRITING COMPASS

Crafting The Mini Scene

The Basic Scene Template

Character Template Example I

Decoding The Mentor Text

Applying The Template

Discussion

Character Template Example II

Exploring An Opening Template

Opening Template

Template For Two Characters

Discussion

Conclusion

FILMOGRAPHY

RESOURCES

Character Archetypes

Writer’s Resources

Suggested Reading

INTRODUCTION

Most people sit down to write a novel without ever having done it before.

Is it any wonder that so few people actually finish a novel?

Fiction writing boils down to understanding how to plug your unique ideas into the framework of a novel. Like any other major endeavor, a novel has a unique design and an explicit process for using that design. Though the design is simple, understanding the process is more challenging. The process requires a writer to take the story playing in their head, translate it into plot, characters, scenes and setting, and transfer all that information into the novel framework.

The ideas are always the easiest part. It’s the words and novel framework that create a huge stumbling block for most writers. Good writers understand this. The writers who go on to publish well-received novels do one thing differently than everyone else—they study how to write a novel—and master it.

The good news is that you can, too.

Up until now, there was no ‘how to’ for novel writing that outlines a clear path. Fortunately, the new era in publishing has given rise to information, tools and resources that have made writing a novel more accessible. My hope is that The Fiction Writing Maps will clarify and simplify writing a novel so that all writers have a greater chance of success.

About The Maps

In 2013, I restructured my professional life to take advantage of my graduate degree in English. I designed an online platform to assist graduate students who needed research and organization for dissertations and other scholarly papers. From there, I branched out to add Google AdWords campaigns, website content, blogs and book reviews.

We had weekly, often daily, requests for editing and proofreading of half-finished manuscripts. Many of these stories were brilliant ideas with well-developed plot lines, but they were all incomplete. The writers had begun their novel, but stalled out when they came to places in their writing where they couldn’t transfer their vision into the novel design. Unwilling to admit defeat, these brave souls looked for help.

Over time, we found that the issues our clients struggled with were almost universal. In fact, we were answering so many of the same questions that we began compiling a list of writing FAQs to address these issues. One chilly afternoon in 2015, I sat down to finalize answers to those questions.

Hot chocolate at hand, I read through some manuscript submissions and focused on the common stumbling blocks these writers encountered. Common themes began to emerge. With each manuscript I read and each question I answered, I became more determined to map a path through these areas of uncertainty for my clients. Finally, I distilled the problem down to three large pieces of the writing puzzle. Characters, Setting and Scene. These areas are broad, but I targeted the precise location where writers had gone off track and identified what had happened.

After weeks of combing Amazon, Barnes & Noble the library for resources, I realized there were no resources for immediate, helpful fixes to these common writing problems. I found books about how to hone your writing, find character motivation and build fictional worlds. But I found no resource that guided the writer through the nuts and bolts of writing a novel. There was a big, black hole in the literature that no one had even tried to fill.

I pinpointed the problem, but the solution looked dreadfully complicated - as in xinfinity kind of complicated. How do you explain the creative process of writing a novel? How do you show each writer how to plug their own ideas into that framework?

Defining The Problem

I thought that if I focused on the places where clients stumbled, I might be able to redirect those missteps and offer viable solutions for fixing them or even avoiding these problems. I began the project as a bolder and more comprehensive version that spanned character, scene and setting in one volume. I soon found that I needed to focus on character first, but I kept in mind that the overlapping threads of character, scene and setting would all come together by the end of the third book in the series.

Character came first because from a structural standpoint, the description of characters and explanations of their personalities, motives and connections usually occurs before anything else in the novel. It seemed sensible to start from there. After all, it is your characters who shoulder the burden of telling the story. They speak to one another, about one another and drive the narrative forward. Without a clear vision of who your players are, no story can truly begin.

Characters can be simple or elaborate, but they all demand the same complement, the same package of information. They’re fictional people plotted into a piece of writing in that follows a predictable design. When I had singled out characters as the launching pad for the first set of Maps, I began to tackle the most frequent questions:

How do I introduce a new Character?

How do I choose which character details are important?

How can I give information on characters without sounding like a boring info dump?

My main character just isn’t interesting…how do I fix that?

With each new answer, the threads of writing web began to emerge. Many months passed before I stumbled over the common thread that united them all. And it was relatively simple. With a design in mind, I set out to fill the black hole in writing resources with a set of maps that guided writers through character creation, setting design and writing solid, substantive scenes.

Parts Unknown

The goal was clear. Now I had to distill a lifetime of reading novels and writing pedagogy into a universal, easy-to-follow framework. I had to show fiction writers how to design great characters in a step-by-step process. Like a literary version of orienteering, I pored through novels to discover precisely what I needed to define. Then I began planning and laying out The Maps.

The more I pored over the writing of other authors, the clearer the design for The Maps became. It took countless hours, a plethora of legal pads, Scrivener editing and a good deal of Avoca Misty Valley coffee to draft The Fiction Writing Maps. I include in this work the links to the resources that supported my research. I’ve added that list in the Resources section so that writers who want to dig deeper can see the path I took to arrive at the final product for The Fiction Writing Maps.

How This Book Works

A Step-By-Step Guide To Characters is a process-driven approach to novel writing that will:

Help you understand how character functions in the novel—both in the ‘micro’ spaces of writing and the larger scope of the plot.

Show you how to describe characters in evocative language that translates to visual images.

Help you decide what to include when introducing each character.

Scaffold your writing to deepen character development quickly and easily.

Apply this mapping process to your novel in progress.

Dispel the misconception that only true authors can achieve industry results.

Each chapter of the book deals with one aspect of building a fictional character. I provide examples from classic fiction as well as examples created specifically for this book in order to illustrate how each writing technique works. At the end of the chapter, I break the technique down into steps to help you turn concept into writing. The Concept, Examples and Guide system creates a character-building design that ends with your own unique writing. The Maps takes writing a step further. You’ll flex your character writing skills and generate the muscle memory that allows you to dash off interesting characters quickly rather than agonizing over character development and getting uncertain outcomes.

What The Maps Are Not

Maps, by design, act as a chart to get travelers from starting point to final destination in their journey by the best