Author: Janet Gershen-Siegel

Exposition Should Be Your Superpower

This is because exposition works.

First of all, exposition basically means a literary device intended to describe a character’s background, or “our story so far”. It can be done elegantly, with flashbacks or dialogue or even a character finding something or other.

It can be clunky, like when characters say, “As you know, …” and then proceed to clue in the reader but then tell the other characters everything they should, logically, already know. For example, one doctor telling another one how chemotherapy works would denote really clunky exposition.

Clunkiness was rather memorably skewered by the Basil Exposition character in Austin Powers, International Man of Mystery. However, you and I don’t want that to happen with our works. So we’ve got to try to be a lot more eloquent. Hence we’ve got to figure out how to clue in our readers in a more natural fashion. So consider your setting.

Using Settings for Exposition

What do I mean by this? Your story’s circumstances and your characters’ specifics might be places to sneak in some background. Are they spies? Spies get briefings. Are they museum goers? Museums have docents (specialized guides) and tours, and they also have guidebooks and even identification for paintings or artifacts. Hikers use trails. Motorists use maps (or GPS, if the time period is right).

There is nothing wrong with a character reading a street sign, either out loud or to themselves.

Here Now the News

Love or hate it, but a character reading a newspaper or listening to radio news or watching it on television can provide a level of exposition to your story which can be seamless and even elegant.

Chapter Titles

When your chapter title is Sunday, August 6, 2017, 11 AM, San Francisco Chinatown, you get across a ton of information in a very short space. And you do so without interrupting the flow of the story unnecessarily.

Character Names and Occupations

These are more subtle, but if your characters have names like Maria, Vito, Anna, Guido, and Antonio, your reader will think Italy or at least an Italian family. If your characters have occupations such as blacksmith, miller, alchemist, and barber surgeon, your reader will think of medieval times.

The New Guy

There is a damned fine reason why a lot of television pilots involve someone coming to a new city or starting a new job. This is because explaining the story and the plot and characters to the new kid in town is perfectly natural.

“Excuse me, but where’s the spaceship parking bay?”

“Oh, it’s next to the mess hall. I’m Dave; I do the regular run to Venus every Thursday.”

It’s natural, it flows, and it doesn’t bog down the story.

Interweaving Exposition

Yet another method is to weave the exposition into the story or the dialog.

“You have great eyes. I love that color blue.”

“My mom always said they looked like the ocean. But I grew up in Kansas and I confess I didn’t see the ocean until I was thirty.”

Or

“You look like hell.” She nodded toward the wound on his arm.

“Oh, you should see the other guy.”

Get it?

Exposition, Scenes, and Character Descriptions

While not 100% the same as character descriptions, your standard bit of exposition is really just another flavor of describing … something. And while it’s a problem if the only time you describe people is when they aren’t white, it’s less of an issue when you don’t go into detail about something we should already know.

A modern day city is likely to have streets with traffic, perhaps outdoor vendors, maybe office buildings, and definitely crowds of people. Mainly, you may need to separate Philadelphia from Mumbai, or the like. For God’s sake, read some maps (and make sure they are for the correct year!) before describing a city you don’t know.

Hell, do that even for a city that you do know. And let me make one thing perfectly clear. Try not to turn it into a travelogue. I can practically guarantee to you that, unless they work there or are showing a tourist around, New Yorkers do not go waltzing into the Empire State Building all the time.

Takeaways

Exposition is truly vital in writing but you need to get it across without a dump of information. Read back your exposition. If it reads like a text book, or it goes on for too long, see about changing it but also about breaking it up. A bit of exposition here and there, even if it’s the same amount as in your big info dump, will stick out a lot less.

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What is a Character Questionnaire?

At its essence, a character questionnaire is a set of questions about a character. Seems obvious, right? Master Class has a good one.

A character questionnaire is not strictly necessary when putting together characters. But it can be very helpful. This is particularly the case if you are early in the process and still getting to know a character.

Some questionnaires seem to be overly complex. Or the questions address one area of a character’s personality in depth but not others.

Hence you will want to add some depth but probably some randomness as well. So, let’s look at the whole thing in pieces.

Here are some questions which might help.

Background

Of course you want to know some basics about the character. What is their name, and how old are they during the story? Gender is often important. But sexuality may or may not be. Educational level is probably also something you want to know.

• Name
• Date of birth
• Gender assigned at birth/current gender if different
• Sexuality
• Height
• Weight
• Educational level
• Siblings, if any
• Place in the birth order (if applicable)
• Whether parents or other close relatives are still alive
• Socio-economic background

Details for Your Own Personal Character Questionnaire

There’s more to a name than just … the name. Was your character named after someone? Are they a junior, a senior, a seventeenth?

Beyond going into horoscopes, a date of birth can inform a few things, not just whether someone is the eldest in a group. After all, if like me your character was born in early September, then if they’re in the modern world, school probably started right about the time of their birthdays.

Gender, gender roles, and gender changes all matter. If a person has body dimorphism, that is far different from if they just don’t like being (for example) female and upset that society keeps them from making more money.

Height isn’t just a yardstick. It’s also whether your character can reach stuff on high shelves or needs to duck through doorways. Weight? These days, you can be rather quickly and unfairly judged about your weight.

Educational level will inform how a character speaks, and perhaps also what you have them read. Are they quick on the uptake? Do they solve the puzzle first—or should they?

Siblings and place in birth order can give you an idea of whether a character feels overly responsible, or seems horribly spoiled, or doesn’t feel like they belong anywhere.

Parents—living or dead—will loom large. Is your character estranged from their parents? Orphaned? Is Mom or Dad in jail? Did the character kill one of them? Was one of them deadbeat, never known by your character? Or is your character adopted?

Socio-economic background can inform your character’s opportunities in life. It can also define if their growth was stunted, if they hoard food, or if they waste money.

Relationship Queries

Even if a piece is not a romance, understanding a character’s relationship history can prove fruitful.

• First serious relationship
• Also, the first serious relationship after coming out, if applicable
• Marital status
• Have they ever been in love?
• Are they ace/aero (asexual or aromantic)?
• Do they let anyone get close to them?
• Do they have any kinks?

Details

Beyond the parental and sibling relationships listed above, how does your character relate to anyone they’re interested in romantically? How serious did they get, and how soon? Are they a virgin? If not, when did they lose their virginity? Are they happy with that?

Is their sexuality set or fluid? Or is it repressed or so closeted that they don’t even realize they’re closeted?

Have they ever been married? Divorced, separated, or widowed? If so, what was the wedding like?

Have they ever loved anyone? Was it romantic? Chaste? From afar? Unrequited? Or was it some borderline stalking?

Has anyone ever gotten close to them? Also, are they vanilla, or are they in a dom/sub situation, or something else?

Work and School

Again, even if you never show work or education, it will help to inform the piece.

• Highest level of education attained
• Age when classes ended (that is, were they a dropout, or did they graduate?)
• Current employment
• Industry
• Basic tasks/duties
• If a supervisor/manager, number of direct and indirect reports

Details for This Part of Your Character Questionnaire

So, can you call your character doctor or professor? Or are they even literate? Did they drop out to help the family or because they were failing?

Where do they work, or are they unemployed? Also, do they even need to work? Are they perhaps an unpaid caregiver of some sort?

If they work outside the home (so, not necessarily literally for work from home and hybrid jobs), what’s the industry? Is it creative? Caregiving? Something in business? Do they work with their hands?

When the working day ends, how tired are they? Are they injured? Or are they so stressed out they can barely see straight? How does the commute (if any) treat them?

Can anyone call your character boss? Also, what kind of a boss are they? Do they rule with an iron fist, or are they empathetic? Sexist? Absent?

Favorites

So, after you’re about the age of eight or so, people stop asking you what your favorite dinosaur is. It’s as if they don’t even care! But you can always ask your characters!

Their faves can also include:

• Person
• Food
• Place
• Workout or place to walk
• Season
• Subject in school

And so on and on. Musicians can have a favorite guitar or glockenspiel. Carpenters can have a preferred hammer. The sky is literally the limit here.

Personality

Rather than listing various personality traits, it makes more sense to instead ask questions. Pretend as if you’re interviewing your character for some reason or another. Maybe it’s for a newspaper article, or a job. Whatever the pretense is, ask about things like:

• So, are you a morning or an evening person?
• In a group, do you lead, follow, check out, or something else?
• If you found a wallet full of money in the street, what would you do?
• Do you believe in God? Also, do you follow any religion?
• Who has been the most influential person in your life so far?
• What’s the most daring thing you have ever done? And would you ever do it again?
• How’s your mental health?

Takeaways

So the truth is, the more you treat your characters like people, the more your readers will see them as people. Adding depth will also help you write them, and know when you’re having them say or do something out of character.

If you don’t know your characters, who else could possibly know them? So, ask!

Oh, and another thing. This kind of a questionnaire can even help you with getting story ideas. No lie!

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A character questionnaire can help. Just don’t treat it like gospel.

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Do You Want to Know How to Make Characters for Your Writing?

There are all sorts of ways to make characters. But no matter what, a character with more than a few lines (e. g. the barista at a coffee shop where our heroes go to decompress) need a reason for existing. For any character which isn’t main, the questions tend to be:

• How does this character relate to the main character?
• Do they showcase them, make them look better or worse?
• Help them grow?
• Kick off the action (inciting incident)?
• Amp up the conflict?
• Work to facilitate exposition?
• Enable the ending (including HEA if appropriate)?
• Love interest? Or the one that got away?
• Bring the story to its climax/crisis?

Characters which don’t do at least one of these things need to be changed, nixed, or combined.

In my 2016 NaNo, for example, Devon and Alexander help drive plot and exposition and Devon in particular helps to facilitate the ending; Jake is the love interest; Frances and Bessie both showcase the MC; Johnny kicks off the inciting incident, etc.

Make Characters Believable

Too many quirks, and characters just plain will not feel real. Instead, they will feel like a mishmash of characteristics and foibles.

Also, too many perfect bits threaten to convert any character into the dreaded Mary Sue. So does an author insertion. Although you’d be hard-pressed to find books where the author doesn’t get into it in some way.

Long as things are imperfect.

But!

The reverse is also true. That is, if you make characters with so many flaws and horrid tragic backstories that they are just like the biblical Job, then those, too, are a form of Mary Sue. And don’t think for a minute that this is confined to just female characters and authors. There are a ton of Marty Stu characters out there as well.

Make Characters Better Than Mary Sue

Strive for a balance, if you can. Ask yourself: would this character be the kind of person I would just want to punch in the mouth for existing? If so, then you might have a Mary Sue on your hands.

I (for real) had a sorority sister who was kind of like this. Now, being unflappable is one thing. But this girl was cheerful and enthusiastic in the face of nearly anything. While, of course, the rest of us had problems and dreams and were imperfect.

So yes, Little Miss Perfect (or Mister Perfect) can absolutely exist in real life. But they are hardly the stuff of believable fiction. Even a character based on a real life Marty Stu should have some sort of flaw or issue. Or at least a comeuppance.

How Does the Character Relate to Your MC (Main Character)?

Let’s set aside how to make characters who are the focus for a moment. What are the sidekicks and side chicks like?

As noted above, they should have some sort of a point for the plot. But let’s distinguish a character with a purpose versus a fill-in character necessary but not important. Here’s an example.

In the second of the books in the first Obolonk trilogy (The Polymer Beat), and in the third (The Badge of Humanity), main character Peri Martin spends some time in the Washington Megalopolis on a few separate occasions.

In the second in particular, she hangs out with Greg Shapiro. Greg is a character who requires some depth. He serves a few purposes:

• Expository mouthpiece
• Ending enabler

But in the third book, Peri spends some time in a coffee shop. There is a barista there to take her order and make her coffee. But do we really care what the barista looks like? Not really. I think I just describe her as a young woman of Asian extraction. And that’s enough. Unless I had made it a self-serve place, the coffeehouse needed a barista. But that person could be anyone.

What if You Create Characters That Deserve a Promotion?

Side characters can be fun to write. You can pour a lot into them, and the stakes feel lower. They feel like a place where a writer can experiment. But sometimes they are so vital that they steal the show.

What happens when you realize the side character really should be the main one?

In Untrustworthy, that went down (a bit) in that Ixalla turned from an expository mouthpiece into a driver of the action and a facilitator of the ending. Frankly, I found I preferred writing her to Tathrelle, the actual main character.

Now, that book suffers from some head-hopping. I get the reader into Tathrelle’s head for the most part, but also into Ixalla’s at times. For me, the trick was to keep the balance tilted a lot more heavily toward Tathrelle’s point of view. It was only when I could not use Tathrelle that Ixalla’s POV came front and center.

Another instance is Trinity Hawthorne in Time Addicts. Trini isn’t much of a side character. But I realized I wanted to write a prequel to serve the entire Obolonk universe. And so, I turned to Trini to run that particular show.

Character Interactions and Intersections

When you use a method such as the snowflake, the intersections of characters is at the forefront of creation. I have also found that it helps me to avoid creating a character who is unmoored from the MC.

Make your side characters work for you!

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