B&N Week 170: Casting--Do You Do It?

[Steven Forbes]

We’ve got another Tuesday! I thank you for spending some of it with me. I appreciate it.

This week’s question is: casting—do you do it?

When you create a character, don’t fall into the trap of mistaking characteristics for character. These two things are night and day. You can say what a character likes to do, and you can say that they’ve learned and when they learned it, or how hot tempered/laid back they are, but those are just traits—characteristics that do not help you to round out your characters.

All characters have a gap, and that gap is filled with actual character. Sounds silly, but I’ll explain.

Your characters aren’t revealed until you put them under pressure. Character is what you do and how you perform in a crisis. This is true in life, and since characters all strive to mimic real life [no matter how fanciful the setting], what’s true in life will be true in fiction. Character will be revealed when in crisis.

So, if your character is handsome, successful, is kind to kids, and is a bit of a philanderer, that doesn’t matter much. What will matter is what will happen when your character is confronted with violence by another woman’s husband.

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