adding personality?
Today i was (halfheartedly) editing Dragon Slayers. The problem I’m having with it is that the main character, Natlie, (which is Natalie without the middle A. Her real name is Natalie but she doesn’t go by that.) Natlie anyway is having problems with being personable. I have dialog and I think I have perfectly fine dialog but the characters aren’t doing anything. They’re just there talking, and that’s all.
So, unlike normally where I say what I think, I want to know what other writers think. How do you add personality to characters? How do you make a scene more three dimensional? How do you life a scene off of the paper and into the head?
I think I’m going to post the first part of the scene right now too, just so that way you can see what I’m having problems with. So go to here: Dragon Slayers Scene One
I know this is random and I know there isn’t a whole lot of people out here reading this, but if any of you have any suggestions, it’d really help. Thanks.
2 responses to “adding personality?”
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Abigail
always a writer 
Where are the characters when they are talking? What are they doing? Unless they are sitting upright and staring straight at the other person there are a myriad of small but significant acitons you can add in that will add something to your characters. Do they look away when they say something that may not be true? Do they pace? Do they fidget? Could they be walking and avoiding collisions with others while they talk?
It really depends on how you have set up the scene but there should be someway to interject action into the dialogue to help create a more balanced scene.
I’ve actually been doing that for a while. My problem comes when it is too forced to seem realistic except I realized as I began to respond to your comment on Monday that I just don’t really know my characters, so you actually helped anyway. :) (And they’re walking towards town after she shoots him.)