We think of them as real people. Why? Because Ian Rankin knows a thing or two about building unforgettable characters from the ground up. Shakespeare knew his audience loved complex characters full of apparent contradiction. And David Chase wasn’t afraid to create a sympathetic Mafia boss.

Join two writers and a psychologist on Saturday, February 27, to learn what makes great characters tick. Jo-Anne Richards, Richard Beynon and Pierre Brouard have joined forces to help screen-writers, novelists and television writers create characters that leap to life from page or screen.

Interested? Read more about our Johannesburg Character Course or email us at allaboutwriting@worldonline.co.za or phone Trish on 082 652 4643

Psychologist Pierre Brouard thinks he is probably the first of his profession to be involved in running a writing course. He is co-convenor of a regular one-day course in character development with novelist Jo-Anne Richards and script writer, Richard Beynon, of allaboutwriting.

The next Character Course, will be held in Parkview, Johannesburg on February 27 from 9am to 5pm. Cost: R1500. The first Cape Town Character Course will be held on 27 August 2010.

Brouard thinks that psychologists and writers are similar in one important respect: “We are fascinated by human nature, and the attempt to understand what makes us who we are.”

As a psychologist in his middle years, he has worked with people across the spectrum. “I have also lived a varied life, all of which has exposed me to human frailty. That, and my AIDS work, has left me with an empathy and a deep interest in what is essential about us; in our essence.

“These are the same questions that plague writers.”

Beynon thinks that characters are “the key to all fiction”. We remember books by their characters, he says, even when we praise their plots.

“There is no formula for creating a good character. The most important thing a writer can do is to begin to develop a sense of the forces that make us the people we are.”

Richards agrees. “As a writer, I’ve always been fascinated by the different ways people respond to the influences in their lives. In what ways are we all similar, and how is each of us unique?”

The Character Course blends psychology and writing to create a one-day plunge into the process of creating memorable and larger-than-life characters. It looks at the skills needed to make these characters leap off the page.

“Our aim is to help writers and would-be writers to create characters who will become as real – and in some cases perhaps more real – than our next-door neighbours,” says Richards.

For more information please contact Trish on 0826524643 or trishurquhart@gmail.com

COMMENTS FROM PAST PARTICIPANTS

“Jo-Anne, Richard and Pierre have an intimate, non threatening way of sharing their knowledge and I felt privileged to be in the group. The catering alone would be enough to encourage creativity in the dullest whit. My writing has been on a back burner for so long and Saturday’s course has inspired me to make the time to start living my passion again.” Ronnie Whitaker

I loved the first exercise – the life graph. I think it was so simple yet so effective and really made the point of how we are shaped by our history very profoundly. I also loved the interviewing the partners to sketch a character part. I loved the exercise of developing the back story of a famous character.The video clips were amazing and really illustrated the point very clearly and accessibly. I LOVED the food – always an important aspect of a workshop! The day was well structured to take us through an incremental process of developing understanding and skill, and I thoroughly enjoyed it; thank you very much. Judy Klipin

I enjoyed it tremendously. The theory and the examples (specially the television and movie clips) were excellent. And the fact that Pierre was there to add the psychological background I found particularly enlightening. Merle Ruff

THE FACILITATORS

Jo-Anne Richards is a writer and lecturer in the Wits journalism department. Her novels include The Innocence of Roast Chicken, Touching the Lighthouse and Sad at the Edges. A new novel – My Brother’s Book – was released in April 2008. She has, over the past few years, run a number of writing courses and retreats: in journalism, narrative journalism and literary skills.

Richard Beynon is a television and film writer. A former journalist, he has conceived, shaped and written scores of documentaries. He managed the writing team at Isidingo for three years, as well as contributing over three hundred scripts to the series. He is currently a writer and generator of stories on the etv daily drama, Rhythm City. He has lectured on writing for film and television at Wits and together with Jo-Anne runs writing courses and retreats.

Pierre Brouard is clinical psychologist who has done everything from private practice, HIV counselling and training, managing counsellors in workplace settings and developing counselling resources, to being an agony uncle and blogging about life, love and relationships. He writes a blog in which he answers questions about the psychological make-up of characters and their motivations. Currently he is the deputy director of an AIDS NGO.

The book in question is a non-fiction work that borrows from the skills traditionally associated with fiction – as all good narrative journalism does nowadays.

It is written in scenes, with dialogue and developed characters. And the author has cut off his scenes at moments of conflict or tension – which make us long for the story to be picked up again. So perhaps the academic was referring to this type of literary device.

I think it’s one of the things that make the book work. She was criticising on ideological grounds, of course: whether it was valid or “right” to present true stories of crime and violence in a suspenseful way. But surely there’s a certain absurdity to any argument that suggests a book should be made less readable.

And to imply that any book can be written entirely without suspense is nonsense. When we think of suspense, we tend to think of thrillers and murders and detectives.

But anything that draws us forward is actually a form of suspense. It might not be an event or action. It might be a minute change of attitude, a loss of love, the gaining of peace of mind.

I recently read a beautiful novel by Marilynne Robinson, which consisted of an elderly man’s letter to his young son. The canvas was small and there were no grand, sweeping events in his life. But it certainly drew me forward.

Readers are drawn onward by caring for the characters. If they care deeply enough, they’ll be drawn into their world – no matter how small that world is. And on the contrary, I often find high action movies boring. I start nodding off during the car chase – precisely because I don’t care a stuff what happens to any of them.

Ian McEwan protests at what he calls the “dead hand of modernism.” He writes in such a way as to “incite a naked hunger in readers.” He says the key to this is withholding information.

I think that withholding is one of the great secrets – and a skill that’s really hard to learn. When you first write, the temptation is to do the opposite. You want to spew everything out at once.

The reason withholding works is that it creates a tension or an imbalance. We keep reading because we want to see the imbalance righted and the tension broken.

In the end, it’s probably all to do with conflict and tension. If there’s no conflict, there’s no story – and certainly no suspense. This conflict can be with the environment – a plane crash in the Andes …

It can be person against person – or it can be inner conflict. I believe there’s always inner conflict, no matter what other conflicts exist. And these are often the most interesting.

These can be as big or as small as you like, but it has to be there. And suspense is a must, like it or not. If you don’t draw your reader forward, there’s little point in finishing the book – they certainly won’t.

Jo-Anne Richards muses on the challenges and excitement of a writer’s life.

Pierre Brouard, writing as Gabriel St Claire, offers psycho-literary advice to writers on www.allaboutlove.net . Writers from around the world send him questions about human motivation and character complexity – and he responds with practical advice both from his professional insight and his love of story.

“I do think it’s possible,” he told Adil, busy with his book set in the world of opera, “but I’m more inclined to think the acts of your understudy were a result of a heated and impulsive moment which would fit the so-called artistic temperament more closely.”

“To our knowledge, this is the only service of its kind available to writers anywhere in the world,” says Jo-Anne Richards, co-creator of allaboutlove.

“Every great novel – not to mention films and television – is rooted in characters that leap to life from page and screen. We remember them as real people,” says her colleague Richard Beynon.

In fact, all three are so convinced of the importance of complex characters, that they have also designed a one-day course to help writers of all kinds build characters that will effortlessly drive any plot forward. The first face-to-face Character Course is being held in Johannesburg on October 24, 2009.

E-mail Gabriel at info@allaboutlove.net

For more information contact allaboutwriting@worldonline.co.za

His characters were beautifully drawn and tugged us into a poignant memoir. But he had always longed to write a novel. I couldn’t wait to see it.

When he showed me a draft, I couldn’t believe it. The characters were cardboard stereotypes.

“But where are the kind of characters you had in your first book?” I asked.

“But that was non-fiction. This is a novel. I have to make them up.”

But you see, you don’t. You can, but you don’t have to. If you work from real life, think of a real character and lie. Change them to suit your story.

That is important. Real life is fine as inspiration. But don’t stick so closely to the real model that you lose sight of the dramatic imperatives of your story.

If you make a character up from scratch, don’t think of them merely as “the tough game ranger” or the “prostitute with the heart of gold”. Everyone has quirks, inconsistencies and contrasts. Everyone has hopes and dreams, fears and heartaches.

Characters don’t exist in isolation. They are the sum of their history, experiences and personality.

You need to work out far more about a character than will ever actually appear on the page. If you don’t know how someone grew up and what relationship they had with their parents and siblings, you’ll never know how they’ll react to older men, younger women – in fact, to anything at all.

You need to work out how someone appears to others – what they look like, what they do, their work, hobbies and everything else that make up their public self. But everyone has internal characteristics too. You need to know how they feel, what makes them tick, their likes, dislikes, fears and favours.

Don’t forget what they look like and how they feel about themselves.

You need to be able to see and hear your character – to know intuitively how they’ll react. If you say to yourself: “Hmm, what should I make this character say now, they’ll never sound real.
For more about characters and lifting them beyond the cardboard, join our one day Character Development Course on 24 October 2009 in Parkview, Johannesburg.

Jo-Anne Richards is the author of four novels. Her latest is My Brother’s Book, published by Picador.

She lectures in journalism and writing skills at Wits University, besides running workshops in literary skills, narrative journalism and Romance writing. She supervises Masters students in the Creative Writing Masters programme at Wits.

She is co-founder of allaboutlove.net. The site runs interactive online writing courses in romance writing.