On Character by Keenan Powell

“Simplicity is the essence of elegance, and the more we can ground complexity in a clear, coherent simplicity, the more our efforts, as they become more intricate, can hope to retain the elegance of truth.” – David Corbett, The Compass of Character

I have a new book premise. It’s been floating around in the back of my head for a few months. I set up the white board, wrote a log line, bought color-coded stickies, wrote snippets for the scenes flashing through my head on the stickies, and arranged them on the white board. I wrote three scenes and then I got stuck. Horrors!

So I signed up for a couple Masterclasses. One was with David Baldacci. He discussed this exact process and said when you’re stuck, it’s because you didn’t do enough research. I had the broad strokes of a story, so what research did I need to do?  Then it hit me: my characters. I was only feeling my way through my protagonist, had nothing on the antagonist, and only the vaguest idea of secondary characters, some of whom may not be necessary. I’m at the point in my writing career where I’d rather not spend a year on a manuscript only to have to do a major overhaul and maybe scrap most of it because I hadn’t done the prep.

I dug back into character. My go-to manual is The Art of Character by David Corbett, author of  the Lefty-nominated The Long-Lost Love Letters of Doc Holliday. He generously shares his knowledge teaching at Book Passages Mystery Writers Conference, as well as other conferences, and on Litreactor. I’ve taken his class at Book Passages twice, and just completed a Litreactor class in March. The beauty of the Art of Character is that it teaches the writer how to delve into personal experience and memories, tapping into all that fecund buried material to better access our characters.

I am so jazzed about his newest book, The Compass of Character, which I just started working through. The material compliments his first book but comes at character from a different point of view: the external and internal factors that combine to push a character to take action. Both books have exercises which I found useful in assimilating the material because I am a learn-by-doing person.

Who hasn’t heard the old saw “character must be three-dimensional?” Honestly, I don’t get it. The image does not fit into my paradigm despite pondering it for the better part of a decade. What I do get is layers. How on top we feel one thing and tell ourselves this emotion is the justification for our actions but the truth lays far more deeply buried. Where The Art of Character teaches the writer to drill down to the bottom layers, The Compass of Character teaches the writer how to build character from the bottom up. The two are a great set for the beginning and more experienced writers.

I'm thrilled to report the inspiration dam broke open, Dear Reader. I work in The Art in the morning at the laptop, The Compass in the evening lounging with a legal pad, and throughout the day I jot notes on legal pads strewn about my home. It’s a wonderous feeling to have my character and her world revealed to me.

If you want to learn more about David Corbett, check out his site: https://davidcorbett.com/.