I often am awed at how great writers are able to grab that one aspect of character and make it manifest in the physical form of their characters. The most famous version of this was Oedipus, gouging out his eyes. Of course, he was blind the whole time — and the act of blinding him made physical the flaw he was living. Pretty awesome.
If you haven’t read Dorothy Allison’s “Gospel Song,” take the time to read it. Shannon Pearl burns all the way through the story, all the way up to its inconceivable, yet perfectly believable ending.
I’m not talking only about describing characters or giving characters defects of some kind to indicate simple shortcomings. I’m talking about manifestations of the internal challenges of characters. And if you don’t challenge your character, your character won’t challenge your reader.
So take a few moments and look over your work. Do your characters have challenges, emotional and physical, that push them to greater and greater extremes? Now, how do you cue your reader that this one matters? How do your characters burn, drown, limp, seek and not see?
Angie Powers has an M.F.A. in English and Creative Writing from Mills College, where she won the Amanda Davis Thesis Award for her novel, The Blessed. She also has a Certificate in Screenwriting from the Professional Programs at UCLA. She is the co-director and co-writer of the short Little Mutinies (distributed by Frameline and an official selection of the Palm Springs International Short Fest) and was a quarter-finalist for the Nicholl Fellowship and at Blue Cat Screenplay Competition for the full-length screenplay of Little Mutinies. She’s twice made it into the second round of consideration for Sundance Labs and is a Cinestory semi-finalist this year. She also wrote and directed the short Hot Date, which premiered at Frameline. She is currently finishing a new novel and a short film.