Ep 200 Create Your Character's Personality

Pencils&Lipstick podcast · Sep 27, 2023

Transcript

Welcome back everyone to pencils and lipstick I'm Kat Caldwell and this is episode 200 of pencils and lipstick it is September 25th 2023 and we are going

into our fifth year. Now, probably none of you have been listening to this podcast since 2019, and I know podcast listeners ebb and flow, but to anyone out there, whether they can hear this or not, who have listened to even one episode, I really appreciate you. Thank you so much for listening. Thank you for giving comments sometimes, too, because I get comments on YouTube or on Spotify now. There's like a comment section. Um, thank you always for your comments It makes me feel like I'm not talking to nobody I like to talk to myself here on the camera. Um, but I just I just really appreciate you I cannot believe we're at 200. I've done 200 recordings if you know me or you knew me like in 2018 Probably never would have thought that I would be recording you know, a podcast for this long. Um, and then putting it up on YouTube. Yes, we are on YouTube. I'm on YouTube. Pencils and Lipstick is on YouTube. It's at Pencils and Lipstick because that's what we're called. You can watch, um, me forget that the camera's mirrored, and you can watch guests when I have guests on there if you want to see what people look like and sometimes they, you know, point to things in their office or whatever, um, hold their book. So if you want to see that stuff, if you prefer seeing, please head over to YouTube and you can look up Pencils and Lipstick Podcast and you can watch, I think, like the last 40 episodes. I didn't keep all of them. I think, yes, this is episode 200, but like we keep moving forward, you know, and since I never did record for video before, I don't really technically have permission of everyone just to put their video up there. So, um, it's like the last couple months that you can see everybody. Otherwise you can listen to all of the episodes on your favorite podcast app. I prefer things like, um, the, the newer podcast apps where they don't have commercials. So if you listen to this on Spotify and you're getting commercials, That is Spotify. That is not me. Sometimes we do sort of a book sponsorship, but that would be me talking, not CDS. So if you're listening to an app that gives you commercials, go to Podverse. You know, get an app that doesn't do that. They are out there. It's a bit dark today. It's so like rainy. We've had like the hurricane. We're in DC and it was not a big deal. we've had worse here it was just a lot of rain and clouds all the time um but on this day the 200 we

do not have a guest we just have me as i ramble on and on to you um i'm just going to sort of give you guys an update and i want to talk to you guys um quickly about something that's a pretty interesting way to figure out your your characters um and their their growth their character arc right? So, a couple things coming up. It is September 25th. Next week we are starting the back to school bundle for writers. If you're a writer, which most likely you are because you're listening to the show, Stacey Juba, Emma Dossey, and I put this together last year and it is basically a one -stop landing page that has everybody's lead magnet. So, about 52 writers who are teachers have sort of their freebie for you to get to know them and get on their their newsletter and all that a lot of times you have to go find those people right so this is a one -stop place where they can sort of give you a little blurb about what their freebies about you can click on the ones that you want you do not have to get all of them and you can download their freebie and then you can be on their newsletter see if you like them see if you want to work with them further. There's no obligation whatsoever. We just want you to have like a one -stop place where you can really find people who might be helpful to you. We started it last year. Everyone really enjoyed it, so we're excited to bring it back this year, and that starts next week. Next week, I will have the link in the show notes for you. Then we have Daniel David Wallace's Through the Plot Forest Summit, and that is coming like the third week in October and I will give you more um data on that coming up but uh Daniel David Wallace if you don't know has about three summits a year he always has really great people

yours truly will be there I will be talking about I will be going really in depth in in talking about the big five personality traits and how you can um broaden your character how can find conflict with them, how you can even create their backstory using that, and by understanding their Big Five personality, like the biggest of the Big Five, like I don't think you have to map out the whole thing, quite frankly. We spend enough time with our books as it is and I think a lot of that is intuitive in our writing, but sometimes we can't quite get deeper, you know, when people say like, oh, dig deeper, flesh out your character more. And as the writer, you're like, what does that mean? And how? Instead of saying something like, oh, the character is selfish, you can really go define that idea more because we can be selfish, but we will react to being selfish differently depending on our personalities.

So I'll be going really deep into that in Through the Plot for Us, Summit with Daniel David Wallace. If you want to know more about that, go over to DanielDavidWallace .com and sign up to his newsletter to get more information about that. So today we are going to go through a little bit on the Big Five and like a taste as to how much more there is to to know about this. We're only going to do like a little portion today. So we have the Summit it, which has like a free option and a paid option. And then we have my workshops in Preptober because whoever is doing NaNoWriMo, which I am not doing this year, but whoever is doing NaNoWriMo, you might need some prep to go with that, right? So Saturday, October 7th at 2 p .m. Eastern Time, Troy Lambert is coming in to talk about and show how you can plot a story idea in an hour and 90 minutes, which I am very fascinated because, as y 'all know, I struggle with plotting. I really have to write before I can like rearrange things. But I would love it if my brain could like figure out plotting. So I will be hosting that workshop. And yeah, I will be very fascinated to see this. For this week, it is $37. Next week it goes up to $47 you can check the links in the show notes below. I also have a workshop

that will like you bring pen and paper and we'll be digging into our characters called What's in a Character. We will be digging into their backstory, why it matters, trying to plot out like bullet point out their backstory and what happened to create who they are. We'll also be going over the big five personality because that's how much I believe in it to help us understand how they should be reacting How do you see them? Because you will see your characters in your heads, right? So but so how can we get that on paper and then make sure that their reactions going forward? Just make sense to to who you have in your head and that you don't get sort of swayed By whatever book you're reading whatever movie you're watching, by whatever mood whim you're on, because that happens. You don't want your character to change too much. If you need them to change, then you're going to have to go back and change them.

So we're going to really be, it's going to be me teaching a little bit, but it's really going to be working out our characters. And so the workshop will be small, it's half full already. Um, so I'm keeping it to 10 people because we want to be able to ask each other questions, brainstorm with you, and make sure that you leave the workshop with, um, with things written down. Like, and kind of, I guess I'm using the word plotted out, but like outlined out for your character. Um, that is October 17th. And then we have another, um, the 16 essentials on October 26th. and that is a little bit more teaching, but you do have the opportunity to get a scene edited by me if you want. All the links are in the show notes.

So, couple little updates personally, now that we've gotten all the writing. I know I'm talking fast, but you know, these are like announcements and sometimes people are driving and they're like, cares, but get to the good part. Um, so I was with, uh, the novel writing kickoff with Sarah Gentry last week, and we did something really fun where, you know, she had recorded all of our talking, and then we came in for a live chat with anybody who wanted to show up, really. And it wasn't recorded, so we could just sort of sit and chat and talk about writing, and all of us were very different.

I'm a fully indie author, some were hybrids, some were, um, traditional authors, and it's, It was just fun, but somebody brought up this question in the chat and they asked what do you do if your character's art is completed about halfway through the story, so halfway through the word count. Now, just so that you know, if you're new, like, anything under $50 ,000 is kind of in the novella area, right? That is not a full novel. Some people might push me on that, but it's, that's short. So you might consider making a novella. It really doesn't matter. It's okay. But here's just another word. People buy novellas all the time, especially all those crazy Goodreads people who have to finish their list or have to read one more book then you know their I don't know enemy I have no idea I don't know why they stress themselves out like this they like short books at the end of December I mean you can sell it like that it's fine people will buy your

book like it's not a big deal but if you're if you have more to say if you have more plot and your character is already to their you know quote -unquote perfection by the halfway through the plot, that's a bit of a problem. By halfway through the plot, your character should be at the point in which they realize they need to change. That there is something that they need to do. I think one of the greatest examples of this is the breakup and I talk about this movie a lot. I'm sorry to all you who are more fantasy people. Sorry. But the breakup is a really great character arc. It is like I just think it's you can really see the template of it. it's not hard to dig into, right? First of all, there's only two main characters, one really main character, right? Vince Vaughn. Yes, Jennifer Aniston is there, probably got paid as much, but it's really Vince Vaughn who is the guy who needs to change. Now, Brooke needs to change as well. So basically, if you know the big five personality, their issue, The one way that you can bring conflict to your story is to have two people on opposite ends of one of the big five.

Now, I am going to say that their big issue is that Brooke is very agreeable and Vince Vaughn is very disagreeable. So these are funny words because you think, well, it's Vince Vaughn. He's very funny. How can he be disagreeable? So, agreeable people are overly concerned with other people and what they think and how they feel. And if they're comfortable, they are always sort of giving to other people. They are putting themselves last and they are putting everyone else first. That's a rough overview. And very low agreeable or disagreeable people. So we see personality on a scale, right? So you can say low in agreeableness or just disagreeable, whatever you prefer. So that's Vince Vaughn. And those people don't really care about your feelings. Like, they can be very funny people, but they can be very self -deprecating, but they can be also really sharp against other people as well. These guys are great for professional, like, firers, you know, where they have to go into a

company and just fire everybody. These are sometimes like the old man become really disagreeable. Oh, what's that? Oh, gosh. It's the movie about the car with. I'm going to you know, I do this every single time on the podcast because I think of of people. Charleston Heston, right when he Charles Heston, sorry, Charles Heston. Like one of the last movies that he did where he lives in the neighborhood and it's all getting sort of overtaken by immigrants and he has to deal with like the kids next door who try to steal from him or something like that. Gran Torino, is that? Oh, is that? Anyway, he's really disagreeable, right? He will tell people what they think and they're just like, who does that? Right? That's somebody who's really disagreeable or very low in agreeableness. So there's a conflict there because you can still like people who are out of balance on their personality, right? Brooke is also out of balance in that movie. So the thing is Vince Vaughn actually by the middle of the movie, a little bit after the middle of the movie, figures out that he has to change but he gets a bit stuck on how he has to change because he can't see his flaws. Like he can see that he's gonna lose Brooke after he like does his sort of vengeance and like I am not wrong and you're the one that's wrong and he's doing all these things that hurt her and her um and she's kind of doing things that are hurtful to him right they're kind of at each other's throats but then he sort of realizes he needs to to do something but he's not sure what and in fact it really culminates in that moment where they hadn't bought those concert tickets together and he can't quite get himself to go because he he's just at a loss as to what he needs to do but he has realized that he needs to change right his changing moment is when he realized what he needs to change and that's when his best friend is telling him you're a really don't care about anybody else.

Anyway, so if he had gotten that halfway through the movie and then like spent his time quickly changing, I'm not sure it would have been a satisfactory of a movie. Some people hate the end of that movie, but I think it's very true to life in in many ways, because that's a hard thing to just change right away. Right. So it's interesting because the last scene he runs into Brooke, right? And he's carrying the bags of his current girlfriend. And after we see him actually doing the books for the family business, which he had always said, like, why should he have to do it? He is the star of the family business.

Why should he have to do the boring stuff? Right. He's just selfish like that. So you if you are finding your character character, coming to everything and becoming perfect by the midpoint and then they're going through the rest of the book changed? You have a bit of an issue and you might want to look at how you can add more conflicts with them. And what I want to tell you today is just like with the breakup, try to find a side character, sorry Jennifer Aniston, a side character in which they can be on the opposite out of balance on the personality of your character and see what conflict they can bring. And really the conflict that they should bring to each other should be hurtful. Okay? Like it should hurt their feelings. I know that we don't like to do that. This is also a little bit of the problem of you're so in love with your character that you don't want them to look mean and you don't want them to kind of be a jerk and you kind of want them to be the perfect person and it's just not possible they really should be somebody who is hurting another person and you can see that you don't have to be dislikable so being disagreeable doesn't mean that you're unlikable. I think that's the word. Because we all like Gary in the breakup. We want him to get better, right? Like he is still a sympathetic character. We really do want him to figure it out. And so you can make a character disagreeable without making them dislikable. So if you think of like the man called Obey, I want to say Obey, but oh if you've read the book or if you've they made the movie into a man called Otto I think because Americans can't we don't know how to say over obey um and that's what Tom Hanks

he's a very disagreeable character um but he's also very sympathetic he has a reason behind his disagreeableness right and then he sort of changes his character art really doesn't come until the end when we understand his whole story. So and there again his neighbor is way on the other side of the personality trait, right? She's very open and she's very agreeable. So if you can figure out the the main personality trait that your character has, that you want your character to have, because again you are the writer you are in charge of this if you can figure out figure that out and then you can give the side character a like the opposite of it then you are gonna create conflict you're gonna create witty banter between them or like straight -up fight scenes look at them and so if you have a character that is agreeable you have a character that is like your main character is more agreeable, then they need somebody who's disagreeable. If your main character is low in the neuroticism scale, you need somebody who's highly neurotic, right? Who's going to cause this issue. If you have somebody who's in... I want to

say there is no like good personality or bad personality. We have these words because it's English and we need words to describe things but yeah we might think that agreeable or neurotic sounds strange good or bad we might put like a value system on them but they they're not good or bad they are just what they are so the big five just so that everyone knows is conscientiousness agreeableness extroversion so if you have somebody who's very extroverted or very introverted it's going to cause conflicts between them when they come up against somebody who's the opposite. Somebody who's neurotic coming up against someone who is not who's very stoic and cold and doesn't display a lot of emotion whereas neurotic people are easily stressed and show a lot of emotion and that can go from shut down emotion like very like almost holding it in aggressively to blowing up emotions so it kind of depends you know see you get to play around with this a lot and then the fifth one is openness or openness to experience which is there is another movie I've been trying to find it where it's like an insurance guy and he is very low on the openness like he's an insurance guy and so you know you don't do anything. You just stay put your entire life. And then he comes up against a character that does skydiving and rock climbing and jumps, you know, from building to building. Like he's super open. He's just trying everything and he's always like putting his life at risk. I can't remember what movie that is, but that's kind of the extreme on the openness scale. So, you have these five and if you want to get deeper into this, I have a little worksheet that explains them a little bit more and it will be linked in the show notes if you want to come. You can come to Daniel David Wallace's summit and we're going to get into it even deeper and you can also, if you want to work on your character, you can come to the What's in a character workshop on October 17th, but you can find these just type in the big five on in Google or whatever your search engine is that you prefer and you

can start trying to think I would just choose one like your character choose one of them are they conscientious like do they like rules and like boundaries and they are the nine -to -five worker and this is how it is you know and then they fall in love with somebody who's just out of control, has a very messy house and doesn't really know what time it is. Um, isn't that, oh my gosh, every single time I do this, there's, there's so many movies that you can think of where like that is the main issue or books where they are, you know, the, it's usually like a military guy has rules and boundaries and laws, And this is how we're doing it. And his kids are like, you know, regimen or whatever. And then he falls in love with a woman who's very creative. So she's low on the conscientiousness and she's, you know, disorderly. But she has her own order. And, you she doesn't really care if the floor is sticky.

And, know, so this is going to create conflict within them. So if you can. Figure out one of those things that your character can be. And put them maybe a little bit, you know, to the extreme on it, and then find a side character and have fun with it. Put them into situations, put them into, you know, they're in a grocery store and somebody does a hold up, you know, like comes in and holds up the store, or they're in a car accident, or they are at a family dinner, or they go on a date with like another couple, or they, you know, if they're extrovert, introvert, they're just, one of them's trying to get the other person out on a date. Put them into situations and see if you can create sort of this rhythm of banter or fighting or tension that can sort of go into the book and into the storyline and plug it into the plot.

And then go through your plot and look at what is going to happen to this main character and what's going to push on them and take their personality a little bit out of balance and see how they would respond. So you have to keep with who they are and when when you take them more out of balance right so we always we're in love with our characters we want to keep them in balance like oh yeah they're conscientious but they're not like overly so no put them out of balance. Maybe you have an uber conscientious person and they lose a job and they gotta go be a kindergarten teacher at the Montessori school. And they gotta figure out how to deal with this job where these kids are running around and no one puts the crayons away and the linoleum floor is sticky and you know, I don't know, it smells like diapers. They,

you know, they're in this job that they can't, that doesn't mesh with their personality. it's going to cause a lot of conflict. So put them into those situations and see what you can get out of them. And make sure, make sure that your plot is pushing them towards their balance, right? So we always talk about their needs and their wants, you know, they want something, we all want something, but they usually need to change. And it's when you pull that character's personality out of balance that's usually what they need to change right and so however you want them to change that there's a million ways you can be come less neurotic you can go you know walk the desert or the whole eat pray love or whatever there's a ton of different ways that you can put your personality back into into balance so that's your plot your plot is pushing that character back to being more balanced with it, right? So make sure that that plot and that that character is reacting every time, you know, a little bit less, but still within that personality trait

that you have chosen for them. Does that make sense? We've talked about this a couple more times. There is, like I said, a worksheet that you can pick up. It's wholly for free. There is a link below and if you want to dig deeper into this, if you ever want to talk about it, you can always tag me on Instagram at catcaldwell .author or at pencils and lipstick all spelled out. That's on Instagram. I'm technically on threads, but that app doesn't work. It's a mess. I don't know. It doesn't like me, so don't bother over there.

You can get me on Facebook and I'm usually on Twitter like for X whatever like it's twice a week but you can also get on my newsletter you can hit reply and it will go directly to my email and I will I would be glad to answer your questions if you want to go deeper into this and get into the workshops this week they are only it's only $37 so you can work on your character and again it's going to be a very small workshop so that we can work specifically on everyone's character and you will have your time to ask questions and sort of brainstorm with us, right? So again, all the links will be in the show notes below. We are going to have some guests coming in next month. I just have to figure out some different dates that will work for people. But once again, thank you for listening. Thank you for being around. whether you are from the beginning or from last week for the 200th episode of Pencils and Lipstick. I really appreciate you guys. If you love this episode or love the podcast, please share it with other writer friends. Tag me if you share it. I'd love to see it. If you have any comments or questions, again, you can get a hold of me. All the links are in the show notes below, even if you're on YouTube. They're down there. If you would subscribe wherever you are listening or watching always helps as well but until next week have a great week keep writing keep developing those characters and I'll see you in October