These are my notes from the San Francisco Writer’s conference, 2014
The Lecture “Character is King” by Dave Corbett. Saturday 2014-02-15. The handout is here:
http://sfwriters.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/01/CHARACTER-IS-KING-David-Corbett.pdf
The 5 aspects he lists are
- desire
- layers of adaptation
- vulnerability
- secrets
- contradictions
He draws out the list in the above PDF in several different ways.
1. Desire
I missed the 1st section, so starting on #2:
2. Layers of Adaptation
- pathological – hallucinations; eg. the movie “Repulsion” by the director of Chinatown (i.e. Roman Polanski)
- immature – e.g. blanche dubois from “streetcar named desire.” She is living in a fantasy.
- denial – acting like it isn’t happening
- mature – humor, altruism
3. Vulnerability
- Pursuing an objective [masculine] – e.g. Blanche pursuing being able to stay with Stella
- listening [feminine]
somebody wounded elicits the reader’s sympathy
type of wound:
- existential – physical illness or literal wound
- situation – alone in a strange town
- moral – they’ve done something everyone will judge them for
side note ‘dramatic irony’ seems to be the voice of the time (meaning: the reader knows something the main character doesn’t).
4. Secrets
“Swing for the fences”
a secret can be small, with a big cover-up
5. Contradictions
work if one can find the connection between them in the character
…?
- Problem
- insight
- decision based on insight
(I guess this is what you would call character development!)
Irony Efficiency 