E59 – Editing Characters

Show Notes

This episode features co-hosts VE Griffith and Miss Catherine MH discussing their differing approaches to editing fictional characters. They explain that characters are essential to a story, acting as the vehicle through which readers experience the narrative. VE, a plotter, emphasizes the importance of planning aspects like physical traits, emotional makeup, dialogue, attitudes, and growth arcs, often reviewing these in separate passes. Catherine, a pantser, describes her process as more intuitive, where characters “visit” her and their physical appearance and speech patterns are naturally revealed, with her editing focusing on ensuring consistency in descriptions and dialogue, as well as the characters’ interactions with others and their underlying goals. Both hosts acknowledge the value of differing methods and the reader’s connection to well-developed characters.

The Revision Wizards are at https://www.revisionwizards.com
V.E. Griffith’s website: https://www.vegriffith.com
Miss Catherine M.H.’s website: https://www.scribes-pen.com
Lon’s Twitter/X: @lonvarnadore1
Lon’s Instagram: @lon_scribbler

Transcript

[V.E. Griffith]
Welcome to the Revision Wizards podcast. I’m VE Griffith and I’m joined by my Enchantress co-host, Miss Catherine M.H. This is episode 59.

[Miss Catherine M.H.]
Today, we’re starting a mini series called Editing by Parts. This will be the first in the series, and we’ll be talking about editing your characters.

[V.E. Griffith]
So, Miss Catherine, what are characters?

[Miss Catherine M.H.]
They are the people in my head that don’t shut up, but they are the object that makes your book do stuff. So they are the, the people, the animals, they could be your protagonist, your antagonist, your side people, they are the voices in your head. What would you describe characters?

[V.E. Griffith]
I would describe characters as the vehicle through which the reader experiences the story.

[Miss Catherine M.H.]
Wow. You just sounded like Jeff.

[V.E. Griffith]
I will freely admit to being heavily influenced by our friend Jeff Elkins, the Dialogue Doctor.

[Miss Catherine M.H.]
He will, I’m sure, love that.

[V.E. Griffith]
I’m sure he will.

[Miss Catherine M.H.]
So speaking of how we see characters so differently, while we were trying to come up with how to edit your character, we realized that not only do we edit characters differently, but we see characters totally different. So it’s really gonna, I think, help people when it comes to editing to see two different ways of editing characters.

[V.E. Griffith]
And I’d love to hear listener feedback about how you edit and about how you see your characters, because everybody’s different and everybody has their own method and their own vision for what a character is and how their characters behave. So as we talk about this, just remember that there’s no right or wrong.

[Miss Catherine M.H.]
I wonder too, if it’s because of our writing styles, that my answers will sound more like a pantser answer than yours sounds very — looking at the script, my friends, is very structured on his end. And when we get to mine, it’s going to be great.

[V.E. Griffith]
I would probably agree with that. I tend to be more of a plotter and I want to have things put together so that I understand what my characters are and who they are. I feel like the more I know about a character, the better I’m able to convey them on the page.

The flip side of that is that I have to be careful not to go overboard with my planning because then that just becomes resistance and procrastination from going to the blank page and putting them on the page.

[Miss Catherine M.H.]
So shall we start with you?

[V.E. Griffith]
Let’s start with me. The first thing that I think about is their physical traits. What do they look like?

It’s important for me to have a sense in my head of what they look like, because otherwise they’re just nondescript heads moving around in space. And sometimes they have arms and sometimes they don’t if I’m not careful. So I try and take an image from the internet or I use an AI image generator like Mid Journey to generate an image of a character that looks like what I want my character to look like.

You can use actors, you can use stock images, you can use whatever kind of image you can find or you can generate. This is one of those places where I think it’s OK to use AI in your writing so that I have a picture to refer to when I get to the point of describing my character. For spicy stuff, you may want to generate or find a nude image so that you have an idea of what their body looks like if you want to describe their body in a nude scene.

And I want to make sure that as I do the description, there’s some variability in how I describe my characters. One of my editors observed that I tend to describe men in terms of their faces and women in terms of their hair and breasts. And as I go through in my editing pass, I need to make sure that I don’t do that, that I fix those issues, because that’s an inappropriate way to describe all of my characters.

So I need to make sure that I’m not doing that.

[Miss Catherine M.H.]
That’s pretty important. When it comes to me, or do we want to go straight for your version of editing?

[V.E. Griffith]
Go ahead, what you got for physical traits?

[Miss Catherine M.H.]
So a very important thing to think about is that I have a space in my head that’s dedicated to my room. It’s a zone that I will go into when I am writing. It’s this little office in a city.

It has a green couch, got a rug. It has a fire escape outside the window that I get a few pigeons that visit. And there are some filing cabinets lined across the wall.

Inside of the filing cabinets are all of the ideas that I can pull up from in there. So when I have a character, they knock on that apartment door and they come on in. Sometimes they come in chatting like there’s no tomorrow.

And sometimes I got to take it from them. So they’ll come in, they will sit on my sofa. So for me, I’ll usually get their their looks right away.

I’ll all of a sudden see this as a person, character, I will see them as if they’re really a human being. And we will make a cup of tea and I will sit down and I’ll start by talking to them. So for me, their looks, I already know.

So when I’m editing, I’m going to control find certain colors when I’m going through to make sure that those colors are related to the spots that I’m describing people and that I’m describing them the exact same each time. So if her eye color is blue-gray, then I’m going to look for blue-gray and I’m going to look for blue-gray eyes. And anytime I’m talking about eyes, I will look up the word eye and then I’ll see what color is also there.

So this way I’m not changing my character’s eye color or I’m not changing their hair color. So that is something that I will look through because occasionally they do come into my office and they have dyed their hair or they’ve changed their looks. And they’re like, this is what I actually look like from now on.

And I’m like, all right, bro, that’s that’s you. And then I’ll have to go through and fix that. But it’s it’s rare that they do that to me too often.

I had one character who did it too much and I was like, that’s it. Like you’re stuck. That’s that’s your final look because I’m not going back and editing this.

So sometimes having that picture would be great. I usually don’t grab pictures. I will grab a name.

So I will look for them by their name first. And then that name projects that character’s image into my office.

[V.E. Griffith]
That sounds like a cool way to do it. Although I think that your image of your office is a little on the detailed side. But, you know, that’s the way you think.

So it’s fine.

[Miss Catherine M.H.]
It is. It’s that great office. Sometimes it gets really crowded.

Especially if I’m like writing one book and an old character from another one will like stop in to remind me like you haven’t written me in a while and I’m here. That’s how I that’s how I organize my my multiple storylines is in my little office, which is way more organized than I am in my real life. So.

[V.E. Griffith]
The next thing that I tend to look for is their emotional makeup and their attitude. So are they taciturn? Are they angry?

Are they angry at the world? Are they friendly and outgoing and jocular? Are they something in between?

Are they depressed? Are they suicidal? I want to make sure that I keep that in mind as I write the character.

And as I write their interactions with other characters, how is their demeanor going to change? How are their body languages going to change? How do their body languages and demeanor change as their emotions change?

So if they go from depressed to happy, how does that affect them? Those kinds of things are important for me to think about.

[Miss Catherine M.H.]
That’s really interesting. I’ve never thought of editing for that.

[V.E. Griffith]
What do you think of that idea?

[Miss Catherine M.H.]
I like it. It makes sense. I just I don’t I don’t do that.

I my next spot is editing their speech. And that’s when only they are talking. So how does their voice actually sound like their voice?

And it’s not my voice that was written out. So if they’re someone who jokes a lot, is that written in correctly? So I’m going to really like nail down like Theodore’s speech, originally written absolutely proper.

And then I went back in and fixed it to be not proper. So until I got the hang of how he talked, and then once I get the hang of how that person talks, I will go back through and make sure that their speech patterns are consistent. So that’s what I’m looking for.

I’m not really looking for the emotional side. I feel like I write that in already, or I’ve gotten those words in. So I’m just making sure that how they talk when they’re angry is portrayed correctly for me.

Or if they are, you know, I have a character who stutters in one of my books, and when are they stuttering? Is it just because they always have the stutter? Or are they, he doesn’t stutter when he’s angry.

So if he’s suddenly angry or super excited about something, he’s not stuttering, he’s going off on it. But if he’s talking to, you know, a girl, he’s suddenly super nervous and will stutter the entire time. So I’ll make sure that I guess their speech comes across correctly for their emotions.

But I’m not like going in and being like, hey, are you depressed today? I probably should. I mean, I have a couch for them.

We could do therapy sessions.

[V.E. Griffith]
When it comes to dialogue, I like to look at each character and how they sound. And one of the big problems that I have is that when I do my first draft, all of my characters sound like college educated men. And the reason for that is because they talk the way I talk.

They tend to be very precise. They tend to be eloquent. They tend to have a large vocabulary.

Not every character is going to be like that. So I need to pay attention to that and make sure that each character has their own voice. They talk their own way.

The other thing that I need to make sure of is that each of my characters sort of changes their voice as their emotions change. So if you’re really angry, you’re going to be talking like this, whereas if you’re in a romantic scene, you might be talking softly and talking to your sweetheart in a different way. So you need to pay attention to how those things change, how you describe them so that your reader understands and has another view into the emotional journey of your character.

[Miss Catherine M.H.]
Here’s a fun bit, I guess. I, when, because I call it my, my gossip talk. So I will sit down with my character in my little office and we will talk about people.

And it’s as if their world is a fully legit world. And we will talk about all the kinds of people in there. So if I’ve got Eleanor sitting in there, we’re talking about Lord Poulton, we’re talking about Theodore, we’re talking about Mr. Thatch, we’re talking about her siblings. We’re going over that and I’m seeing how they feel and interact with those characters. And then when I go through my edits, I’m looking to see those interactions. If she talks a certain way to someone, then that’s going to be very consistent.

So she was very formal originally with Robert. And then as things progress with that sibling relationship, they become less formal. So I make sure that I look to see how they interact with people and how those people are talking to them and talking back.

So I will go through an edit for those interactions.

[V.E. Griffith]
I look for attitudes that influence interactions with other characters. So how do I feel about a character? I’m sorry, not how I feel about a character.

How does the character feel about other characters? There we go. If a character is suspicious of somebody else, how does that affect their behavior?

How does that affect their speech patterns? How does that affect how they view the world? If a character is in love with somebody, again, how does that affect their speech?

How does that affect their attitude? How does that affect their body language when they’re dealing with this character? If you’re dealing with a large scene where you have multiple characters, more than two characters in a scene, what is the dynamic between the three or four or five of them that you want to pay attention to?

Because how, at least for me personally, all of those dynamics affect how I view the world and how I view other characters. It’s called code switching and it’s a well-known phenomenon. The way that I talk to my mother is different than the way that I talk to you, and that’s different than the way I talk to my wife, and that’s different, again, from the way that I talk to an editing client.

So I need to pay attention to those kinds of changes and make sure that they are consistent with the character’s attitude about the world, their emotional makeup, going back to the previous point, and making sure that all of that is consistent for all of my characters.

[Miss Catherine M.H.]
The last thing for me is before I write, because I am a panther, I have no idea where my story’s going. I might have a vague idea of, like, for example, my space opera. I know the final line of my book, and that line is going to be, let me tell you how your dad became a god.

And I know that that’s the final line of my book. How I get there? No clue.

I just know that’s the final line. So sometimes I don’t fully know the goals of my characters. So when I’m going through my editing, I am editing for that.

And we will have pretty much a therapy session where I will sit down and be like, hey, I’ve written this out. And I get that at the end of this book, you are at this level. At the beginning of the book, you are over here.

Are there any important details in the middle of this book that I should know about? Because honestly, my characters are smarter than me. They write themselves on that page.

They write in things that I didn’t know existed the first time I wrote the book. So doing that second edit, I actually learn more about my characters because for some reason, and any panther will agree, they write themselves. They put their own thing into the book and you don’t always catch it until you read back through the book, which sounds really weird because we’re writing it.

But like, I didn’t notice that two of my characters fell in love until two thirds of the book in on Scandal’s Pen. Originally, my brain was like, yeah, I’ve got friends. I don’t have a subplot of a romance.

Yeah. They thought otherwise.

[V.E. Griffith]
Sometimes characters will do things that you’re not planning on them to do. That happens to me too. So sometimes, yeah, sometimes you have to change.

Yeah, I go with it. Sometimes that I have to change my plan. I do plan, but sometimes I have to change the plan as they say in the military context, you know, your plan never survives first contact with the enemy.

So sometimes it happens. The other thing that I look for when I’m editing my characters is their growth arc. Where are they when they start emotionally, physically, in terms of their relationship with other characters, where do they end emotionally, physically, in terms of relationship with other characters?

I believe that readers don’t read just for a series of events and dialogue between characters. They want to go on an emotional journey. A reader will never tell you that, but they want to experience something, not just read something.

So, and that experience is offered to them through the perspective of my characters. So I need to know how the characters grow and change through the text of the story. Whether I’m doing a hero’s journey or I’m doing a heroine’s journey, or I’m doing some other kind of story, I need to make sure that my characters grow and change unless there is some specific reason why they do not.

[Miss Catherine M.H.]
That makes sense. It’s interesting to hear how strict you almost are with editing your characters and I’m very like, all right, sure, let’s go do whatever you want.

[V.E. Griffith]
That’s one of the differences between us and I think it’s kind of cool. I could, I could never pants my way through a character. I don’t think, I think that they would not make any sense the way that I would write them in that way.

And if they don’t make any sense, a reader is not going to, is going to lose interest in a character or be confused by a character. And I don’t want that. I want a reader experience that is not necessarily easy depending on the type of work I’m writing, but is fulfilling and interesting and the way that I know how to do that is through growth arc of the character because the character is the way that the reader experiences the story.

[Miss Catherine M.H.]
And I think us as readers, there’s always a book that we will go back to because we love the character. There is always going to be a book crush. It’s some of the reasons, you know, why a sell so well, I’ve had my fair share of book crushes.

My first one was new mayor followed by Bobby Penn dragon followed by probably Edward Cullen from twilight. Oh yeah. I was, I was, uh, although I went back and forth between Jacob.

So I, I wasn’t a full team Edward. Cause I was like, you know what? Being human wouldn’t be too bad.

[V.E. Griffith]
My favorite character of all time has to be the deliverator from snow crash by Neil Stevenson. Um, the deliverators real name is hero protagonist, which I think is a great name. So, um, I think his, I believe his full name is hero or hero protagonist, but he just calls himself hero.

So with an eye to be fair, but I think it’s pretty cool. I did the audio book first and the way it sounds just is perfect for me, hero protagonist. So, um, but I love the character.

What about a book crush? A book crush.

[Miss Catherine M.H.]
I think it would be him. Really? Yeah.

Like you would totally date him if he was real.

[V.E. Griffith]
I think I would. He’s got the kind of intelligence and street smarts and emotional makeup that I really like, even though to be fair, I am totally straight. And it’s all, you know, it’s all fantasy, but I think it’s hero.

[Miss Catherine M.H.]
Cause I definitely have my favorite characters. I visit, but then I had like my favorite, like, Oh my God, I’m in love with you characters.

[V.E. Griffith]
Yeah, I understand. And sometimes we do fall in love with our characters and that’s a great thing when we’re dealing with when readers do that, because they want, they then want to finish consuming the story, which is what we want.

[Miss Catherine M.H.]
And if you cry hysterically over the fact that you have killed one of your own characters, then you know, it’s a good death. Like, you know, that that death was very important to the book usually, because if you could just kill a character and you’re like, yeah, all right. We killed him.

But if you kill a character and you feel it, you know, the readers are going to feel, feel that. I have a character death in one of my books that is super hard for me. Um, I wrote it at seven o’clock in the morning and ruined my entire day because this character was never supposed to have died, but the scene I was writing, oh, it need it.

Like it fit so well. He came into like my office and was like, just so you know, I’m dying today. And I was like, yeah, all right, whatever.

And then I wrote the scene. I was like, you’re dead. And it ruined my entire day.

And every time I’ve had to edit that scene, it’s been really hard. So I hope it hits my, my like readers just as hard.

[V.E. Griffith]
I think it might, you never know. So I think that about covers how I do characters. I do this in passes and so it makes it easier for me to look for stuff that I am specifically looking for.

I specifically go through and I look at their physical traits. I make sure that my descriptions are not quite as sexist as I initially write them. I, then I go through and I look at their emotions.

I look at their dialogue characteristics. I look at their attitudes. I look at their growth arc each in a separate pass so that I am concentrating on one thing at a time because I have found that multitasking in terms of editing does not work for me and I wind up with a spaghetti mess.

[Miss Catherine M.H.]
I’m impressed. I do it all in one go. Like characters is one section of my editing.

So it’s like this pass is strictly related to any character in my book.

[V.E. Griffith]
Now that doesn’t mean necessarily that I have to read my book five times, but I do have to skim it and I do have to, I mean, I know it pretty well because I wrote the damn thing, but I do have to skim it and I do have to go through each scene and make sure that the characters come across the way I need them to, to promote the growth arc of the story.

[Miss Catherine M.H.]
What edit pass would your characters be?

[V.E. Griffith]
It’s one of the first, one of the first passes because they’re so important.

[Miss Catherine M.H.]
Wow. It’s my third pass. So, you know, you write the first book and then the, the second draft is all about plot for me.

Plot and subplot to make sure, cause I’m pantsing to make sure that that’s solid and it’s in there correctly. And then it’s all about characters on my next pass.

[V.E. Griffith]
That makes sense because I put my plot together earlier in my process. I tend to feel like I have a better handle on my plot from the beginning because I’m using my outline system as sort of checkpoints to make sure that I hit every point along the way in terms of plot.

[Miss Catherine M.H.]
Okay. That makes sense. Cause yeah, the difference in our, in our writing styles.

[V.E. Griffith]
Yep. Right. I think that about covers it.

Did we miss anything, Ms. Catherine?

[Miss Catherine M.H.]
I don’t think so, but maybe you need to get an office in your head that your characters can come stop in.

[V.E. Griffith]
Maybe, but I don’t think the couch is going to be green.

[Miss Catherine M.H.]
I don’t know why the couch is green or that there’s pigeons on the fire escape. They just are. Sometimes there’s more than one pigeon that is, I don’t know.

Filing cabinets are silver, walls are white. There is a carpet on the ground. It’s like beige.

[V.E. Griffith]
Do the pigeons poop on the fire escape?

[Miss Catherine M.H.]
Probably, but I haven’t, I’ve never actually gone on the fire escape in like my mind. So I don’t know. It’s just there.

The window’s open and it’s always like summer.

[V.E. Griffith]
Okay. Well, there we go for now.

[Miss Catherine M.H.]
You guys stay magical.

[V.E. Griffith]
Bye.