Customer Reviews

Creating Characters: How to Build Story People

5 star:		(7)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(4)
2 star:		(1)
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I purchased the first edition of Creating Characters: How to Build Story People in September 1990 and have had endless hours of inspiration and continuous hours of story people development fun. The examples given in this book open the gate of your creativity, along with opening your mind to wonderful ideas of building story people.

From this book you'll learn barn-brush characterization. All you need to start. It focuses you on the basics and it`s easy for both reader and writer to understand.

If you are a writer and find yourself bored to tears, purchase Dwight V. Swain's Creating Characters: How to Build Story People and summarize for yourself (better yet, create two characters and let their dialogue tell you what a bargain this book is for $11.99). I read this book over and over to become reinspired.

If you are not interested in story people development and are a reader of fiction, purchase this book, if only to experience the magic touch a writer uses to create story people you will call your friends the rest of your life.

Thank You: Dwight V. Swain For Writing This Wonderful Book

There are some books you read and then put away and there are books you'll use. This is one you'll use. Swain tells us how to create all types of story characters, how to make them credible, how to describe them, how to motivate them and much more. The book's easy, fun-to-read style makes it ideal for beginners, though more experienced writers can profit as well. Every page offers something worthwhile!

Over the years I've bought a lot of books on writing, and I can honestly say that the insights presented here are among the practical and useful.

Swain understands that characters are NOT folks but instead are constructs, partially based on folks and partially based on the author's needs.

I can highly recommend this book.

Years ago, at a garage sale, I stumbled on a copy of Swain's other book, Techniques Of The Selling Writer. Took it home, looked at it and decided it was beneath me -- or at least below the level I fancied I was writing at. A few years later, after three more novel rejections, I took it out and read it. Really read it. It's a basic book, I won't say it isn't. But it covered so much stuff I'd somehow missed. Like the creation of story scenes. When it had sometime to settle in my psyche I started selling short stories. Shortly after, I sold novels. I have now sold eight books -- some not under my own name -- and can live from my writing.

As for this book -- I never had a need for a character book. It's one of the things I do intuitively. However, when my husband was struggling with characters I thought "Well, Swain helped me, so..." and I bought him this book. He studied it and his next story was published.

I can't garantee these results -- there's so much to the selling of a story or novel that does NOT depend on technique of any sort -- but I can tell you that when I'm mentoring someone -- which I've done a lot since then -- and their issue seems to be technique, Swain's books usually cure the problem.

Dwight Swain taught writing for many years and helped dozens of writers on their way to publication, including me. He practiced what he preached and sold successfully all his lifetime. There is no mystification in this guide, but solid how-to. An indispensable tool for the beginner and useful tips for the professional. Highly recommended. Jeanne Williams, Award-winning author of over 60 books

This book was actually kind of painful to read. It was not awfully written, but there were two factors that made this not a joy for me. 1.) It's quite dated. I expected some of this considering the book is 20 years old, but for a modern writer it's quite off base when it discusses cultural norms, the state of the world and even writing careers and technology. So much so that it's jarring. 2.) I know most of the stuff already written about here. On the plus side, I did pick up a few ideas, and the chapter about writing humor opened my eyes to a few things. Again, not written badly, just not right for me at this point; 15 or 20 years ago I probably would have enjoyed it more.

Although this is a required text book for my Short Story Writing class, it is very helpful and interesting. Full of ideas on how to create characters and get fresh ideas, build and personalize and make characters human. Great choice for my class.

For any writer, seasoned or not, this is one tool you should have at your finger tips. By far the best book on learning to fabricate believable story people.
Swain is a master at the craft, no other book on the market can compare.
An excellent resource and educational tool.

There is some good information in Dwight Swain's book for building characters, but you'll have to dig to find it. Personally, I felt that Swain's book lacked organization and tended to ramble about character traits never really getting down to the meat and potatoes of the subject. The examples seemed to have been put together in a rushed way without much thought. It's almost as if Swain wanted us to know that anything was possible.

It's true that anything is possible in writing. That is the reason that many of us become writers, but our unlimited possibilities need to be tempered with believability. I was hoping that Swain would spend more time on discussing what makes a character believable, and what makes a character more real and less like a cardboard cutout. Swain does hit this mark on occasion, but it is nothing more than accidental as the information I was looking for was few and far between.

I also found Swain difficult to read because of his rambling. He starts to explain his idea in a new way before finishing the previous explanation. The book seems like he wrote it from the top of his head in one sitting. I was disappointed in this book, and I don't feel that my characters gained anything significant for the time that I spent reading it. There are better books out there that get more involved with characterization without taking up the space.

A whole book on characterization may be just what you need. Is this it? The chapters treat the usual aspects or problems of characterization: making your character real, motivating your character, giving some background of your character, offbeat characters, heroes, amusing characters, describing characters, characterization through dialogue, characters in unfamiliar settings. The central thing, says the author, is to make your character care about something-your character, not necessarily your reader. "It doesn't matter whether this something is major or minor, cataclysmic or trivial." (p.1) Doesn't it? How is the reader going to feel about a character who cares about something trivial? According to Swain, this is unimportant. But be forewarned: it may be important to your reader if you choose such a protagonist for your novel.
Further: "Finding a character means...giving human form to aspects of yourself that you like, or dislike, or wish you had. ... all your characters are you." (p. 7) Besides the fact that many would disagree with this recommendation, it is risky advice.
The details of each chapter also will be familiar to anyone who has read other books on writing: give the sex, age, vocation and manner. (p. 15) "Manner is...style." (p. 16) And so it goes. How do you do characterization? Adjectives and incidents. (p. 18) This is the kind of vanilla advice this book consists of. "It's to your advantage to consider the tastes and prejudices of your particular audience." (p. 54) Such redundant statements are not so much untrue as they are unhelpful. To make your character likeable: "The character is striving to attain something. ...The character is today-slanted.... The character does not contradict readers' feelings or their basic beliefs." If only if were that simple!
In sum, if you haven't read many books on fiction-writing, you can get the basic ideas from this book, but you run the risk of thinking that you know how to do characterization after you finish. You won't. You'll only know some of the kinds of thing you can do. And even then, you won't have a clue which work better for your purposes than others.