Customer Reviews

The Writer's Digest Sourcebook for Building Believable Characters

5 star:		(10)
4 star:		(6)
3 star:		(4)
2 star:		(3)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

This is a wonderful book for nailing down a charcter's appearance and their basic personality. I loved the thesaraus of noses, eye color, etc. The personality index can really be a motivational tool.

However, the facial expression section is at times simply laughable. "heart wrung with pity" is simply terrible and "lump in one's throat" is older than the hills. Avoid copying anything from this section.

Another complaint is the accent section, as the reviewer below pointed out. A writer's book I once read said that accents are to be avoided "as they are not read so much as translated". I completely agree with this opinion. "Oi Loik to avoid accents, mite"

All in all, buy this when worrying about very general character creation, it can be a real help

Supposedly a "thesaurus" for character development, McCutcheon's book seems like a sure-fire guide to creating cliched, stock characters. Chapters cover topics like personality traits, facial expressions, and dress, but they are simply lists of words anyone could extract from a conventional thesaurus or dictionary. Worse, his phrases are stale and hackneyed. For example, under "Personality/Identity (Happy/Jovial)", he lists chestnuts like "face aglow with good cheer" and "eyes are like mirthful crescents." Since most pages are simply lists of words, averaging about 30 words per page, there is a LOT of white space. Most disturbing to me was his listing of "Dialects and Foreign Speech." According to him a Southerner would sit in a "cheer" and "drank" some "Co-Cola" or a "bare." Or a Cockney would say, "Bloody well roit, mite." If you were an ethnologist you might transcribe speech in this manner, but this dialect style has been passe in fiction for 50 years. Overall, I found the book to be of little value and a disappointment compared with some of Mr. McCutcheon's others books.

If you are a beginning writer, you NEED this book. I've critiqued a lot of manuscripts, and without exception, the authors could benefit from this book and did, once I suggested they buy it. Of the three writing books I keep beside my computer, this is the most used. I love it!

I give this 3 stars because of the Character Questionnaire. It was really helpful and I feel that after answering it, I now know all my characters so much better.

However I can not recommend the actual purchase of this book (borrow a friends, buy a used copy or loan from library).

Over two-thirds of this book is nothing more than a thesaurus. After I read the first page, I began skipping paragraphs and soon, whole sections. Then I read the Questionnaire and used it for all my characters. This was helpful. But unfortunately, I'm now finished with it. Finding descriptive words, etc. is not an issue for me, so didn't find it particularly helpful.

If you want more about the mechanics of Characters, I rec'd Characters & Viewpoints by Orson Scott Card.

Ask anyone who is someone in the writing field and they'll tell you: one the most (if not "the") most important aspects of fiction writing, is the way you, as a writer, present your characters. Well, if you are among the evergrowing community of writers, you simply can't do without this book. This is very much a Bible for character building and I can certainly guarantee that you'll come up with darn good profiles and a very organized outline to begin any story. The book is divided into three sections. The first one is a transcript of a discussion among six currently published authors and their advice on character building. The second part is my favorite in the book: a "character questionnaire", that lets you build an extremely detailed profile for your main characters in a novel, so that you don't make any mistakes in the narrative. Seems very much as detailed as an FBI file must be, including everything from name, height, eye color; to political ideas, opinions on abortion, favorite dress-code and restaurant, etc. The third part is the thesaurus, geared specifically towards characterization: body attributes, foreign names, types of nose, etc.

Keep this volume beside your word processor. Use it often. It's a tool that could make all the difference, especially if you are a begginning writer.

It used to be that I would sit down, and I would write a story. At the beginning of the story, the character would be a 30 year old female with brown hair, green eyes, and a black beard... And at the end of the story, she would have evolved to a 13 year old boy with blue hair, purple eyes, and a pink dress... Well, o.k... I admit, I may be exhaggerating a small amount. But, when I had no sort of organization for my characters, many times, I would find that my characters were not consistant and therefor lost appeal to the human eye. But, then my fairy god-mother came along and dropped this book on my front porch. I planted it in the ground and suddenly my thoughts began to grow. It gave shelter, and I whole meaning of life to my characters. It gave them personality, it gave them strength. It gave them everything they needed to be believable. This book is in all sense, a gift of heaven. The Character Questionnaire is well-thought out and makes room for the writer to fill in all aspects needed for characters in the story. From the color of one's eyes, to whether or not they smoke, flatulate in public, etc. And then, there are lists, which you can browse through, which I found to be well-organized. I could find anything I needed for my characters. It was more of a connect the dots, and yet, the list were so comprehensive and large, that you could never run out of characters to make. You are still doing most of the creation, but the book just guides you through the process. I deffinately recommend this book to all new writers. However, even the most advanced of writers can benefit from this and I urge them to give it a try. At least try checking it out from the local library for a test-drive. Until next time, write well and have a wonderful life!

This book is a simple source to draw from in regards to eye color, build or form, hair color, etc., but the options to choose from are limited. It might be a bit useful if you want to write a short story and need a quick reference guide when you're stuck on a particular physical aspect of a character, but that's only if you're feeling desperate. As far as writing up detailed character sheets/references beforehand, (for a novel) I wouldn't recommend this book. Definitely do not refer to the Southern Dialect page. It is ridiculous. I felt insulted when reading over it. This is not true Southern dialect, I know because I've lived in the South my entire life. The only times I've heard this idiotic misuse of Southern dialect were in B movies where details were highly exaggerated for the sake of humor, or for ridiculing the South.
All in all, I wouldn't say this book is an effective writing tool to be utilized.

Informative, but only skims the surface really. For new writers, this is a good beginning resource. But for more experienced writers, this will not be of much help as it really does not go too deeply into its claim of Building Believable Characters.

After finishing this book, I found myself brainstorming for character ideas. I had the feeling this was meant to help make an existing character more believable or used as a reference to get character ideas.

I found the thesaurus to be a handy tool for brainstorming and writing exercises. Though some of the thesaurus phrases might seem cliched (particularly expressing emotion), most of it gave me better insight into character portrayal.

Another useful aspect of the book is the interviews from a panel of successful writers for their advice on various topics. I found the different point of views to be helpful. When I went back to do some editting, it helped me to focus on possible troublespots.

The best part about the book is the amount of character traits and flaws available. They had everything from phobias to hobbies, with brief explanations where things might get confusing. I didn't care too much for the clothing section, since a lot of it is vague, but it did point me in the right direction for dressing up my characters.

If you are stuck on character building, or want to flesh out existing characters, this is a good book to start out with. Four stars for usefulness and the many times I went back and used it.

If you really need this book to create characters for stories, then you're in trouble. Any character created solely from this book would be robotic, fake, and one dimensional. I bought this book because it looked like something that could keep me honest, so to speak, to make sure that I wasn't missing anything in the creation of my own characters.

There is an extensive character questionnaire in the book that can be useful if you want to test yourself, to see how well you know your own characters. But you shouldn't use it to create a character. Characters come alive in your mind and in your soul, not on a form.