Getting to Know Your Characters by Jeannie Campbell, Part Two

This week, guest Jeannie Campbell continues with her series: Getting to Know Your Characters: Four Questions Your Character Must Answer and Why.  Click here if you missed last week’s question: What is your biggest fear?

On to the next question!

Getting to Know Your Characters: Part Two

by Jeannie Campbell

Question 2: What is your biggest accomplishment?

When a character feels accomplishment, this is a source of pride. I learn a lot from clients when I ask them what’s gone well in their life or what makes them proud because the answer is so subjective. 

When someone tells me that their biggest accomplishment was getting a high school diploma, that answer tells me a lot about their upbringing, their challenges, their background. If someone tells me their greatest accomplishment was having a child, that immediately gives me some indication of their values, self-esteem, and self-worth. 

Of course, context matters. In the first example, if I learn that I’m talking to a former child star who never went to school because he or she lived on a television set, that would change my perception. In the second example, if the person told me they had tried having a child for seven years, that persistence would also help me interpret their accomplishment in a different light.

The answer to this question might reveal a time when the character showed great courage in the face of danger or kept their integrity when faced with the opportunity to cheat. The joy that a character feels from their moment in the spotlight, so to speak, can follow them through their life and be a constant reminder of how good life used to be, or it can be held as a standard they seek to attain again and again. I wish I could tell you how many clients are stuck in their “glory days” and can’t seem to move on because they see nothing of worth in their current lives.

As an aside, it’s interesting to ask your character how far back in their life the accomplishment occurred. How old were they? And what have they done since then? These questions really dig in deep at the core of the character, helping you get to know them even better.

Join me next week as we look into a character’s biggest regret.

Jeannie Campbell is a Licensed Marriage and Family Therapist (MFC # 45366) in the state of California. She is Head of Clinical Services for a large non-profit in Humboldt County, and enjoys working mainly with children and parents. Two of her “therapeutic romance” manuscripts have garnered the high praise of being finalists in the Genesis Contest for unpublished writers, sponsored by the American Christian Fiction Writers (ACFW), of which she is an active member. She writes a popular monthly column for Christian Fiction Online Magazine and has been featured in many other e-zines, newspapers, and blogs.

Getting to Know Your Characters by Jeannie Campbell, Part One

Hey writers, Annette here. Today Jeannie Campbell begins a new series: Getting to Know Your Characters: Four Questions Your Character Must Answer and Why. She's the "character therapist." Let's pull up a couch and learn something, shall we?

Getting to Know Your Characters: Part One

by Jeannie Campbell

I've found that there are several questions that every character needs to answer in order for his or her author to get to know them better. For this reason, I’ve included these questions and more in my character intake form.

For this series, I want to take a look at each of these questions and discuss why they are so important. Be sure to come back each Monday in August to get all of the info!

Question 1: What is your greatest fear?

While this is not the first question on my form (I ask for basic info like name and age first), it’s perhaps one of the most important. Our fears, which usually center around a limitation or a failure, perhaps a disappointment or frustration, hold the key to our biggest vulnerability.

The same is true for characters.

Fear is fundamental—present in every living thing. Every reader can relate to it in a book simply because of its existence in a character’s life. A reader might not be able to relate to the specific fear your character has, but you draw them in simply because the character fears.

We all have fears, and how we go about relating or not relating to that fear says a lot about us and our fictional counterparts.

Some characters stare fear in the face, like Bella Swan. Yes, they're scared, but perhaps excited and energized at the same time Some go to great lengths to minimize opportunities for a fear to manifest, like Edward Cullen running away from Bella at various times in the Twilight saga.

An author has to have an understanding of what drives their character's fears too. If I give my character a fear of, say, bees, then I need to have in mind a plausible reason why she fears them, like her finding her father dead in the garden from anaphylactic shock due to bee sting.

So give this some thought for your MC. Fears can absolutely define a person, so what does your character's fears say about him or her?


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Jeannie Campbell is a Licensed Marriage and Family Therapist (MFC # 45366) in the state of California. She is Head of Clinical Services for a large non-profit in Humboldt County, and enjoys working mainly with children and parents. Two of her “therapeutic romance” manuscripts have garnered the high praise of being finalists in the Genesis Contest for unpublished writers, sponsored by the American Christian Fiction Writers (ACFW), of which she is an active member. She writes a popular monthly column for Christian Fiction Online Magazine and has been featured in many other e-zines, newspapers, and blogs.

The Character Therapist Blog

It’s Writer’s Journey Wednesday, and today we’re featuring a unique blog for writers. The Character Therapist was created by writer and licensed therapist, Jeannie Campbell. We invited Jeannie to visit and explain exactly what The Character Therapist offers novelists as they continue on their journey to publication.

Character Therapy: The Basics

by Jeannie Campbell

WHAT IT IS

Character Therapist [kar-ik-ter ther-uh-pist] noun. A person trained in the use of psychological methods for diagnosing and evaluating fictional characters to help authors write more realistically.

This is what I do. So how can you—a published or aspiring writer—and your beloved characters benefit? Rather than tell you, I’ll give you a few examples of the types of questions I field each week.

* “I have the man so tied to his mother that he can't break away from her. Do I need a good reason behind this?”

* “How would compartmentalizing parts of self damage a person? How would the buried parts manifest themselves? How easy would it be to slip up? He's pretended to be someone else for so long...what if he's that new person now, and can't find himself anymore?”

* It was brought to my attention it is against the law for a therapist to date a client for two years or something to that effect, but I took artistic license and played the story out the way I wanted to. Am I staring down the barrel of some serious issues here?

* “Is it feasible for a teenager with Asperger’s Syndrome to take a driving test, fail, and then want to take the test again?”

* “If someone has Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder and they are triggered, would they have ‘panic attacks’ that would send them to the hospital for a few days?”

* What makes a womanizer tick?

* If a child was young when they lost a parent, will they remember the parent? And if not, should they be reminded?

Internal motivations, effects of external conflicts, plot feasibility, character strengths and weaknesses, behavioral manifestations or limitations…a character therapist’s playground.

HOW IT WORKS

All I need to work with is a character sketch. I’ve gotten sketches that were a short paragraph to some several pages long. Some of the more fun assessments I’ve posted on my blog were the result of email “sessions” between the author and myself as we delved deeper.

I welcome specific questions, but otherwise, I look at the overall psychological picture. Quirks, pet peeves, family history, hobbies…all these things add up! I might not diagnose every one of the characters I do therapy on, but quite a few of them qualify.

Character therapy is just another tool in your writer’s toolbox to take your writing to the next level. Pick my brain so you don’t have to pick yours.

I look forward to therapizing…er…terrorizing…uh…analyzing your characters!

Jeannie Campbell is a California Licensed Marriage and Family Therapist. She received her Masters of Divinity with Specialization in Psychology and Counseling at New Orleans Baptist Theological Seminary and her BA in both psychology and journalism from the University of Mississippi. Her passion is helping those not afflicted with mental disorders to understand and have compassion on those who are. You can find her at The Character Therapist (where she posts Treatment Tuesdays and Thursday Therapeutic Thoughts) and her writing blog, Where Romance Meets Therapy.