What the Experts Say: Interview, Shawn Hopkins
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JOYCE: First, thank you for sharing your expertise with our readers. We appreciate your generosity. I'd like to turn now to character development. Your books, e.g., PROGENY and THE SOLOMON KEY, "blend the real world with things beyond our nature." How do you develop engaging characters within this realm?
SHAWN: As for the characters, I tend to begin with a concept and insert characters into it as the story demands the need for them. Obviously, you need a point-of-view (POV) and so that's where I start. That person is the easiest person to create in a way, because they have to be able to move the story along, which means their background, age, talents, etc kind of come in preprogrammed by the story. For example, in my novel The Solomon Key, it was necessary that my POV be some kind of ex-soldier/intelligence, otherwise he wouldn't survive to chapter six.
In Progeny, I needed vehicles to get a lot of information across to the reader. So the evolution of the story dictated that such knowledgeable characters be created. As I'm going through the prologue of my new novel, I'm trying to figure out a way to bring some human elements to the characters in the midst of a story that is a pretty basic and straightforward horror/suspense novel. In the midst of being chased by supernatural forces, I want the reader to feel the reality of what my characters are going through, which means a certain level of sympathy. I like giving my main characters some kind of personal struggle that haunts them, that makes them seem more human. I didn't do that in my first novel and it really bothered me afterwards. So my characters generally start out being molded for me based on what the story is going to require of them, but the back story, the struggles and hidden demons the characters have that will be worked through chapter to chapter are what I really have to plot out. Sometimes it takes a few chapters before I know a character well enough to create their past, but I try to start with some general idea.
JOYCE: What is the key to good character dialogue? Do you ascribe different
characteristics to the dialogue based on your character's traits?
SHAWN: It's funny you should ask that. One of my latest reviews claimed that my dialogue was "wooden." Whatever that means! So, I guess if you were to ask that reader, I really have no business answering this question.
However, I'll pretend that I do (so far that's the only negative review I've gotten, and it still managed to come with a couple of stars). Sometimes how good dialogue sounds depends on whose mouth it's coming from. If you've ever seen the Star Wars auditions with Kurt Russell (and others), they're reading the script and it's HORRIBLE! The script sounds like trash and makes the actors look just as bad. But then they bring Mark Hamill, Harrison Ford, and Carrie Fischer in to audition and suddenly it all works (though not even the great cast selected for the prequels could salvage that dialogue).
Anyway, I've noticed that if I'm reading a novel and the dialogue sounds unrealistic and boring, I can envision the characters as, say, Mel Gibson and Jodie Foster (or whoever), and then the dialogue suddenly works because I've infused their mannerisms and personality into the scene. I mean, if you were to read a novel about Jack Sparrow before seeing Johnny Depp act it out, you probably wouldn't have had the same amount of fun with the dialogue.
So I think that what I try to do is to construct the characters in such a way that their traits and personalities dictate how the readers interpret the dialogue. Does that make sense? I think the authors who really capture that are the ones who can have a whole page of back and forth dialogue between two characters without ever having to use a single word outside of the quotes to explain to the reader how the dialogue should be interpreted. You know exactly how sarcastic, funny, angry, etc. the characters are being based on the way the author has already familiarized you with them.
So I guess I try and get the reader to know the character's temperament so that when he/she is engaged in dialogue, they know how to read it. With that said, there's still bad dialogue. I've seen it in some books where you're just like, "Are you kidding? They'd never say that!" So if you can match the dialogue with the character's personality, then the two help define each other.
I'm not sure that I told you what the "key" is for dialogue… I guess just staying within the boundaries you've created with your character development. I personally LOVE the dialogue in Dean Koontz books. I think he does an amazing job at defining his characters with dialogue, which is kind of going at it from the other side, but he knows how to write and I'm still learning so… maybe someday my wooden dialogue will sprout some fertile branches and I'll be able to do that too!
*Shawn Hopkins is an independent author who has published four novels. Fascinated by humanity's mysterious past (and future), his four novels find their inspiration via some of history's stranger instances of the unknown.
His first novel, Noahic, was published in 2005 and is a YA action adventure story that served as the inspiration for Progeny. His other book, Even the Elect, is the first edition of The Solomon Key. It's a much longer version that pays special attention to a futuristic America that has been deceived into setting up a One World Government, resulting in a continuous police state rather than the freedom promised. Conspiratorial in its design, action-packed in its delivery, and theological in its application, ETE has made for some sleepless nights... The Solomon Key is a streamlined production of the same story, though with slight modifications to the sociopolitical climate of the day (being implied rather that scrutinized), has gone through another edit, and is repackaged for a broader audience.
He is currently working on a sequel to Progeny and a prequel to The Solomon Key.
For more information on Shawn, Go to Amazon.com: http:// http://tinyurl.com/8yhn7aa
http://www.shawnhopkinsauthor.com/
SHAWN: As for the characters, I tend to begin with a concept and insert characters into it as the story demands the need for them. Obviously, you need a point-of-view (POV) and so that's where I start. That person is the easiest person to create in a way, because they have to be able to move the story along, which means their background, age, talents, etc kind of come in preprogrammed by the story. For example, in my novel The Solomon Key, it was necessary that my POV be some kind of ex-soldier/intelligence, otherwise he wouldn't survive to chapter six.
In Progeny, I needed vehicles to get a lot of information across to the reader. So the evolution of the story dictated that such knowledgeable characters be created. As I'm going through the prologue of my new novel, I'm trying to figure out a way to bring some human elements to the characters in the midst of a story that is a pretty basic and straightforward horror/suspense novel. In the midst of being chased by supernatural forces, I want the reader to feel the reality of what my characters are going through, which means a certain level of sympathy. I like giving my main characters some kind of personal struggle that haunts them, that makes them seem more human. I didn't do that in my first novel and it really bothered me afterwards. So my characters generally start out being molded for me based on what the story is going to require of them, but the back story, the struggles and hidden demons the characters have that will be worked through chapter to chapter are what I really have to plot out. Sometimes it takes a few chapters before I know a character well enough to create their past, but I try to start with some general idea.
JOYCE: What is the key to good character dialogue? Do you ascribe different
characteristics to the dialogue based on your character's traits?
SHAWN: It's funny you should ask that. One of my latest reviews claimed that my dialogue was "wooden." Whatever that means! So, I guess if you were to ask that reader, I really have no business answering this question.
However, I'll pretend that I do (so far that's the only negative review I've gotten, and it still managed to come with a couple of stars). Sometimes how good dialogue sounds depends on whose mouth it's coming from. If you've ever seen the Star Wars auditions with Kurt Russell (and others), they're reading the script and it's HORRIBLE! The script sounds like trash and makes the actors look just as bad. But then they bring Mark Hamill, Harrison Ford, and Carrie Fischer in to audition and suddenly it all works (though not even the great cast selected for the prequels could salvage that dialogue).
Anyway, I've noticed that if I'm reading a novel and the dialogue sounds unrealistic and boring, I can envision the characters as, say, Mel Gibson and Jodie Foster (or whoever), and then the dialogue suddenly works because I've infused their mannerisms and personality into the scene. I mean, if you were to read a novel about Jack Sparrow before seeing Johnny Depp act it out, you probably wouldn't have had the same amount of fun with the dialogue.
So I think that what I try to do is to construct the characters in such a way that their traits and personalities dictate how the readers interpret the dialogue. Does that make sense? I think the authors who really capture that are the ones who can have a whole page of back and forth dialogue between two characters without ever having to use a single word outside of the quotes to explain to the reader how the dialogue should be interpreted. You know exactly how sarcastic, funny, angry, etc. the characters are being based on the way the author has already familiarized you with them.
So I guess I try and get the reader to know the character's temperament so that when he/she is engaged in dialogue, they know how to read it. With that said, there's still bad dialogue. I've seen it in some books where you're just like, "Are you kidding? They'd never say that!" So if you can match the dialogue with the character's personality, then the two help define each other.
I'm not sure that I told you what the "key" is for dialogue… I guess just staying within the boundaries you've created with your character development. I personally LOVE the dialogue in Dean Koontz books. I think he does an amazing job at defining his characters with dialogue, which is kind of going at it from the other side, but he knows how to write and I'm still learning so… maybe someday my wooden dialogue will sprout some fertile branches and I'll be able to do that too!
*Shawn Hopkins is an independent author who has published four novels. Fascinated by humanity's mysterious past (and future), his four novels find their inspiration via some of history's stranger instances of the unknown.
His first novel, Noahic, was published in 2005 and is a YA action adventure story that served as the inspiration for Progeny. His other book, Even the Elect, is the first edition of The Solomon Key. It's a much longer version that pays special attention to a futuristic America that has been deceived into setting up a One World Government, resulting in a continuous police state rather than the freedom promised. Conspiratorial in its design, action-packed in its delivery, and theological in its application, ETE has made for some sleepless nights... The Solomon Key is a streamlined production of the same story, though with slight modifications to the sociopolitical climate of the day (being implied rather that scrutinized), has gone through another edit, and is repackaged for a broader audience.
He is currently working on a sequel to Progeny and a prequel to The Solomon Key.
For more information on Shawn, Go to Amazon.com: http:// http://tinyurl.com/8yhn7aa
http://www.shawnhopkinsauthor.com/
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