Who was that character?
Characters are the mainstay of our stories, the lynchpin around which all the action takes place.
Whilst it’s possible to have a novel where the protagonist and antagonist are two-dimensional, where the action is so strong it can carry us along without bothering about the characterizations, it can only be done with considerable skill. Having a rounded and complex character is much more likely to hold the reader’s attention – and that’s what we want, isn’t it?.
There are many different ways of coming at character development, some writers might simply start with a name, others with a job, or a hobby. For minor characters, where less detail is required, I’ve even just started with a ‘placeholder’, a name (or even initials) which I’ll change later.
For our main characters, it’s crucial to develop someone who our reader can be rooting for, who they actually care about. Now, you might not need to have every fact and foible of your protagonist in place when you start writing, but they’ll need to be fully rounded by the time you finish. Here are a few of the elements I try to consider:
Name: Like it or not, some names invoke images - Cormoran Strike, for example, in the Robert Galbraith (J K Rowling) novels has an edgy feel, whereas Harry Potter, by the same author, evokes ordinariness. We might find, of course, that the actual character doesn’t entirely match what their name suggests e.g. an ordinary boy who has wizarding skills, but the name itself draws us into a set of assumptions.
On the margins: No-one is usually that bothered (in a novel) about what happens to Joe Ordinary. On the spectrum of character attributes, it is those who have something out of the ordinary who pique our interest. For example, James Patterson created the detective Mike Bennett who has ten adopted children – a genius alternative to the divorced, alcoholic, corrupt cop we often encounter.
Avoid stereotypes: As in the above example, it’s easy to fall into the trap of making a stereotypical character. If we have the divorced, alcoholic, corrupt cop then our reader can guess there’s almost only one way the story can go if they’re to find redemption in the end. There are, of course, all sorts of racial and gender stereotypes to be avoided but that’s a much bigger subject.
When you see a black-hatted gun fighter come on the screen in a western,
you say to yourself, "Ah, the bad guy." If you see a handsome,
boyish, clean-shaven fella, a flower in his holster instead
of a gun, a lasso twirling at his side, you say to yourself, "Ah,
the good guy."
When all the reader's expectations about a character are fulfilled,
when there are no contradictions or surprises in the character,
you have a stereotyped character. If the old granny is a
retired police lieutenant and the bookish intellectual secretly loves
boxing, you have a start on breaking the stereotype.
James N Frey How to Write a Damn Good Novel
Believability: Reading is often about suspension of disbelief, but our characters still need to be believable. Their actions need to be consistent with the character we’ve created and, at the same time, allow them to be ‘on the margins’ as mentioned earlier. If, for example, our normally mild-mannered librarian is an accomplished kick-boxer then they’d be believable if they tackled some bank robbers, but less so if their hobby is sky-diving despite it also being slightly off-scale. On the other hand, our characters need to be complex and contradictory
Complexity: Real people are complex, so our characters need to be. No-one is all good, nor all bad. A blood-thirsty pirate might still be kind to his mother, a loving mother might still be cruel to her husband, etc. These contradictions help make our characters more human.
Needy: If our story is to mean anything, our main characters must not only want something, they must need something. Often this need is subconscious. For example, our detective might consciously want to catch the bad guy, but they subconsciously need to ditch their cocaine habit in order to regain their self-worth.
So. How do you get to this?
There are lots of character development templates out on the ‘net and some programs like Plottr and Scrivener have templates built in. In my experience, some are more useful than others but it’s probably a good idea to be able to distinguish between those which only look at physical attributes and those which go beyond that. For example, it is useful to know your character has blue eyes and blond hair, but it may not be relevant to how they behave or react to situations. If, on the other hand, your template tells you that the character has been in a war zone and been injured, this might be more relevant to their actions.
One way of building the picture is to write a journal as the character, having them explain how they arrived at the situation they are in at the start of the story.
Another would be to interview them as if on the radio or as a therapist.
In an earlier post, I talked about mind-mapping, and I’ve used that with some success to explore a character.
Whichever way you build up the picture, give it some time, let the ideas percolate – and keep a record for reference and refining throughout the writing.
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