Actually writing characters

Yes, it's that time of the year again where an amateur asks a cliche'd, silly question.

So, I have been thinking about my setting and all, and upon chatting with a friend of mine about our characters, I figured out my characters were very... bland. Something on the lines of "loyal guy who is determined to fulfill his duty and live up to his standards", or "lazy teenager who is actually smart but too lazy to dedicate and do hard work, who is also silly and honest", this sort of thing.

I've noticed these characters are very... bidimensional, if not unidimensional. When I can define the "loyal guy" as just someone who is dedicated and determined for his cause, I know I haven't given much thought about him, but merely about what he is supposed to do in the plot... which makes him no less than an NPC, even though he -is- one of the main characters of my setting (roughly the equivalent of the Obi-Wan archetype).

The "lazy teenager" is also one of the main characters - one of those who are trained by the "loyal guy". But if I can describle him just as a smart but lazy guy who crams and improvises when he has work to do, he's a very boring character.

tl;dr (I'm bad with words, sorry), I feel like my characters solely exist for the sake of fulfilling their finality to the plot. They don't seem like "people" at all. I want to make them seem more like "people", but I don't know how. Help? I'd also appreciate an exercise for working out that flaw of mine, if one can provide it. I'm very dumb with theories, tbh.

You haven't mentioned it so I will assume that you had not done it before, or at least not often enough for it to matter, so I recommend taking a look at the people you interact with, the ones in real life, and trying to see all facets of them or at least as many as you can.

Because, in the end, if you only look at one kind of situation, then most people are one-dimensional. It's the fact that we are more complex by that and don't necessarily behave the same when the circumstances change that makes us potentially interesting.

The same thing about your characters. Because, in the end, they are there to do their part of the plot and be done with it. The key is making it so that this is not the only facet of them that the readers see.

Take the example you gave, the one with the "loyal guy", for example. Loyalty is one thing but is it loyalty in everything or just in certain aspects of life or towards certain people? Why is such a loyalty here in the first place? Does said loyalty even matter when it appears to play no part in whatever is happening to the character?

Look at people, notice the fact that we are all multi-faceted and have our own quirks, some of which define us and some of which are nothing more than minute curiosities, regardless of what we show to people. And then apply that to your characters: give them personality quirks, show how they react when exposed to something completely different from the norm, and remember that whatever trait you assign to a character there is always need for the "why" to be there even if the readers never get to see some of those "whys".

There's a book called "The Geography of Thought". I'd recommend it to you, Rap.

Besides that, though, one trick is to not adhere to just one plot. If they can only show one dimension in one plot, add a sub-plot (ideally one that isn't the same situation as the A-plot) to force the story to show another side to them.

Another is to not think of characters as a list of quirks, and as entities whose quirks are some of their outward appearances (if not outright affectations).

I think I've understood the gist of it. Instead of focusing on quirks and each character's finality to the plot, I should also focus on their attitudes when dealing with issues. I also think the best way to flesh out their personality is by thinking about how they deal with issues, as it will give me a hint of how their psychological patterns led them to their actions.

I just disagree with the advise to base it on real people. People don't know how to deal with issues most of the time, or react in a bland way. It's like writing dialogue. Should we base it on how it is done in real life? Well, enough to make characters seem human, but also out of reality enough to make it interesting, because there are parts of dialogue between people that are just fillers or plainly bland, and readers don't really want much of that.

Of course you don't go around transcribing real conversations or borrowing people from your life to toss straight into your story. That's how you get Twilight's crap dialogue with super-annoying speech filler and Dante Alighieri showing his enemies in hell and his friends and idols in heaven. But looking to real life is a really good way to see how the parts fit together and how they inform and influence each other.

The way that I've developed characters involves a lot of asking myself 'why'. I often have basic one-note personality and a job as my starting points. A character I've been playing with recently is terse and subtle, and is a manager for a body of house staff. Why's he so quiet, and why does he work there? Oh, it's a remnant of his native language, and he wants to leave a mark by working for a very powerful family. Where'd he come from, what was that place like, and what made him so focused on leaving an impression on the world? Look at how that opened things up- it's like a scaled-down version of the Snowflake method. The questions just sort of occur to me randomly, while I'm doing other stuff, sometimes over the course of days and in this case over the course of over half a year (partially due to school).

It's normal to not get it at first. Character-building takes time, practice, a lot of stepping back and examining why something isn't working, and a lot of trial and error. My method might not work for you, or at least not immediately- even that took practice for me to ask more of the 'right' questions that add genuine depth. But it's certainly one way of approaching the problem.

You don't base it off of real people, Rapier. If that's how you approach the advice I gave you, you will fail.

The point is to look at real people, really look at them, and try to analyse them as characters in order to see how it all works together and to gain experience. And then, once you get enough experience, to try building your characters again in whatever way works for you. Because people in real life, in spite of their simplicity not unlike what you get in stories, tend to be more interesting once you get deep enough. So you look at them in order to see the "why"; but it's not the people who are important there, it's the "why", and that is the very reason why you are looking at people at all.

And if you can't find people who are actually interesting ... well, that's a whole different kind of problem, because then either you are out of luck as there really only are people bland as gruel around you, or you simply do not know how to look properly. Whichever it is, I know not, but confirm that it is not the latter before you assume it to be the former.

This is where you're wrong. Just because a character can be described as a broad archetype doesn't mean that they're boring. It's actually better if you've got a strong enough concept behind the character that you can describe them coherently with a single sentence. There should be more to the characters than that sentence, but having a strong core to work from is good.

This is a bigger problem. Possibly with your characters, but possibly with your plot as well. A character's decisions should influence the plot. If your characters' actions are going to be dictated by a plot that was decided on before they were fleshed out then you're going to have a really hard time making them interesting. Characters are defined by their actions and the choices they make. If the story doesn't let them make those choices, then they're really just interchangeable cogs with a little bit of decoration.

Letting your story be more character-driven might help. Does your character's loyalty cause conflict when something or someone he's loyal to comes into opposition with something else that's important to him? Does the other guy's laziness bite him in the ass in an important way?

Your character can have all the complexity in the world in your head, but if your story just reduces that to window dressing most of your audience isn't going to pick up on any of it.

This doesn't sound like a problem with writing the characters, though. It sounds like a problem with brainstorming characterization.

As Bloodsquirrel wrote above, a good determiner for character is plot. This isn't to say that characters ought to be reduced to plot devices, but it recognizes a creative process: events bring about emotional reactions that give characters motivation to do whatever the next event is going to be.

Maybe one of your characters is somewhat gormless. That's okay if it's a trait that changes during the story, and especially if their initial gormlessness gives you a way to establish the rules of the setting. Gormlessness, of course, can be bland, so there's got to be something else to them that's interesting or mysterious but doesn't contradict what you need. Example: Neverwhere by Neil Gaiman. Richard Mayhew is kind of whiny, but he gets bothered by random fortunetellers and dimension-hoppers and what they have to say is more interesting than Richard's own bland reaction to them. Also, he's kind to homeless people. As Neverwhere is a story about homeless fairy people, you see where it leads him.

If it's about actually writing characters, then give them their own voice and habitual mannerisms. You might be surprised what that leads to in your own brainstorming, or what it can suggest to the reader.

Maybe one character slouches and has no qualms about slapping people upside the head. What does that physical mannerism do to their speech mannerism? Physically, it makes no sense that it should, but characterization naturally builds on these things. Does such displays of violence make this character brave, or does it make them a bully? Any virtues or flaws can depend entirely on the context. Such violent tendencies can get them through a dangerous situation, or it can doom them.

Other character traits: scuffing the toe of their boot/sneaker into the ground, hair flipping or preening, trying to complete other people's sentences when the other person speaks too slowly, folding arms across the chest, humming in meditative concentration...

Also take into account character interactions. In any given scene, perhaps you'll need one character to be curious and another character to be cautious. What created those traits in their past, and how do they show it?

Maybe one character is high-energy and frenetic or easily distracted, whereas another is serene and contemplative, and a third is holding some emotion or energy in and seething. Meekness, honesty to the point of cruelty, honesty to the point of honesty, pragmatism, easy or eager manipulation, goodwill and gullibility, inventiveness, traditionalism...all of these are potential character traits.

What fits? What's needed?

Those are the questions.

edited 19th Aug '15 2:22:03 PM by Faemonic

Rap - base quirks off of real people, then, but make sure the characters aren't those people. In a sense, you are parodying those people, but playing it straight.

Pretty much that, yes. And the trick is to know what quirks play well with what other quirks and how it all looks together.

So basically what I wrote, but much more succinctly.

I'll keep that in mind when working again with my characters, thanks.

I've another question, though. It is about character presentation. It really won't matter to me if I make such an intricate character full of backstory and relevance (and influence) to the plot like Daenerys Targaryen, Aragorn or Rand al'Thor from the Wheel of Time series, so long as they are not presented well. I've been told about exploiting the facets of my characters, but how exactly do I do that in scenes? In other words, it's about how to show the work.

Well, to put it some words, that bit is about showing pieces of the character's characterisation by making them act, in the scenes you show them in, in a way that either shows new traits—ones that are part of the character but have not yet been presented to the readers—or reinforces the ones already shown (the "either" here means that some scenes do the former and some scenes do the latter, but you need to do both; though, of course, all the traits are new until you show and then reinforce them, so that's that too).

Because there's more to characters than just a single adjective. So, for example, someone who is presented as loyal might happen to also be hard-working and witty but bitter and afraid of having nothing. Or he might be lazy but a certified genius with courage to go with it when he actually bothers. And so on, and so on, there's a bajilion of possible iterations. So look at them the way you'd look at puzzles: don't hand the readers the finished work, but throw some loose pieces at them and then do that again and again until they put it all together on their own.

Now, how exactly you do it ... well, that depends on your style. But suffice to say, it's a "show, don't tell" thing as just telling people that the character is so-and-so pretty much defeats the point.


Also, I'm just guessing right now, but whoever mentioned "exploting" might have meant that you should use characters' traits to create suspense by making it so that a character you present has a combination of traits that makes it unclear what choice the character will make until it (the choice) is made; for example, having a character who is both loyal to someone who is currently in trouble and a bit of a coward, in order to have the character's decision to act or not act appear more meaningful. If that one is the case then it's pretty much something you need to plan ahead for, or alternatively something for which you start with loosely-defined characters and then leave space for "filler scenes" that will establish characters' traits once you do need those traits to be there.

You have a plot, don't you? The plot moves along because of scenes. So, let's say we're at the climax of, I don't know, mobsters have kidnapped one of the two characters for torture purposes, and the second of the two characters comes in for a rescue. Let's say that Adam is the loyal and driven guy whereas Zack is smart, lazy, silly, honest. Who in this plot is the kidnapped person? It depends on how tight your plot is, but as this is only a example, I don't know what you'd need. So, let's flip a coin...ah! Sorry, Adam...just let me tie you to this chair...

Adam grit his teeth, or what was left of his teeth, and the pain that shot through his skull told him that was a bad idea. He settled for a defiant glower at Don Fettuccine. "Zack isn't coming," Adam repeated, in a patronizing tone that he used on the youngest kids he babysat. "You're wasting your time."

Don Fettuccine raised a quizzical eyebrow. Their captive wasn't bargaining or bribing, as most did this late into the procedure. The boy must have had absolute faith in his friend's cowardice. At that thought, Don Fettuccine chuckled. "Such loyalty never goes unreciprocated, even by the worst of us." Then he sighed. "Still, you know Mr. Zachary better than I do...and..." The mob boss trailed off as he ambled over to the table and lifted up another torture implement to examine, as if the electric blender were a piece of jewelry. Adam gulped, but squared his shoulders as his torturer turned to face him.

"We always make time for what truly elates us," Don Fettuccine finished with a sickly grin.

Behind the mob boss, the garage door screeched as it opened. The Don turned, the act allowing Adam a glimpse of a moonlit silhouette of a scrawny teenaged boy with spiky hair. Adam's breath caught. The next moment, the garage door slammed shut. The invader moved, sneakers squeaking. Adam never believed that he would be happy to hear it.

"Zack!" Adam shouted, joyfully.

His rescuer drawled, "No need to sound so surprised."

"But Don Macaroni sent you coded puzzles to find where I was! He thought you were bored and loved to solve cases! I tried to convince him you were a lazy lump who was exactly as challenged as you deserved to be, but—"

Zack rolled his eyes. "It was a lot of trouble," he admitted, "But I'm not going to leave my best friend in the hands of some random sadist, you blockhead!" He stamped his foot to punctuate the jab, the victorious squeak echoing throughout the garage.

Adam coughed up a tooth. "So you must have brought backup, right?"

"Too much trouble," Zack said, with a dismissive wave of his hand.

Adam's smile faded. He looked from the muscled mob boss with the holstered gun to the boy genius. Boy opposite-of-genius, more like! Zack could have at least made the mob boss think the area was surrounded by police! Adam's shoulders slumped and he sagged his head. "I'm doomed!" He groaned, but his mind raced. There had to be some other way out of this, while Zack and the mob boss were distracted with each other...

That's only how I would do it. How you would do it would be different. Of course, your story is going to have a different plot, different setting, different stakes, different events, different turns, different tone, and all that. Maybe Zack's squeaky shoes are too silly, or you meant that "Zack" could be silly in a different way. I could do micro meta narrative analyses or whatever about Adam's conditioning or motivation for referring to Don Fettuccine as Don Macaroni instead of Mister Pasta, but I shouldn't, because the reader probably isn't going to care to think that hard.

My creative process in bringing the above scene to life is not only going to be different from yours as a writer, but it's going to be different than the recreation process of the reader. Some readers are going to decide that Adam is gay because he's good with kids or because his breath caught, which is their problem. Or that I know nothing about organized crime, which is true and is my problem.

But what I hope the above example passage got through was: Adam's determination, and Zack's laziness combined with book smarts (not so much the street smarts.) The relationship that they have must be different than the mentorship that you envisioned, but I hope that I conveyed a friendship between peers of different personalities.

If Zack had won the coin toss, their characterization would have still been the same but the details would be different. Adam would not barge in all moonlit silhouette and messy hair and squeaky shoes. I would have needed to think up a different motivation for Don Fettuccine to capture Zack, whether or not he meant to lure Adam to the garage or not. I also liked making Don F a sophisticated sadist rather than a brawling brute, so maybe you can imagine the same scene played out with a different villain with different characterization.

edited 20th Aug '15 9:28:38 PM by Faemonic

"Dave picked up the gun. Glock. Loaded. Probably no bullet in the chamber. He pulled the slide back and made the point moot. Ready for action, he thought."

"Dave looked at the gun. Bad as the situation was, he didn't want to use it and make things worse. He fiddled with it until the magazine slid out, and cleared the chamber just in case, then walked off with the bullets."

"Dave found the gun on the ground, behind the church. There was a bit of leftover dew on it, and a mark in the ground where it had landed - abandoned. He picked it up; it weighed like it was fully loaded. Abandoned in a hurry, for some reason. He sighed, and walked back to his car to call it in."

"Dave stared at the gun. It hadn't been there a moment ago, and he was pretty sure he'd been watching that particular spot of ground for some time. The gun seemed to be staring back at him, as though confident that the hairless ape was inferior and weak."

"Dave licked the gun. It was cold and tasted mostly like oil, so it probably hadn't been fired in a while."

Five characters: same name, same situation, different stories. How a character acts in a given situation is one way to show what their character is.

Character is revealed through struggle.

Do your characters have motives and goals? Then sooner or later they are going to run up against a problem on the way to their goal that they can't just breeze past. How do they react to that problem? How do they resolve it, if at all? That will tell you a lot about who the character is, what they value, what they hate, where their skills and talents lie, and so on.

edited 2nd Sep '15 2:07:20 AM by Tungsten74

My cousin is a writer like myself and she was having trouble fitting one Mary Sue character into a story, so I asked her what the character's worst fear was and told her to throw them into that very situation and see how they'd survive (or not). That's one way to get the ball rolling. But my work is a little closer to horror, so...

Forget that. I'd ask her what her character's motives are. What do they want? What are they trying to achieve over the course of the story? If she can't answer that, then why include the character in the first place? Who cares what the character's deepest fear is - without a clear motive, they're just going to bumble through the Scary Situation, with no rhyme or reason to their actions.

Fear is the oldest and most powerful motivator there can ever be. I'm not talking about a fear of spiders or a fear of heights (although those can also be used to generate conflict) but the kind of fear that leads a woman to make her children rivals so they won't ever rise up to take her power as she took her mother's. The kind of fear that produces drama fit for fiction is the kind that leads a desperate man to betray his beloved wife because he knows she wants to replace him with somebody else. The kind of fear I'm interested in as a writer of dark fantasy is the kind that leads a council of matriarchs to take a queen's crown and drive her from the throne in disgrace because her spineless cuckold of a husband revealed that she's been dallying with an angel and they want to make sure their regent is loyal to demonkind.

See, that's how I wring Drama Fit For Fiction out of a character's fears. In fact, I like three fears so I won't soon run out of raw material. My fiction is character-driven, fear-driven. I know how to use fear; not the reader's fear but the character's fear.

What's the worst thing that can happen to that character (that won't leave them incapable of action)? Put them through it. Make them struggle. Make them fight for their "happy ending".

edited 25th Sep '15 9:15:22 PM by nekomoon14