Character is everything. Regardless of what genre you’re writing - or
even if you are writing fiction or non-fiction - the characters you are writing
about are the substance of your book.
It is because of who your characters are that certain actions take place
and become your plot. It is because of who your characters are that they speak
in a certain way, reside in a specific place, interact with other characters
who in turn shape your story and your characters’ world.
Think of your book as if it were a living, breathing being - after all,
it is, isn’t it? If the action of your book is the spine, and your theme or
purpose is the heart, what is the life blood? What makes the story work, the
heart beat? The characters.
All too often we become, as writers, focused on “getting the story down.”
We focus on the theme, the wisdom, the point of the book, and we walk our
characters through the mechanics we’ve set up for them without exploring the
reasons they are walking.
And you finish your book and you find that in all ways it is competent,
it is what you meant to write about, the language may be beautiful, the plot
structure superb and yet there feels like there is something missing. That it
doesn’t quite work.
What could be missing is character depth, the point at which your
characters are rich enough, full enough, three dimensional enough that you know
what they’d order when they walk into a diner, what they’d wear to bed, what
they think about when they first wake up in the morning.
If you want your characters to come alive, to be memorable, to walk off
the page and maybe even tell you what they are doing on that page, you need to
know them. You need to make each of them count.
Here are some simple ways to make your characters count.
1. Gender. Each sex has distinctive styles of speech and speech patterns,
and innate way of relating to the world. Naturally sex affects many aspects of
your character, but in terms of basic conversation it’s particularly evident,
or it should be. Women tend to ask more questions than men, and use more words
that are considered qualifiers (kinda, almost, sort of) in their speech. Look
at this example, of tough, street wise police, discussing their first arrests.
COP ONE: Yeah, him. Packed a mean punch. Put up a helluva fight, before
the cuffs went on.
COP TWO: You know, I won’t forget that guy. He almost took me down before
I cuffed him.
Which police officer reads female and which one reads male? And why?
2. Careers and status. Your character’s walk of life is very important. A
used car salesman will relate to the world differently than a poet. A used car
salesman who wants to be a poet will also relate to the world differently. An
unsuccessful used car salesman poet will relate differently to the world than a
highly successful salesman up for a promotion who likes to write poetry in
his/her spare time.
3. What about his/her parents? What did they do? Where were they from?
4. Where was your character raised? And where does your character live
now? That used car salesman poet from the deep South whose mother worked in a
cotton mill is different from the one in Los Angeles whose father was a famous
actor.
5. What is your character’s name? Not just the nickname he’s using
now “Greenie”, but his full heritage. First, last, middle, and what his teacher
called him in grade school. Do your research - there’s plenty of web help on
first and last names - names by region or ethnicity, historical names.
6. Describing your character. This applies to both physical traits and
emotional ones, visible and invisible. You’re not going to reveal your
character all at once of course, but suppose you had to sum him up in a
paragraph or less such as:
Kim’s hair was as red as her face. She flushed frequently, whenever
she was embarrassed or she felt she should be. Tall, twenty, Scotch-Irish, the
last of fourteen children, always waiting for someone else to tell her what to
do.
You can base a lot on a description that simple, and keep it handy, too,
for whenever you character’s doing something he or she wouldn’t really do. Kim,
as described above, would not be sunbathing nude on the French Rivera, for
example.
7. Descriptive words. Free associate. Write down a list of words that
describe something about your character - i.e., still using Kim above:
restless, stifled, interested, fair, scared, embarrassed, accommodating,
observant -
I’m sure you could fill a page. Or ten.
8. How your character feels at the beginning of your story - or of his
appearance in your story. The characters feelings will of course change, as
they must for the drama of your story to occur - but how does he feel when you
first begin?
Our example, Kim, is somewhat shy, easily embarrassed, looking for
someone to tell her what to do in life. Boy, is she ever ready for a lot of
changes. A lot of interesting changes.
Some characters - your p.i., your romantic swashbuckling hero, your
biographical subject - will remain in a more fixed emotional state than others.
But regardless of how much your character does or wants to change - or not -
you need a sense of how that person is feeling at the beginning of his role in
your story.
A caveat — just because you need to know this information about your
character, your reader may not. Perhaps your used car dealer poet from LA whose
father is an actor only has a few lines, such as
Something that looked like a haiku dropped from his pocket. He was
looking for the bill of sale. “You look familiar,” I told the salesman, while
he rummaged through his file. “Yeah, well, my father was an actor,” he
mumbled.
Genie Davis is a produced screen and television writer. Her work spans
a variety of feature film genres from supernatural thriller to romantic drama,
family, teen, mystery, and comedy, including the feature film Losing
Hope. She's written on staff for ABC Daytime's Port Charles, TLC's
A Personal Story, and for HGTV, PBS, and Discovery. Her novel The
Model Man, romantic suspense, was published by Kensington
in 2006; Five O'Clock Shadow is just hitting the stores in February '07.
Her first novel, the noir Dreamtown, was published by a
small press in 2001. She also writes erotic romance under the name Nikki
Alton her novella Rodeo Man, August 2006, is a part of
Aphrodisia's The Cowboy anthology.
2 comments posted.
One writing exercise a friend and I did for a class on writing romance was to each interview the other person, as her hero or heroine. We did roll-playing and really got into character. My friend asked some normal type questions, then she asked, "What Looney Tunes character is your favorite?" I had to think on this, since I'm a Disney girl, but came up with "Taz, the Tazmanian Devil," the crazy little beast in the cartoons. This revealed so much about my heroine I never knew. Inside that shy and quiet exterior was a zany side she hid from everyone. Turns out in the next interview exercise, when I was my hunky hero, his fav Looney Toons character was also Taz! It hasn't come out in the book yet, but I know it. ;-)
(Sherry Weddle 12:33pm January 5, 2008)
That's a wonderful exercise! And what a great insight into your character... Happy New Year!
(Genie Davis 4:34pm January 6, 2008)