Does Your Character Have Enough…Character?
It’s All About the Who
Readers want a character who is engaging. Relatable is good, but an engaging misanthrope will easily take a book across the finish line in the hearts and minds of readers who can’t even begin to relate to such an individual.
Good character development is everything to story, and the first thing at risk to be lost when starting out. As students, our formal education in Language Arts stressed substance over style, hemming us into a small space where the what was emphasized, elevated, celebrated, and lauded.
All this at a cost to us as creatives. Unless the creative aspects of writing were ever re-explored in our early education, our writing voices became stilted, perhaps even lost. We must be reminded that in a story, the who is our holy grail.
For the fiction writer, a standout who can fix other writing sins. A captivating story demands a great who, one whose helpers and hinderers do not overshadow them. There is a reason why we focus on the superhero over the sidekick.
The best characters take us with them. Sometimes it is by letting us into their heads, but characters with secrets intrigue us just as much. Sometimes it is by more subtly drawing us in and making the reader desperate to follow, anticipating, guessing, and stressed out over what might come next. Imagine your story is a party. The main character must be the most interesting person there. This does not mean they cannot be despicable, downtrodden, or frightening; they must simply capture and hold the reader’s attention to the very end.
So…what is the how of the all-important who? The writer must create a multi-dimensional character with motivation (angst, failure to launch, and a character’s uncertainty about motivation are valid here), destination, and machination. My secret is to know my main character as I know myself, before I start writing any story at all. The gritty details of this backstory, even if they never find their way onto the pages of the book, is my secret sauce. It has even led to the odd geek celebrating the birthday of a nonexistent being.
Know any multi-dimensional characters? If you are a writer, my guess is that you see one whenever you look in the mirror. If you have a mother, father, sister, brother, friend, car, favorite color, STD, interesting birthmark, astrological sign, most embarrassing moment, birthdate, failure, petty resentment, ingrown toenail — by all means, your character deserves one, too. Ok, roll your eyes. Get it out of your system. But understand that I make this suggestion in all seriousness.
Why, you are asking yourself, do I need to do work on a bunch of random stuff that has nothing to do with my story? Do you need bread to make a sandwich? Let’s unpack this idea further.
If you know the tiniest concrete and intangible aspects of your imaginary friend, who you would like to be an interesting temporary friend to your reader, what naturally follows? An enjoyable, believable, and more-often-than-not unforgettable character, that’s what. And you don’t even need to share those details in your story (unless they fit).
But there are added bonuses. Less writer’s block when it comes to the what and the where and the why and the how. Filling in and finishing the story becomes easier. The details that the writer fleshes out during the exercise of giving the character a ridiculously detailed fake-believe existence will inform fiction writing in a fascinating way.
First, the writer’s intensive knowledge of their index character will dictate not only what the character does, but how they do it. This deep familiarity with the character helps the writer avoid implausibility and inauthenticity of character. Character consistency in word, thought, and deed provides verisimilitude. Under the circumstances in which the character’s journey results in personal change, the writer already understands and can supply a plausible reason why such a transformation might occur.
Second, the flow of the story is not hindered by a writer’s uncertainty about what may happen next in the plotline. It is much easier to write about the when and the why with a character whose motivations are directed by specific qualities pinned down within the writer’s imagination and shared with the reader as and when appropriate. A character’s deep background and idiosyncrasies can direct and carry several chapters of plot and motivation. Better that a writer should have extra material to edit out than not enough to do the story justice. Isn’t that a problem any writer would love to have?
Finally, adding secondary characters is simplified. The writer who has command of the strengths and weaknesses of the primary character can provide a supporting cast that makes sense, or even supply a particularly noxious antagonist, because whatever buttons need to be pushed were installed in the protagonist by design.
When I teach character development, I ask each of my students to present their main character to the group in the first person. I have a bag full of Proustian questions, which their colleagues use to grill the presenter and ‘test’ their ability to keep the illusion alive. The only rule is that there is no wrong answer except “I don’t know.” At the conclusion of the exercise, the group identifies the writer who appears to have accumulated the most intimate knowledge of the character they created. Time is spent equally on the critique of character inconsistencies and weaknesses, and the challenges of overcoming them.
Afterward, I recommend the approach I outlined above, and we repeat the exercise during our next session with uniform metamorphosis of their characters. This is invariably accompanied by a great deal of writer confidence when facing their next challenge — a write-off to showcase those characters and earn bragging rights for most outstanding character.
Try it for yourself. After all, what writer doesn’t want more interesting, captivating, and realistic imaginary friends to put into their stories?
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