Characters, At Long Last

You may have started with nothing more than a kernel of thought, but now that you’ve created your world, you should have a good idea of who your hero, villain, and supporting characters are. They must not be automatons. Your reader must buy into these characters as real people, with real goals, real relationships, real motivations, ad real emotions.

Your characters must be multi-dimensional. They must have flaws as well as virtues. They must face internal struggle as well as external conflict. They must have past lives and prior relationships. Their previous experiences define how they view their world and their situation and determine how they respond to their emotions. 

1)     Give each character a unique set of physical traits. These traits need not be unique among all humanity, just unique within the context of your story. If you have two or more similar characters, your reader may have some difficulty keeping them straight. (Display through variance in five senses: appearance, perfume, voice, body-types, etc.)

2)     Give each character a unique style of speech. Since you cannot convey tone through writing, you must either describe the character’s style of speech, or give them a unique perspective/cadence that appears through their dialogue. This will make them easier to identify and give another trait that you connect to them, making them more relatable as a person.

3)     Give each character a flaw that the reader can understand. Write about ordinary people in extraordinary circumstances.

4)     Give each character a special skill that they will find useful at some point in the story. Introduce your character’s skill early in the story, well before they will need it, otherwise it will seem contrived¾something you made up to get them out of a fix.

5)     Give each character a definable personality. Optimistic? Pessimistic? Grumpy? Funny? Flirtatious? Adversarial?

6)    You may choose to give each character an identifying line, mannerism, or prop. Giving your reader something to associate with your character besides a name will help you to keep your characters straight. Again, an identifying characteristic could be the cadence or unique physical characteristic.

7)     Give each character virtues. This is particularly important for your hero; the reader must like them. No mater how many internal demons your hero has to overcome, they must have at least one redeeming quality that your reader can latch onto and that makes him say, “I care. I hope s/he overcomes it all because s/he’s worth saving.”

8)    Know each character’s backstory. As a writer, you must know the details of your character’s backstory in far greater depth than you’ll ever reveal in the pages of your novel. Your character’s past has made him the person he is today. His past will determine his emotions, attitudes, and actions. And it will justify them to the reader. His past will make him real.

9)    Know how each character will change throughout the story. The change your character makes and the way that change comes about is the character’s arc. Provide an arc for each major character, not just the hero, but make the hero’s arc dominant in the story. Give your villain an arc too, though his change may be from a bad guy to a dead or imprisoned or crazy guy.

10)  Make your villain stronger than your hero. Don’t make your hero’s victory a foregone conclusion.

1)     Make sure each character’s personality is different from that of every other character.

2)     Make your hero strong willed.

3)     Remove clichéd character traits.

4)     Don’t forget your secondary characters.