Creating Characters

1. The Core of Character: The Ability to Care

The core of character, experience tells me, lies in each individual story person’s ability to care about something; to feel, implicitly or explicitly, that something is important.

Caring creates character. A character becomes a person when they care deeply about something, whether consciously or not. This "something" can be anything from world peace to personal order, but its importance to the character is what makes them relatable and drives their actions. Without this capacity for caring, a character remains a mere stick figure, unable to engage the reader.

Caring drives story. When a character's deeply held value or the thing they care about is challenged or threatened, it creates conflict and propels the narrative forward. The character is motivated to act to protect or achieve what is important to them, transforming them from a static figure into a dynamic force within the story. This fundamental principle applies universally, from simple tales to complex literary works.

Sympathy is key. While any character can care, those who are sympathetic or intriguing are most likely to hold the reader's attention. Readers need to be able to share or empathize with a character's feelings, even if the character is flawed or evil. The ability to evoke empathy through a character's caring is the highest hurdle in character creation.

2. Finding Your Characters: Aspects of Yourself, Rationalized

For at root we’re all writing about ourselves.

Characters are you. The characters you create are, at their core, personifications of aspects of yourself – qualities you like, dislike, or wish you had. This connection allows you to fantasize and feel with your characters, which is essential for bringing them to life. You must find characters who "turn you on," exciting you enough to commit to spending significant time with them.

Rationalize their behavior. Once you find a character who excites you and fits the story's needs, you must rationalize their presence and behavior. This means devising plausible, believable reasons for why they think and act the way they do within the context of your story. Unlike real life, where motives are often hidden or unknown, you, as the writer, are in control and must understand your characters' inner workings.

Observation is fuel. Your experiences and observations of real people, with all their quirks and contradictions, provide the raw material for character creation. While you shouldn't use real people directly, you can combine their traits, mannerisms, and attitudes. The key is to develop the ability to step into another person's perspective, simulating empathy to make your characters believable, even if their true motives are complex or hidden.

3. Building the Foundation: Labels, Tags, and Traits

Your reader needs some clue or two to help him recognize each of your story people.

Labels create recognition. To help readers distinguish characters, assign them a dominant impression based on four elements: sex, age, vocation, and manner. Manner, described by an adjective (e.g., "loud," "pushy," "surly"), is particularly important as it indicates inner state and predicts behavior. Combining vocation and manner (e.g., "sloppy waitress," "surly cop") quickly brings a character into focus.

Tags add detail. Beyond the dominant impression, characters need specific "tags" to make them unique and memorable. These can be tags of appearance (a limp, a distinctive mustache), ability (can pick a lock), speech (a repeated phrase, an accent), mannerism (rubbing chin, eye tic), or attitude (habitual cheeriness, cynicism). Choose a few significant tags for major characters and use them repeatedly so readers remember.

Traits define behavior. Characters also possess habitual modes of response or "traits." Decide how a character will typically behave in certain situations (e.g., a worrier, a bully, kindly, selfish). Then, devise specific incidents and details that show these traits in action, rather than simply telling the reader about them. This concrete demonstration makes the character's personality believable and prepares the reader for their actions later in the story.

4. The Inner World: Motive, Goal, Drive, and Attitude

You devise something that he or she must change in order to win happiness.

Happiness is the aim. At the root of a character's inner world is the pursuit of happiness, defined as a state of self-worth or self-importance. Unhappiness, stemming from a situation that diminishes this feeling, creates a desire for change. This desire, strong enough to compel action, becomes the character's motive.

Goals define purpose. Motive translates into a specific "goal" – something the character actively tries to achieve to change their unhappy situation. Goals can be general (survive) or immediate (avoid poisoned wine). Striving towards goals tests characters and makes them worthy of reader attention. A story is fundamentally about a character dealing with danger while pursuing a goal.

Drive fuels action. Drive is the intensity of a character's desire to achieve their goal – the "give a hoot" factor. Without sufficient drive, a character drifts and is useless to the story. To give a character drive:

• Devise something they care about.
• Fit them with a suitable goal.
• Threaten that goal.
• Establish reasons (external or internal) for them not to quit.
  Attitudes, consistent dispositions or "hang-ups," also shape a character's inner world and influence their reactions to situations.

5. Bringing Characters to Life: Emotion and Action

You make the character reveal emotion.

Emotion equals life. Characters come to life when they reveal emotion – liking or disliking something, feeling good or bad. Emotion gives a character direction and makes them relatable. When a character feels strongly, it can rouse emotion in the reader, creating empathy and engagement.

Stress reveals character. Moments of stress, where a character's emotions are heightened, are particularly revealing. These moments, whether anger, joy, fear, or grief, make a character exist for the reader. By showing a character's emotional reaction to a situation, you make them real and dynamic.

Emotion drives the hook. Readers seek emotion and are hooked quickly by the promise of something interesting or emotion-provoking. This often involves plunging a character into danger or disrupting their ordered existence with a change. Every change, even a minor one, constitutes a potential danger because it demands adjustment, and the inability to adjust successfully evokes emotion.

6. Shaping Characters: Background and Experience

Only enough to make your reader— and you—believe in him.

Background provides "reasons why". A character's past shapes who they are and provides believable reasons for their present attitudes and behavior. You, the writer, must understand this background, even if you don't reveal all of it to the reader. Tie key attitudes or reactions to specific, memorable past events or conditionings.

Four elements of background. Consider how these factors have shaped your character:

• Body: Heredity, physical attributes, age, sex, health influence perspective and experience.
• Environment: Social and physical milieu, group norms, and accepted behaviors mold individuals.
• Experience: Life events, especially traumatic ones, shape reactions and outlook, though individuals interpret experiences differently.
• Ideas: Concepts absorbed from people or reading act as powerful conditioners of thought and behavior.

Consistency is key. Regardless of how disparate the elements of a character's background seem, they must cohere into a consistent personality. Avoid overloading characters with unnecessary background details that can confuse or bore the reader. Focus only on what's needed to make the character believable and their actions understandable within the story's framework.

7. Handling Special Characters: Roles and Wild Cards

What goes into building an offbeat character? The same elements that you use in creating any story person —only more so.

Roles define function. Characters play various roles in a story: protagonist (has a goal, drives the plot), antagonist (opponent, creates conflict), love interest, and bit-players. Shape each character to fit their job in the story, ensuring they have the necessary attributes and motivation. The strength of your antagonist is crucial for the strength of your story.

Special attributes make characters interesting/memorable. Give characters unanticipated aspects (interesting) or unique, emphasized tags (memorable). Even minor characters benefit from a bit of color. However, be careful not to let bit-players overshadow your main characters.

Wild cards deviate from the norm. Eccentrics (openly deviate, often harmless) and psychos (more severe deviance, often masked) add color and manipulative edge. Build them using the same elements as other characters, but "more so." Rationalize the logic behind their irrational behavior to maintain consistency, even if the reader doesn't fully understand it.

8. Using Language: Description and Dialogue

You build the character with significant specifics that lead readers to feel the way you want them to feel.

Show, don't tell. Instead of stating a character's traits or feelings, use significant specifics and sensory details to show them in action. This allows readers to draw their own conclusions and evokes feeling more effectively than authorial judgment. Focus on the particular, definite, and concrete.

Specificity creates vividness. Use specific details about appearance, mannerisms, and actions to individualize characters. For example, instead of "a man with a limp," describe how he limps. Use active verbs to show characters doing things. What a character notices and how they describe things also reveals their personality and state of mind.

Dialogue reveals character and advances plot. What characters say and how they say it individualizes them, reflects their background and attitudes, and provides information crucial to the plot. Dialogue should also reveal and build emotion. Short speeches often increase tension, while longer ones suit reflection. Listen to real people to capture authentic speech patterns, but edit for conciseness and purpose.

9. Adding the Light Touch: Humor and Amusing Characters

You replace reader assumptions with offbeat alternatives.

Humor is a state of mind. To write amusing characters or situations, you need a sense of humor yourself. Humor works by presenting a plausible, yet unanticipated alternative to a reader's assumption ("the should"). The abrupt awareness of this contrast, when no real danger is involved, triggers amusement or laughter.

Elements of humor:

• Assumption: The reader's expectation of how things should be.
• Alternative: The unexpected deviation from the norm.
• Applicability: The warped plausibility or recognizable parallel between the assumption and the alternative.
• Abruptness: The sudden realization of the contrast, often delivered at the end of a line or scene.

Techniques for amusement: Use exaggeration (overstatement, understatement, distortion) and incongruity (jarring notes, contradictions) to emphasize the difference between the expected and the unexpected. Focus on threats to vanity rather than life or happiness. Establish a playful mood early and integrate humor naturally into the story, avoiding standalone gags.

10. Adapting Characters: Length, Media, and Genre

You design your people to fit your market.

Length dictates depth. In short stories, limit character presentation to dominant impression, attitude, and goal due to space constraints. Novels allow for more detail, exploring multiple facets, relationships, and growth over time. Long stories may use episodic structure and narration to cover extended periods or multiple characters.

Media impose constraints.

• Radio: Rely solely on sound (dialogue, sound effects, announcer/narrator) to draw characters and convey action/emotion. Individualize voices and use verbal tags.
• Stage: Use dialogue and broad action visible from a distance. Characterization is often revealed through what characters say and do, with limited access to inner thoughts.
• Film/TV: Leverage visuals (appearance, sets, closeups) and action. Characterization is often shown through behavior and reaction, though flashbacks can reveal past/inner states.

Genre shapes expectations. Category fiction (romance, mystery, sci-fi, etc.) has specific reader expectations for characters. Research the genre's implicit rules and character types. Characters should fit the market's demands while still being believable and engaging.

11. Maintaining Belief: Avoiding Common Pitfalls

You plug the gaps where belief leaks out.

Disbelief shatters engagement. Readers engage with fiction by willingly suspending disbelief, accepting the story's imaginary world as real. Flaws in character presentation can break this suspension, making the story feel false.

Common belief leaks:

• Viewpoint flaws: Shifting viewpoint confusingly, unclear viewpoint, or presenting a viewpoint character who acts unrealistically stupid or too perfectly brilliant.
• Inadequate research: Characters acting or thinking in ways inconsistent with their background, occupation, or the story's setting (historical, future, or contemporary).
• Telling instead of showing: Stating facts about characters or events rather than demonstrating them through action, dialogue, or sensory details.
• M/R gaps: Breaks in the logical chain of motivation and reaction within a scene, making character behavior seem unprompted or unrealistic.
• Planting failure: Introducing crucial elements (like a necessary skill or object) needed later in the story without subtly establishing their presence or possibility earlier.
• Distasteful characters/actions: Presenting characters or their actions in a way that alienates the reader due to unpleasantness, unless carefully handled to evoke specific, intended reactions.
• Unlikable characters: Failing to give major characters qualities or vulnerabilities that allow readers to connect with or care about them, even if they are flawed or antagonists.

Last updated: May 19, 2025