Character Creation

Jon · Aug 25, 2008

Character Creation

WHAT'S THE WHO? said:

IF YOU can't create characters that are vivid in the reader's imagination,
you can't create a damn good novel. Characters are to
a novelist what lumber is to a carpenter and what bricks are to
a bricklayer. Characters are the stuff out of which a novel is
constructed.

Fictional characters—homo fictus—are not, however, identical
to flesh-and-blood human beings—homo sapiens. One reason
for this is that readers wish to read about the exceptional
rather than the mundane. Readers demand that homo fictus be
more handsome or ugly, ruthless or noble, vengeful or forgiving,
brave or cowardly, and so on, than real people are. Homo fictus
has hotter passions and colder anger; he travels more, fights more,
loves more, changes more, has more sex. Lots more sex. Homo
fictus has more of everything. Even if he is plain, dull, and
boring, he'll be more extraordinary in his plainness, dullness,
and boringness than his real-life counterparts.

Real human beings are fickle, contrary, wrong-headed—happy
one minute, despairing the next, at times changing emotions as
often as they take a breath. Homo fictus, on the other hand, may be
complex, may be volatile, even mysterious, but he's always fathomable.
When he isn't, the reader closes the book, and that's that.
Another reason the two species are not identical is that, because
of space limitations, homo fictus is simpler, just as life is more
simple in a story than it is in the real world.

If you were to write down everything that went on with you
while you were, say, eating breakfast this morning, you could fill
a fat volume—if you included all the millions of sensory impressions,
thoughts, and images bouncing around in your head. When
depicting the life of a fictional character, a novelist must choose
to include only those impressions, thoughts, reflections, sensations,
feelings, desires, and so on, that bear on the character's
motivations, development, and decision-making faculties—those
aspects of character that will affect the way in which the character
copes with the dilemmas he will face in the story.

The result of this selection process is the formation of characters
who, although they are lifelike, are not whole human
beings. Homo fictus is an abstraction meant to project the essence,
but not the totality, of homo sapiens.
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SUBSPECIES OF HOMO FICTUS said:

There are two types of homo fictus. The simpler type is called
"flat," "cardboard," or "uni-dimensional." These characters are
used for the "walk-on" parts. They walk on, say a line or two,
and that's that.

They are the waiters, newspaper carriers, doormen,
bartenders, bellhops. They may be colorful or nondescript;
at a high emotional pitch or placid. But they are always peripheral,
never central; the reader's interest in them is fleeting. They
are easily labeled characters who seem to have only one trait:
they are greedy, or pious, or cowardly, or servile, or horny, and
so on. They may startle, enlighten, or amuse for a moment, but
they have no power to engage the reader's interest for a protracted
period of time. They have no depth; the writer does not explore
their motives or inner conflicts—their doubts, misgivings, feelings
of guilt. As long as uni-dimensional characters are used only
for the minor roles in your novel, okay. But when they are used
for major roles, such as the principal villain, dramatic writing
turns into melodrama.

The other broad type of character is called "rounded," "fullbodied,"
or "three-dimensional," All the major characters in your
novel should be of this type, even the villains. Rounded characters
are harder to label. They have complex motives and conflicting
desires and are alive with passions and ambitions. They have
committed great sins and have borne agonizing sufferings; they
are full of worries, woes, and unresolved grievances. The reader
has a strong sense that they existed long before the novel began,
having lived rich and full lives. Readers desire intimacy with such
characters because they are worth knowing.
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CREATING WONDERFULLY ROUNDED CHARACTERS said:

George Baker, in Dramatic Technique (1919), claims that "great
drama depends on a firm grasp and sure presentation of complicated
character . . . thus the old statement 'Know Thyself
becomes for the dramatist 'know your characters as intimately as
possible.'

Now then, how do you go about getting to know your character
"as intimately as possible"?

Lajos Egri, in his essential and remarkable book, The Art of
Dramatic Writing (1946), describes a rounded character as being
three-dimensional. The first dimension he calls the physiological;
the second, the sociological; the third, the psychological.
The physiological dimension of a character includes a character's
height, weight, age, sex, race, health, and so on. Where
would Jim Thorpe have been, for example, had he been born
with a club foot? or Marilyn Monroe, had she turned out flatchested?
Or Hank Aaron, had he had a withered arm? Or Barbra
Streisand, a small voice? Obviously, not only would their choices
of profession have been affected, but their personalities would
have been shaped differently as well. A small man cannot "throw
his weight around" as a large man can. Pretty or ugly, short or
tall, thin or fat—all of these physical traits affect the way a
character would have developed, just as such physical traits affect
real people.

Society shapes our character based on our appearance, size,
sex, build, skin color, scars, deformities, abnormalities, allergies,
posture, bearing, lilt in the voice, sweetness of breath, tendency
to sweat, nervous ticks and gestures, and so on. A petite, delicate,
golden-haired girl with big blue eyes grows up with a completely
different set of expectations about what she's going to get out of
life than her needle-nosed, bug-eyed sister. To develop a fully
rounded character, you must understand the character's physiology
completely.

The second of Egri's three dimensions of character is the sociological.
What is the character's social class? What kind of a
neighborhood did he grow up in? What kind of schools did he
attend? What kind of politics did he acquire? Which church
nourished his spirit, if any? What were his parents' attitudes about
sex, money, getting ahead? Was he given a lot of freedom or
none? Was discipline lax or harsh, or somewhere in between?
Did the character have lots of friends or few; what kind were
they? A Missouri farm boy has grown up in another country from
a kid in New York's Spanish Harlem. To understand a character
completely you must be able to trace the source of his traits to
their roots. Human character is forged by the sociological climate
in which an individual is nurtured, whether it's a real human
being or a fictional character. Unless the novelist understands
the dynamics of the character's development, the character's motivations
cannot be fully understood. It is the characters' motivations
that produce the conflicts and generate the narrative tension
that your novel must have if it is to succeed in holding the reader's
attention.

The psychological, Egri's third dimension of character, is the
product of the physiological and the sociological dimensions.
Within the psychological dimension we find phobias and manias,
complexes, fears, inhibitions, patterns of guilt and longing, fantasies,
and so on. The psychological dimension includes such
things as IQ, aptitudes, special abilities, soundness of reasoning,
habits, irritability, sensibility, talents, and the like.

To write a novel you need not be a psychologist. You do not
have to have read Freud or Jung or Dear Abby, nor must you
be able to discern the difference between a psychopath and a
schizophrenic. But you must be a student of human nature and
acquire an understanding of why people do what they do and say
what they say. Try making the world your laboratory. When the
secretary in your office quits, ask her why. Your friend wants a
divorce; listen to her complaints. Why did your dentist take up
a profession that inflicts pain on others and requires him to be
nosing around in people's mouths all day? Mine thought he could
get rich that way, but so far he can't keep ahead of the payments
on his drilling equipment. It's amazing what people will tell
you if you ask politely and listen sympathetically. Many novelists
keep journals or make character sketches of people they meet,
which is a good idea. Grace Metalious, it's been said, peopled
Peyton Place with friends and neighbors in her hometown, and
everybody she knew had no trouble figuring out who all those
rakish, bed-hopping characters were. She lost a few friends, got
the cold shoulder from a few neighbors, but wrote a damn good
novel.
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More Y/N?

MofoNofo · Aug 25, 2008

That's a pretty good description on how to create characters. Not that I would know the difference, but you sound like you know what you're doing .

I learned quite a bit about how a good character is made.

More: Y

Dark Belra · Aug 25, 2008

More help on the charecters. Y

Maybe a sticky too?

Aekiel · Aug 25, 2008

You know, the number of writing lessons we're getting on here almost demands a sub-forum, don't you think? Also, I vote Y.

Dark Minion · Aug 25, 2008

Y me wants moar!

Xiph0 · Aug 25, 2008

Homo fictus... weren't you a homo fictus at some point there Jon?

Ryuugi Shi · Aug 25, 2008

Gimme some mo'!

Y

InfernoCannon · Aug 25, 2008

I say Y.

Simply due to the fact that i've finally figured out where I go wrong with my characters.

Jon · Aug 26, 2008

Part 2

MAKING CHARACTERS SIZZLE said:

If your novel is not only to succeed, but to be electric, you need
to people it with dynamic rather than static characters. A character
can be fully-rounded yet be too passive, too mamby-pamby.
Characters who can't act in the face of their dilemmas, who run
away from conflict, who retreat and suffer without struggling, are
not useful to you. They are static, and most of them should meet
an untimely death before they ever appear in the pages of your
novel and ruin everything. Dramatic novels require dynamic
characters, alive with great passions and strong emotions: lust,
envy, greed, ambition, love, hate, vengefulness, malice, and the
like. Make your characters, at least your major characters, emotional
firestorms.
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BUILDING CHARACTER FROM THE GROUND UP: THE FICTIONAL BIOGRAPHY said:

In Fiction Is Folks (1983), Robert Peck gives the following advice:

Writing is one heck of a rough racket, which means
that if you do it dog lazy, it will defeat you quicker
than boo. So, before you type Chapter One at the top
of a Virginal Page (and then sit there for a week while
you wonder what to do next) do your homework for
each one of your characters.

"Doing your homework" means creating a background for the
major characters: in effect, writing their biographies. For most
writers, and certainly all beginning writers, character biographies
are a necessary preliminary step in the making of a novel.

Suppose you want to write a murder mystery. You don't
have a plot yet, or even an idea for one. The first thing you
need in a murder mystery is a murderer. The murderer will
be the villain and antagonist of the novel. In a mystery, the
story stems from the machinations of the villain. In a sense,
the villain is the "author" of your story. The cast of characters
you will need in your novel will depend upon your villain's
scheme.

Say you have a notion of a woman who murders her husband
because he has disgraced the family by selling dope to finance
his addiction to betting on slow horses. You have no idea who
this woman is or what she is like, but you know she is a clever
woman (otherwise she is not a worthy antagonist). You know she
will plan the crime with great care and cunning. Her cunning,
moreover, will determine the degree of difficulty the detective
will have, so you'll want her to be as clever as you can make
her.

The second thing you need is someone to solve the crime, the
protagonist. You may at the moment not have anyone in mind
to play the part. What do you do then?

There are many different types of detectives in such novels.
He or she can be a hard-boiled pro (Philip Marlowe, Sam Spade),
a cerebral pro (Sherlock Holmes, Hercule Poirot), a gifted amateur
(Ellery Queen, Miss Marple), or a bystander who gets drawn
into the mystery (the second Mrs. de Winter in Daphne du
Maurier's Rebecca).

Your decision will depend on the type of novel you envision.
Detective fiction offers readers many delights. One might be the
delight of watching a great thinker at work. Another might be
sharing the bafflement and terror of an innocent caught up in
murderous intrigue. Or watching a tough-guy detective slogging
through the mud and mire on the seamy side of town, bashing
heads and ducking bullets as he goes.

If you're an aficionado of one type, that's what you should
be writing. Write the kind of book you like to read. The exception
to that rule is the tough-guy detective novel written in
the first person. It is a difficult prose style, especially for a beginner.
When it's not done well, it comes off as imitative; or
worse, as parody.

Whichever type of novel you select, you will be writing in
a tradition, and it's best if you've read widely in that tradition
and are thoroughly familiar with its conventions. An established
writer may depart from convention and his readers will
forgive the departure, but a beginner will not enjoy this privilege
and is hereby warned to stay within the bounds of accepted
practice.

Let's say you decide to write about a pro detective because you
enjoy reading Erle Stanley Gardner, Ed McBain, Ross
MacDonald, John Dickenson Carr, and Robert B. Parker. The
"pro" detective is your favorite kind of detective. But you have
no idea what your pro might be like. A good place to start is with
a name, which might give you a mental image.

Let's not give him a typical detective's name like Rockford,
Harper, Archer, or Marlowe. You want something fresh and
different, but nothing far out. Nothing like Stempski Scyzakzk,
which you fear might turn your reader off. The idea is to be
creative within accepted form, as an architect will change the
corners, pillars, slope of the roof, yet still have all the bedrooms,
bathrooms and closets his clients have come to expect.

Let's call your detective something that sounds un-detective ish, like, say, Boyer. Boyer Mitchell, how's that? Good as any.
If you can't think of a name, the phone book is full of them.

A lot of detectives are middle-aged, tough, grizzled, and experienced.
For novelty's sake, let's make Boyer young and inexperienced.
Physically, he should not be a typical detective
either. Fictional detectives are often tall, handsome in a rugged
way, and brash. Let's make Boyer small-boned and gangly, medium
height, intelligent-looking, and let's give him large, dark,
penetrating eyes and make him round-shouldered and rather slow
in his movements. He believes, let's say, in dressing well to make
the best impression possible, is well groomed, and has large,
sparkling teeth. He has a pleasant manner—quiet and thoughtful.
Most people would take him to be a scholar. He's twenty-six and
single.

Where did this picture of Boyer Mitchell come from? He was
made up out of thin air by the author of the book you are reading,
as the book was being drafted, selecting features that are the
antithesis of those of most detective characters—features that have
become stereotypes. Boyer could just as easily be old, fat, and
alcoholic. Your decisions on what characteristics to include in
your characters should be based primarily on two considerations:
breaking stereotypes and good orchestration.

Good orchestration, according to Lajos Egri, is the art of
creating characters with contrasting traits so they are "instruments
which work together to give a well-orchestrated composition."
In other words, don't make all your characters, say,
greedy or ambitious. Characters should serve as foils for one
another. If one is excessively studious, another might be excessively
lazy in his studies. Hamlet was indecisive; he lacked
will, being prone to thinking rather than acting. He brooded,
sulked, and felt sorry for himself. His foil, Laertes, was a tough
man of action.

One other consideration, when it comes to making up characters,
is that you, the writer, will have to live inside the heads of your characters for a long time. You should ask yourself whether
you really want to work with these characters. Are they characters
you find interesting? Maybe you wouldn't want to work with
Boyer Mitchell if he was old, fat, and alcoholic, for no other
reason than that you prefer him to be young, small-boned, intelligent,
and so on. That's okay, it's your book. If you are fascinated
by your characters and like them, it is more likely your
readers will too.

So far we have determined some of Boyer's physiological dimension
and have a hint of his sociological dimension. We are
starting to get a picture of what he is like, but it's still nebulous.
We will need to penetrate his character and really get to know
him, for he is to be the star of this novel.

We could start by asking, since he doesn't seem like the typical
detective, just how did Boyer get into this business? Perhaps he
got into it the way many other young men get into business—
by following in his father's footsteps. Here's where you can let
your imagination run. Let's say his father was the famous "Big
Jake" Mitchell, who was the model Dashiell Hammett used to
create the character of Sam Spade. Big Jake was tough, ruthless,
and shrewd; he would stop at nothing to protect a client's interest.
More than once he broke a jaw in the service of what he called
"higher justice." Boyer regards his father as having been something
of a bully, but he did admire him. He believes in justice
just as strongly as his father did, but he also believes that civilization
depends on respect for the law.

Choosing such a father for Boyer would compel him to live
up to Big Jake's high standards. People would always be comparing
him to his father. Old enemies would still be trying to
even scores with the father by making life miserable for the son.
Big Jake, even though he's gone, would be a cross for Boyer to
bear. When creating a character's biography, look for elements
that will influence the character's emotions and behavior in the
story. Rounded characters will have a past, and, just like real
people, the past will still be with them.

We as yet have only a rough sketch of Boyer Mitchell. We
need to flesh him out. We can do that by writing a complete
biography of him, either in third person or first person. A biography
such as the one that follows is not a story. It may, as
this one does, meander a little, give snatches of relationships
which are not explored, allude to unexplained events, and so on.

Such biographies are not intended to be encyclopedic presentations
of the character. A character biography is a brief summary
of the character's life to give the writer a better understanding of
the character. It is for the writer's use only. Here, written in first
person, is Boyer's:

I was born Boyer Bennington Mitchell on the
first of January. I'm twenty-six. Not only am I
young, I'm young-looking. That makes it difficult
for me to get respect in my profession, but I've
learned to live with it.

What counts with me is getting the job done.
That's the one thing I learned from my father.
You take somebody's money, you owe them your
best work.

My father was "Big Jake" Mitchell. That's another
of my problems. It's difficult to live up to
a legend like that.

My mother's the one who named me "Boyer
Bennington." She was born into an upper-class
family—a Bennington of the Vermont Benningtons.
Very old New England family. It so happened
that in 1955 one of her uncles was murdered
here in San Francisco and the police couldn't
solve the crime. Big Jake to the rescue. He nabbed
the murderer in twenty-four hours and married
my mother twenty-four hours after that. Swept
her off her feet. He really had a way with women.

Women used to go for that macho stuff. My
mother did anyway, they tell me. Of course my
parents' marriage was about as happy as life in
the Black Hole of Calcutta.

The main reason for all the unhappiness was
that Big Jake insisted they live on his earnings
despite the fact she had money enough to buy
the Principality of Monaco. Big Jake made a good
living, but still, what's a good living when you're
used to Rolls Royces and wintering in the Bahamas?

What a life I had when I was a kid! My
mother wanted me to play the violin despite the
fact I have no sense of rhythm, a tin ear, and
the dexterity of a brine shrimp. I had nine different
violin teachers. Mother always blamed them
for my lack of skill. But I never wanted to be a
musician. When I was about fifteen she finally
gave up on the music. She then decided she
wanted me to grow up to be a banker. But I
wouldn't hear of it. No sir, from the time I was
old enough to know what's what, I wanted to be
a private eye. And even then, when I was a kid,
I was stubborn as hell. When I wanted something,
I'd never stop trying to get it until I had
it.

Mother said I'd never make it, of course,
because I'm not like my father. She fought me
like the Boers fought the British. But believe
it or not, you don't have to be like Big Jake
Mitchell to be good in the business. His style
isn't my style. If I ever acted like he did, I would
have been broken in half my first year in the
business.

My approach to being a private eye was to
become a scientific criminologist instead of a cheap
thug. In college, I took a lot of chemistry, physics,
math, police science, forensic science, and
computer programming. I would say I'm a specialist
in crime detection. When Big Jake was
gunned down in 1982, I was just finishing graduate
school. It was a hectic time in my life. I
was planning to get married, I had just had an
operation on my deviated septum, and I was looking
for a house to buy, but I put everything aside
and stepped right in and took over his business.
. . .

We now have the bare beginnings of the outline of Boyer's
life. For an important character such as Boyer, this biographical
sketch might be ten to fifty pages long, describing the character
from his birth—including family history—up to the beginning
of the story.

Now then, why were these particular elements of Boyer's biography
selected? As noted above, you should choose elements
that will have a bearing on the character's emotions and behavior
in the story. Boyer was made young-looking because it will cause
him to be self-conscious; his appearance may lead other characters
not to take him seriously, making it harder for him to do his job.
You should always be looking for obstacles for your characters.
Boyer's slightness will make it difficult for him to live up to his
father's reputation. His mother, who is still living, will be trying
to get him to quit the business—yet another obstacle. But he
will stubbornly stick to his goals. To compensate Boyer for his
lack of physical toughness he is endowed with other abilities: he's
smart and studious. His father's death, however, forced him to
take over the business before he was ready, which also interrupted
his wedding plans. Another problem.

Boyer Bennington Mitchell could have had a completely different
background and could have emerged as a completely different
character. His father might have been a crooked cop, say,
and Boyer might be trying to salvage the family name. Boyer's
skills could be of an intuitive rather than scientific nature. His
mother could be poor and sick and he could be trying to pay her
bills. The way in which Boyer is drawn depends completely on
how the author feels about the character. An infinite number of
possibilities would work, as long as the end result is a believable,
three-dimensional character that will give a good performance
in his role in the story.

If you do a thorough job on your biographies you will know
your characters well—at least as well as you know your brother,
sister, or best friend—before you begin your novel. It is not
possible to make a list of all the elements that should be included
in these biographical sketches. You should include any detail
that affects the motivations and actions of the character. Include
anything that influences his relationships, habits, goals, beliefs,
superstitions, moral judgments, obsessions, and so on—all the
factors that govern choices and behavior. You should know your
character's views on politics, religion, friendship, family; his hopes,
dreams, hobbies, interests; what he studied in school, which
subjects he liked and which he hated. What are his prejudices?
What would he hide from his analyst? What would he hide from
himself? You should be able to answer any reasonable question
anyone might ask you about a character as if that character were
someone close to you.

You may complete the biography of your character and still
not know all you'd like to know. Say your character found a
wallet with $10,000 in it. Would he keep it or return it? If he
contracted a fatal disease, would he commit suicide? If he could
save one thing from his burning house or apartment, what would
that one thing be? If you don't know the answers to such questions,
you need to explore your character further before you begin
your story.
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INTERVIEWING A CHARACTER said:

If, after you have created your characters, you still do not see
them in your mind's eye walking, talking, breathing, perspiring,
you might try a little psychoanalysis. Put them on the couch and
start asking them questions. Here's how such a session might go:

AUTHOR: What I still don't understand, Boyer, is really why
you stay in the business. Your mother, to whom you are
very close, does not want you in the business, and your
fiancée is demanding you get out of it or the wedding is off.
BOYER: I can tell you this because you're my author, but I
wouldn't tell anyone else. I feel like I have to prove something
to myself. That's the real reason I stay in the business.
Sure, I'm afraid sometimes, but I can't run away. I wouldn't
feel like a man if I did.
AUTHOR: I understand—you're competing in a way with your
father. Cigarette?
BOYER: You know I don't smoke.
AUTHOR: That's right, I remember. Let's see, I understand you
vote Republican.
BOYER: Not true! I'm a registered Republican for family reasons.
I'm basically apolitical. I don't vote often, if you want
to know the truth. Either I forget or it just doesn't seem to
matter a whole lot who's elected. I don't even know much
about the issues anyway, and all the candidates look the
same to me.
AUTHOR: Tell me about the girl you're going to marry.
BOYER: Sally's a wonderful girl—bright, articulate, sweet.
AUTHOR: Have you ever slept with her?
BOYER: What kind of a question is that?
AUTHOR: It's important, if I'm to understand you, that I know
your experiences and attitudes and so on.
BOYER: I've never slept with her.
AUTHOR: Have you ever slept with any girl?
BOYER: Not exactly—there was an almost in college.
AUTHOR: An almost?
BOYER: Yeah, well, almost.
AUTHOR: Tell me about it.
BOYER: This will have to be just between you and me. . . .

By the time you've thoroughly interviewed your character,
he should have become like a dear friend or a hated enemy.
Once you feel that close, you should be confident working
with him.
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generic lengthing text

Jon · Aug 26, 2008

Part 3

AT THE CHARACTER'S CORE:THE RULING PASSION said:

The ruling passion is a character's central motivating force. It is
the sum total of all the forces and drives within him. For Boyer
Bennington Mitchell, his ruling passion has to do with solving
crimes. It is rooted in his family history, in his competitiveness
with his macho father, in his wanting to prove his snobby mother
wrong, in his drive to overcome his physical limitations by building
up his mental capacities. He also has a strong sense of justice
and a powerful desire to do a job well. Not just well, let's say he
wishes to be an artist at it. Not just an artist, a great artist. Boyer's
ruling passion:

Will he waver if he meets with discouragement? Not much.

Will he be swayed by bribes, threats, hardships? Not a chance.

If he is beaten and shot, will he quit? No, because he's out to
prove himself; deep inside he will find the strength to go on.
It's possible to slow him down, but he will keep coming back
to his task. He will solve the crime the author assigns to him
or die trying. This kind of determination makes Boyer a strong
character. He is well-motivated and strong enough to go the
distance despite the numerous obstacles the author is going to
place in his path. A worthy protagonist for a dramatic novel
indeed.
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THE STEADFAST PROTAGONIST said:

The protagonist of a dramatic novel should always be determined,
well motivated, willful. Here are some examples:
• The old man in Hemingway's The Old Man
and the Sea has not caught a fish in eighty-four
days. He is disgraced. He is impoverished. His
very manhood is being derided. He must catch
a big fish or die trying.

• Michael Corleone in Puzo's The Godfather is
another example of a worthy protagonist. Michael's
father has been shot. His beloved family
is under siege. His father's enemies have brought
the family to the brink of disaster. Michael Corleone
will risk everything to save them.

• Scrooge in Dickens's A Christmas Carol is a
protagonist with a negative ruling passion. He's
a passionate miser, unrepentant, ill-humored,
ready at all times to defend his miserliness. And
he does defend it, against all comers, all cheerfulness,
all happiness—even against the supernatural.
Does that make him a worthy protagonist?
It certainly does.

• How about McMurphy in Kesey's One Flew
over the Cuckoo's Nest? He's going to run things
his way or else. He refuses to be dominated by
Big Nurse. He's the Bull Goose Loony, he says.
He will dominate the ward or die trying.

• Remember Leamas in The Spy Who Came in
from the Cold? He has gone behind the Iron
Curtain pretending to defect in order to trap an
East German spy master. He'll do his duty despite
betrayal, despite disillusionment, despite everything,
right up to the climactic moment.

• Humbert Humbert, the protagonist of Nabokov's
Lolita, is a cad, but he has one monumental
passion, which rules his every waking moment.
He must have Lolita's love or die.

• Emma Bovary, in Flaubert's Madame Bovary,
is a hopelessly romantic woman stuck in a provincial
town, married to a dull country doctor.
She must find romance despite the risk to her
reputation. This kind of passion is the stuff of
which great classics are made.

You need not look far to find other examples in literature.
Think of any character you ever liked and you will find at his
core a definable, strong ruling passion. Look at Defoe's Moll
Flanders and her relentless pursuit of the good life, Tolstoy's
Anna Karenina and her love for Vronski, Melville's Ahab and
his passion to kill Moby Dick. Examine any enduring dramatic
novel and you will find central characters with burning passions
that rule their every action.

Even though a character is controlled by a burning passion,
he acts out of a complexity of motives. Take Boyer Mitchell.
He wants to best his dead father. He wants to prove himself to
his mother. He has a love of justice. He likes a mystery. He's
fascinated by applied science. All of these motives combine to
form his ruling passion, to be the Leonardo da Vinci of private
eyes. His antagonists will act out of a complexity of motives
as well.
Click to expand...

STEREOTYPED CHARACTERS AND HOW TO AVOID THEM said:

Stereotyped characters are characters that are too familiar: the
whore with the heart of gold, the Southern sheriff with a slow
drawl and a sadistic core, the tough-but-tender private eye. If you
watch network television you will see stereotyped characters on
nearly every show.

When you say a character is a "John Wayne" type, you mean
he is a stereotype of the screen character created by John Wayne.
The same is true for the "Woody Allen" type. Readers and audiences
like to type characters. It's unavoidable. Whether or not
you like to think of your characters as types, your readers will.
But there is an enormous difference between fresh characters of
a recognizable type and stereotyped characters.

One of the first novels ever written was Defoe's Moll Flanders.
Moll is a delightful character—lusty, gutsy, full of life. She's
an anarchist, a thief, a whore, a bigamist; she commits incest,
yet she's honest with herself and has an infectious good humor.
What type of character is she? Let's call her a "sympathetic
sociopath." A couple of hundred years later another sympathetic
sociopath comes along. He's an anarchist—lusty, gutsy, full of
life. He's a thief and a liar, and he has an infectious good humor
about himself. His name is Zorba the Greek. Moll and Zorba
are both of the same "type" but are not stereotypes. The reason?
Both have great complexity and depth, and therefore differences
abound.

Pierre, in Tolstoy's War and Peace, is an innocent in search
of meaning as he slogs around in the muck of the Napoleonic
Wars. He's indecisive and easily swayed; he attempts understanding
through befuddled philosophical speculation. The same is
true of Robert Stone's Converse in Dog Soldiers, written a hundred
years later—except that Converse is slogging around in the muck
of the American drug culture of the 1970s. The characters are
similar, but they are not Xerox copies. They are similar because
traits in both homo sapiens and homo fictus tend to "clump"
together.

If you find a soft-spoken intellectual, an expert on, say, medieval
morality plays, he will probably not be a greedy businessman
or a shark at three-corner billiards. We expect cute young
girls not to be interested in fascist politics. Kindly old grandmothers
who like knitting and baking cookies are probably not
making bombs in the basement. Expectations about characters
in the reader's mind are based on conventions such as these and
are signaled by clues authors give about the characters. When
you see a black-hatted gun fighter come on the screen in a western,
you say to yourself, "Ah, the bad guy." If you see a handsome,
boyish, clean-shaven fella, a flower in his holster instead
of a gun, a lasso twirling at his side, you say to yourself, "Ah,
the good guy."

When all the reader's expectations about a character are fulfilled,
when there are no contradictions or surprises in the character,
you have a stereotyped character. If the old granny is a
retired police lieutenant and the bookish intellectual secretly loves
boxing, you have a start on breaking the stereotype.

Take, as an example, the stereotype of the tough-guy detective.
Say you want to create such a character and you name him Brock
Mitchell. He's everything the stereotype calls for: he's resourceful,
ruggedly handsome, hard as nails, chews matchsticks, but he's
soft as mush on the inside. He likes kittens. He isn't making it
well financially, lives alone, has a wry wit and a fondness for rye
whiskey. He collects blondes the way a blue serge suit collects
lint.

So you've created the perfect stereotype. Philip Marlowe, Jim
Rockford, Sam Spade, the Continental Op—this character has
had a thousand incarnations. What to do?

Robert B. Parker broke the detective stereotype with Spenser,
who loves gourmet cooking and is having a stormy romance with
a lady psychologist named Susan Silverman. Donald E. Westlake
writing as Richard Stark broke the stereotype by eliminating the
soft mushy inside of his character, Parker. So did Mickey Spillane
with Mike Hammer. You might make Brock a gambling addict
or an ex-priest mourning his loss of faith.

But be warned. You can break the stereotype only if the break
is well integrated within the character as a logical outgrowth of
his physiology, sociology, and psychology, and not simply contrived
by the author to surprise or shock. If Brock Mitchell were,
say, sexually involved with a thirteen-year-old girl, you've broken
the stereotype all right; you might even be able to make his pedophilia
an outgrowth of his physiology, sociology, and psychology;
but the reader is likely to find such behavior reprehensible.
You could give him other negative traits that the reader would
accept, as long as he's struggling to solve his problem. Say he's
a kleptomaniac and is warring with his inclination to steal. The
kleptomania might be a result of some boyhood trauma, for
example. He might have been severely punished for a theft he
never committed. The reader could sympathize with such a character.
The secret of fresh, nonstereotyped characterizations is to combine character traits that the reader would not expect to find
within the same character. You might draw a character in your
novel, Sister Maria of Avignon, who loves comic books. You
might find tenderness and compassion where you'd least expect
it, say in a Nazi stormtrooper. An artist of the most delicate
sensibilities can have a mean streak. There are contradictions to
be found in everyone. Readers delight in seeing them in your
characters. The trick is, of course, not to go too far. There is no
objective standard for knowing what is too far; you have to ask
yourself, "Is it believable?"

And like all character traits, contradictions should serve the
purpose of the story; they should affect the emotions and the
behavior of the character.
Click to expand...

CHARACTER MAXIMUM CAPACITY AND THE "WOULD HE REALLY" TEST said:

Human beings sometimes do foolish things. They misspeak, they
forget, they buy when they should sell, they miss opportunities,
they're blind to the obvious. In effect, they are not at all times
and in all situations operating at their maximum capacity. Not
so with homo fictus.

All of your central characters, both protagonists and antagonists,
should at all times be clever and efficient in handling the
problems you have presented them. Say your heroine is alone
in a spooky house during a thunderstorm. The lights go out. "What's
that?"—strange noises are coming from the attic. Groaning and
moaning and the clanking of chains. You've seen this scene a
million times in cheap horror films. Your heroine finds a candle
and lights it. But if she goes anywhere near that attic (as she
always does in the cheap horror films), you are violating the
principle of maximum capacity. No sane and sensible person,
no matter how curious, would go up those stairs to the attic. This
particular cliché is rather widely known as the "idiot in the attic"
motif. Never use it.

The principle of maximum capacity does not require that a
character always be at an absolute maximum, but at the maximum
within that character's capability. A weak character in the
dramatic sense does not mean weak in the ordinary sense. Your
character may be a ninety-pound milquetoast and still be a strong
dramatic character—if he knows what he wants and is striving
within his capacity to get it. The clever author is always placing
obstacles in the path of his characters. It is cheating if the author
does not allow a character to use all his capacities to overcome
these obstacles. If your character is at his maximum capacity,
the reader will never say, "Hey, knucklehead, why don't you just
pick up the phone and call the fire department instead of using
a garden hose?"

Characters at their maximum capacity will use any and all
means available within their particular capacity to achieve their
ends. Let's say you have drawn an extremely shy character, Ellen,
who is hopelessly in love with a married man who works
in the same office. She fantasizes about him. She yearns for a
hello from him, which she never gets. His name is Kevin, and
he doesn't even know she exists. It is not within Ellen's powers
(her capacity) to go up to this man and say, "Hey Kevin, old
bone, what do you say we take a tumble in the hay after work
tonight?" It is not even within her powers to speak to the man
except on business matters, and even then she sputters, demurs,
and blushes.

Now suppose you have drawn Ellen from a "real" character
you know from the office where you work. Her name is Sue
Ellen. Sue Ellen has worked with the "real" Kevin for twentytwo
years, and every day of those twenty-two years she has been
pining for him without ever saying one word or making a single
move. That's real life. Stranger than fiction, as they say. But
nothing is happening; there is no drama, no action. The reader
grows impatient for something to happen. A story is goaloriented;
it progresses, it develops. Homo fictus always operates
at his maximum capacity and it is never within a dramatic character's
maximum capacity, when faced with a problem or a challenge,
to do nothing unless the lack of action is being played for
comedy.

True, a shy character has a limited range of options for action.
In her regular state of mind she is not likely to do anything overt.
But there are still a million choices she might make. You, as the
storyteller, must select from among all the possible solutions
which action she might take within her maximum capacity. Let's
say you go into your study and think real hard about all the things
your character could do. Here are some possibilities:
• She might send a note to Kevin and tell all.
• She might have a friend intervene for her.
• She might telephone Kevin and disguise her voice.
• She might take assertiveness training.
• She might go to charm school.
• She might find out what bar Kevin frequents, then go there in disguise.
• She might find out what church he attends and join the choir to be near him.
• What if she were to meet his wife and befriend her?
• She might get tipsy at a party, find her courage—and make a fool of herself.
• She might manipulate things at the office so she gets appointed his secretary.
• While passing him in the cafeteria she might get flustered and spill her coffee on his new tie.

This list is not exhaustive. You might make up option lists
like this whenever a character faces a new dilemma. If the character
agonizes, so much the better.

Maximum capacity should always be exhibited but must never
be exceeded. In each situation, you must ask yourself whether the
contemplated action passes the would he really test. Suppose you
have characterized Wilfred Frompet as a mild-mannered book
dealer. He's bespectacled, fiftyish, retiring, scholarly. Let us say
you have him getting into a minor traffic accident. The other driver
is a surly foreigner with garlic breath who pushes Wilfred around
and knocks his glasses off. You're not sure how Wilfred would
respond in this situation. You reread his biography and ponder
the possibilities. You want him to be resourceful and determined,
so you have him go to the trunk of the car, get out his tire iron,
and bludgeon the other driver to death.

What's wrong with that? you ask. It's willful, decisive, and reveals
a new facet of his character. The trouble is, such an action
flunks the would he really test. Such a violent response would be
appropriate only in an absurd or satirical piece in which the characters
are not intended to be portrayed realistically. Nothing will
send a book to the garbage can sooner than a character that causes
the reader to say, "Wilfred Frompet would never do a thing like
that—at least not the Wilfred Frompet I know. "

That is not to say that a character such as Wilfred could not be
pushed into such an action if the pressures on him were great
enough. In other words, if Wilfred were drafted into the army, he
might turn out to be a Sergeant York. In fact, Sergeant York himself
refused the draft at first because he was a pacifist.

If you are conscientious in seeking out clever and resourceful
alternatives for your characters, your story will prosper. Whenever
your characters are faced with decisions that matter, ask yourself
these two questions with regard to maximum capacity: "Would
he really?" and "What else could he do that is more ingenious,
dramatic, surprising, or funny?"

Asking these two questions will help you keep your character
acting at his maximum capacity. A character at his maximum
capacity always gives the reader a good performance.
But, you say, what if your character has little capacity? Doesn't
matter. He will act within that capacity and will surprise and
delight just the same. Say you create the character of a business
executive who crashes his plane in the desert. He has no survival
skills; in other words, a low maximum capacity in that situation.
His idea of hardship up until this point in his life is having no
crushed ice for his vodka martini. His clumsy and ineffectual
attempts to dig for water, to milk cacti, to kill lizards, and so on,
could make for a damn gripping story, as long as the executive
acts at his maximum capacity within the limited range of his
skills.

It is also within the maximum capacity of a character to change,
to grow, to develop. Characters are not made of concrete. They
are living things, and no living thing remains the same. What
causes them to change is the fiction writer's magic wand: conflict,
the subject of the next chapter.
Click to expand...

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ParseltonguePhoenix · Aug 26, 2008

Very nice. I've never really attempted to create my own character, but now I feel like I know how to start, if I get the urge. Thanks for sharing, Jon.

Also, I agree with Aekiel...a sub-forum for the writing tips sounds pretty good to me.

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Character Creation

Jon The Demon Mayor Admin DLP Supporter

MofoNofo Seventh Year

Dark Belra Minister of Magic

Aekiel Angle of Mispeling ~ Prestige ~ DLP Supporter

Dark Minion Bright Henchman DLP Supporter Retired Staff

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InfernoCannon Seventh Year

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ParseltonguePhoenix Unspeakable

Big franchise, small main character

How to write dialogue from a character who has a hard time speaking the language?

When is a character a SI/author avatar?

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