Who is your Character, and what does he do?

Taking a cue from Ahnold, this is only the first of many questions you need to ask of your characters. (Also, welcome back to the meaty article series for National Novel Preparation Month.)

Some authors swear by the infinite detail system, in which you systemically and categorically (but perhaps arbitrarily) write down every possible detail about the character. I find this both excessive and a waste of both you and your character’s time. I prefer a more pointed inquiry. Yes, some details are nice, so your character doesn’t have blue eyes in one scene, and brown in another. Beyond that… I wouldn’t write things down ahead of time. If you come to a point during November when you need to add something, add it then, and write it down accordingly. Having the note of everything you have decided is important, for the aforementioned blue/brown eyes reason. But if you don’t need it yet, skip it until you find a useful purpose for it.

Who is your character, and why should I care?

This is the real question. If I pick up a book, and I find a hero off on a quest who is Perfect In Every Way™, I chuck the book and pick up something else. Bo-ring. There’s nowhere to go from perfect except down, and I’m not in the mood to watch a perfect character spiral into depression. Not an ideal way to spend my hard won free time. This is a key point. Not everyone reads anymore, and those that do are finding time around their infinitely busy schedules. You’ve got to earn that!

First of all, if you followed my articles on prep, you saw my breakdown of the basics for any character (from my Conceptualization article) as follows, which pretty much summarizes the “meat” of the character and their role in the novel.

Compelling Character:
Desperate Desire:
Specific Situation:
Classic Setup:
Wound:
Flaw:
Inciting Incident:
Quirk of Fate:
Theme:

If you have all of these for each character, great. If not, you should probably work on the big picture points before getting into the details. The critical item is really the first one. What makes a character compelling?

Readers need to be able to relate to your characters somehow. Pinnacles of Perfection are not only boring, they’re un-relatable. None of us are perfect, and while we’d love to be, it’s impossible. We’re only human. (Even if your characters may not be, the intent of that expression still holds weight.) Harry Potter as the boy who lived under the stairs at the beginning is exaggerated, but we have all been marginalized, condescended to, or generally looked down on for some reason. Being orphaned, too, is something people are familiar with. My parents are both alive, but I can still relate to someone having lost theirs. I have friends who have lost parents, and I have felt their pain as they dealt with the loss. It doesn’t have to be a character trait that I (your reader) share, as long as I can understand it. Human qualities, troubles, and desires are relatable. Even if your reader can’t precisely relate to an elf witch in a position of power having a moral dilemma, the moral dilemma is something we all understand.

The first three points on that list of basic traits are all going to interconnect. What does your character want more than anything else in the world? Usually, what they don’t have, despite past trying. No one is a clean slate. Everyone has already been through wins, losses, mistakes, and displeasing neutrality. The character is the sum of all those parts, and it’s important you include both ups and downs. Let’s see, my current desire is to publish a novel. I’ve written a ton. I submitted some to contests and publishers and got rejected or failed to win any real prizes. I have participated in NaNoWriMo events for years, though I’ve only won some of the time. I’ve now ghostwritten a novel that’s going to be published, but haven’t got one that I can put my own name on. Each piece fits as part of the whole, so while “struggling writer making a meager income with odd writing jobs” is probably relatable as a character, and “getting a novel published” is a desire I assume you all can understand, the scenario is really what sells it. What single thing has its figurative boot on the character’s neck? Let’s get out of my head (it’s scary in there) and picture a writer character instead. Is it because they have some kind of innate quality that the world is out to suppress? Did they rack up huge debts both in relation to their goal and maybe alongside it, too? Maybe their status in life means they’re writing on the back of recycle bin paper with stolen pens while working as the publishing company’s janitor, and wouldn’t dream of showing such a composition to anyone? This is the crisis you’re offering to solve with the novel. The hero wouldn’t decide to be heroic unless doing so gave them what they desire and got them out of whatever hole they’re in that kept them from having it already. Even those heroes that seem to be heroing for the greater good are really doing it because they have a desire to uphold the good, or to be seen doing so. Often heroes with no better reason than “it’s the thing to do” are going to falter on their journey. Whether that means you decide they will do it because it would affect their status if they don’t (money/power), affect someone else they care about (love), or something like that is fine. Just be aware that there is an underlying reason.

Which Brings Us To Motivation and Development

Motivations are really what it’s all about. Why the hero needs to save the heroine, or fight the bad guy. Most of the time we like to think about our desires drawing us onward, but let’s face it. A lot of the time we’re really just trying to stay two steps ahead of the crocodile at our heels.

Ultimately, as we grow up, a lot of the lessons we learn about life aren’t all sunshine and rainbows. We learn hard truths when we get hurt. When we get rejected, or refused, or laughed at. Think of the desires as the mask your hero wears because they’re too ashamed to admit what they’re afraid of. Rejection? Were they made fun of because of how they dressed, how much money they had or didn’t have, or something else? These things are going to be part of what has shaped their worldview. We say we’re over things, but what we really mean is we’re not going to get caught doing that again. Whatever “it” was. If they got laughed at for how they dressed, maybe they’re a model or fashion designer now, or even an artist. Having money? Doing charity work. Not having money? High powered executive type with a large salary. The only characters that start in one situation and never leave it are minor characters, because we don’t care enough about them to let them have real development. (If your main character fits that single-situation description, full stop. You need to overhaul that character immediately.)

Now, some of my readers are whining, ‘but that’s not what my hero is doing now’. Okay, why not? What changed? We are pretty simple creatures. We want what we don’t have currently, and we need to show the rest of the world we aren’t that loser anymore. (Ask any high schooler, ever.) If your hero isn’t seeking what they didn’t have once, what changed? Even if they aren’t putting it into the same words, they’re working for what they lack, and any change in course after that probably means new hard truths about life kicked in. So think about how your character develops. Not just before your novel, but during it as well. Why do they do what they do?

Allow me to add a little structure to your answer:

Opening Mindset: NAME wants DESIRE, but due to EARLIER EVENT, falsely believes LOGICAL FALLACY rather than risking WOUND again.

Transition Mindset: Now that EVENT HAPPENED, NAME has reconsidered their DESIRE, but only partly updated their belief that LOGICAL FALLACY, turning it instead into MODIFIED FALLACY. They’ll need A KICK IN THE PANTS to move into their new mindset.

New Mindset: Now that A KICK IN THE PANTS HAPPENED, NAME has reconsidered their DESIRE yet again, and this time realized that NEW BELIEF puts earlier events into a different perspective.

Yes, I’ve been rather blunt with my parameter names. It’s not supposed to be rocket science. I find using this in my character template sheet makes me start working on a character, see this, laugh, and then I’m in a better mood to keep working. You have to look at the hero before anything started happening to find out where they’re going, and it’s only once they’re going that you’re going to find reasons to lead them astray. Good reasons or bad ones, even. It’s okay, sometimes good things can happen that change their course, too. Let them meet someone nice. Not taking them where you want them? Lover cheats on, lies to, or dumps the hero. New job taking them a little off track? Maybe things aren’t going so great with relatives, friends, or other people they care about, and they need to go help.

The key is to get them moving!

There’s More To Characters Than Meets The Eye

But sometimes what meets the eye is part of the plot, too. Instead of thinking of characters as a whole, try to think of them as a group of traits. Mr. Potato Head, if you will, but expand that analogy to include all the other traits, internal and external, that you’ve been working on so diligently so far. Romeo and Juliet only works because they’re from opposing families. Could you make that opposing countries? Sure. Love stories where the lovers are of different races, colors, or creeds are compelling.

You don’t have to keep your characters exactly like you came up with them. Ideas can be improved upon, that’s why it’s so much work to be a writer. You can swap character traits around to make your story stronger. If the Romeo and Juliet star-crossed lovers issue is at the core of your main characters, try poking at some of their other characteristics. That scenario often to makes them “a lover, not a fighter” (at first, at least). How might the story change, if that did? Would Romeo brave her father to publicly ask for her hand, some time when he’d either have to fight for it physically (challenge someone in her family to a duel?), or intellectually—maybe he strategically gets the Prince into the scene so that violence couldn’t break out? I brought up causality in earlier articles. Here, too, cause and effect.

Your Task, Should You Choose To Accept It…

Take out a blank sheet of paper (or blank word doc, but it helps to be able to do these side by side). For every trait you have for your main characters, choose something else. Are they white? Make them black. Now think, “Does this hypothetical new character fit the plot as well? Better?” If they fit just as well, your racial choices are simplistic. Too simple and there’s no effect on the story. Not all traits have to affect the story, mind you, but a good percentage of them should. Only a character who is the perfect mix of right person, right place, and right time fits the plot you are writing.

Not all your traits need to be divisive, either, race is simply an easy trait to poke at because all characters have that trait. Sometimes the difference could be as simple as giving the character blue eyes in a nation of brown-eyed individuals. Of course, then you have to explain why the character has blue eyes, but you’ve made a choice that definitely makes that person stand out. People that stand out tend to get noticed by others. Small ways, like the eye color, are enough for interest. Why does the love interest find them so intriguing? Their eyes are different. Now the love interest wants to interact with the character, even if just for a moment.

Go through most of your traits, and determine if you chose them because they were easy (or like yourself), or because they actually affect the plot, setting, or other characters. I can’t give you a number or even a percentage of traits that should affect the story because everyone writes differently. But I can tell you, if none of your character traits affect the story, that character is the wrong person for the main character role.

Ha! My characters are awesome, well-rounded individuals!

Great, I’ll buy your book when it hits the best seller list. (Yes, this is sarcasm. You’re not done yet.)

You can either move on to the window-dressing (height, weight, eye color, favorite food, etc.) or you can start working on how to ruin their lives. You now have all their wants, needs, fears, and situations written out. Take them away. Ruin them. Make it an uphill fight, both ways, in the snow… yeah, I’m actually serious on this one. I’m not cheering for a hero that didn’t have to earn it. You made the character compelling, “earning” my decision to spend my hard won free time reading the book for a bit. Now you have to keep my attention.

We live in the digital age where movies and TV have upstaged traditional media with a mile a minute action and CGI effects. If you can’t make the character’s fight harsh, strangling, and nearly lost several times over, you’ve probably lost your reader to the latest movie or TV show. (What do we call Netflix’s series, just “series”?) It’s not a guarantee, and many readers are devoted to reading. But there’s got to be something hard-won, even if all the character wins is self knowledge and the will to act. It’s that struggle that keeps us turning pages.